Preparing Your Home for a Hurricane

Right now, during the calm before the storm, is the best time to prepare your home for hurricane season. Don’t wait until the big one’s bearing down on you, when everyone else in town is snapping up all the bottled water. Get out your measuring tape, hammer, and credit card, and take these steps today to help protect your home.

Remove weak or dead trees.
Contact a tree removal company to ensure that those trunks and limbs don’t fall through your roof or your neighbor’s. Don’t wait too long to do major yard work; if there’s an impending storm, there might not be any yard waste collection, and then you’re stuck with a pile of debris just waiting to be blown around.

Clean out your gutters and downspouts.
With intense rains coming, you want to give all that water a clear path for drainage.

Bring in lawn furniture, garbage cans, bicycles, etc.
Hurricane winds will transform loose objects into dangerous projectiles, even if they’re heavy.

Get your plywood window covers ready.
Covering your windows doesn’t just protect against the mess of broken glass. Broken windows allow pressure to build inside your house and can actually put your roof at risk of blowing off.

Use plywood that is a half-inch to three quarters of an inch thick.
Measure your windows ahead of time and have the plywood custom-cut to fit each window. Allow room at the edges for screw holes, which should be placed about 18 inches apart.

Get the proper hardware.
While you’re at the hardware store, pick up the appropriate size screwdriver or drill bit and a steady ladder if you don’t already have them. To be one more step ahead of the game, store the plywood with the screws already started; that way, the job’s partially done when the time comes.

Consider buying a generator...
Or if you have one, make sure it’s operational. Sure, cooking every meal on a camp stove or grill and reading by candlelight can be fun at first. But for many, going without electricity gets old quickly—and it can be dangerous for children, the elderly, and diabetics, who rely on it for health reasons.

Cary-based Bitting Electric offers an array of mid to high end residential generators from manufacturers GUARDIAN®, KOHLER®, and Onan. “We try to stick with the ones that have been in the marketplace the longest and that have a good track record,” says Ryan Bailey, sales manager. These generators are attached to your house, and unlike their portable counterparts, they don’t require you to keep a large supply of fuel on hand.

“They’re fully automatic, they come on between and eight and thirty seconds after the power goes out, and they run designated loads that are selected ahead of time for the whole house,” says Bailey. “When the power comes back on, the generator transfers utility power back into the home and shuts itself down.”

TIP: Get A Head Start
To be one more step ahead of the game, store the plywood with the screws already started; that way, the job’s partially done when the time comes.

If you have this type of generator, change the oil, oil filters, air filters and spark plugs according to the manufacturer’s recommendations. And although these systems test themselves once a week, “if you know there’s a storm coming, just go outside and make sure your unit runs,” says Bailey. “There’s no substitute for doing a full load transfer to test all aspects of the system to make sure that they’re operational.”

Turn refrigerator and freezer to coldest settings.
If you don’t have an alternate power source, like a generator, turn these temperatures down to prolong the cold. Keeping your food good will not only protect you from foodborne illnesses, it’ll also help protect against odor damage inside your fridge.

Prepare your pool.
Turn off the power to the pump, pool lights and chlorinator. If the pump is exposed, wrap it securely with a waterproof cover, or if possible, remove the pump and store it inside (along with all your pool and patio furniture).

For more information, including tips on how to retrofit your home to protect against hurricanes, plus the latest storm advisories, visit the National Hurricane Center’s Web site at www.nhc.noaa.gov.

Karen Rhodes is a freelance writer who lived in Charleston, S.C., for Hurricane Hugo, and in Coral Gables, Florida, for Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma.