Southwest Florida specifics · Newer Houses, Shutters
Built Compliant, Built With Shutters, and Nobody Told the Third Owner
Much of this region's housing stock is recent and was fully code compliant when built — using shutters rather than rated glazing. Owners assume a newer house has protected openings. Often it has panels in the garage instead.
Tell us the address and whether the property has been repaired since 2022. That second answer decides whether this is a window job or something larger.
50%
The threshold that turns a repair into a compliance project
Wind
Impact glass is a wind product. We will not sell it as flood protection
Our crews
We measure, we schedule, and our own people install
Licensed
A licensed Florida general contractor
Assuming the year of construction answers the question
A house from 2007 feels modern, and its owner reasonably assumes modern means protected. The code, however, allowed more than one route to compliance, and for a long stretch of rapid build-out here the cheaper route was a shutter package supplied with the house. By the time a property has changed hands twice, nobody involved remembers which route was taken. The panels sit in the garage behind everything else, and the assumption goes unchallenged until a storm is named.
How to find out in an afternoon
- Count the panels in the garage against the openings in the house.
- Check for an etched marking in a corner of a few panes of glass.
- Look at the original permit package for what was actually approved.
- Ask whether anybody has ever put the panels up.
- Check that the fixings the panels mount to are still in the wall.
Why the pattern is regional rather than random
Collier and Lee grew extremely quickly over two decades, and building at that pace at scale rewards the cheapest compliant specification. For much of that period a shutter package was cheaper than rated glazing across a whole house, so a great many houses were delivered that way.
It leaves a regional stock of buildings that are modern, well constructed and entirely compliant, whose current owners have never established which route their own house took. The question takes an afternoon and hardly anybody has asked it.
How we handle it
- 01Establish what protection exists before proposing anything new.
- 02Say so where the existing shutter package is complete and serviceable.
- 03Prioritize openings honestly where a budget will not cover everything.
- 04Quote only what genuinely improves the situation.
This is the check we run first and it regularly changes the job. Some owners find they are less protected than they believed. Others rediscover a complete shutter package that works, which turns a whole-house replacement into a much smaller piece of work on the openings that matter most. Both of those are better outcomes than a quote written without asking.
Said plainly
Where we stop
A complete shutter package is a legitimate answer to the requirement and we will tell you when you have one. What we will not do is imply that shutters you own are inadequate in order to sell glass, and we do not fit shutters, so we cannot help you extend or repair a package that is incomplete.
FAQ
Common questions
- My house was built in 2015. Surely it has impact glass?
- Not necessarily. Both routes satisfied the code, and shutters were frequently the specification during the fast build-out years. The permit package for the house will say which was approved.
- The panels are in the garage but I have never used them. Is that fine?
- It meets the requirement, provided the package is complete and the mounting hardware is still in place. Whether it is fine in practice depends on whether you would actually put them up, which is a different question and only you can answer it.
- Should I replace working shutters with glass?
- Only for reasons you can name — usually convenience, appearance, or not being here to deploy them. If your package is complete and you are willing to use it, we are not going to invent a reason for you to spend money.
What we install
Impact Windows
The core product. In Collier and Lee the common situation is not an old house with old windows — it is a reasonably new house that was built fully compliant using shutters, with glazing that was never rated at all.
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Sliding Glass Doors
On this coast the sliders open onto the lanai and they are the widest thing in the building. On a property that took water in 2022 they are also where the evidence of it is easiest to read.
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Impact Entry Doors
An approved entry door is a whole assembly — slab, frame, hinges, lock, threshold and any glazing — approved as one thing. On this coast the threshold detail matters more than most people expect.
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Impact Garage Doors
In most houses the double garage door is the widest opening in the whole envelope. In Collier and Lee it is also the one nearest the ground, which drags it into a conversation that has nothing to do with wind at all.
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French & Specialty Shapes
Arched heads, radius transoms, oversized fixed glass and French pairs are fabricated for one opening in one house. In a region still working through a rebuild, the queue in front of them is longer than the brochure suggests.
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Glazing Into Existing Frames
Where existing frames are sound and an approval exists for glazing into them, changing only the glass is cheaper, faster and far less disruptive. On this coast it suits the condominium stock particularly well.
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More southwest florida specifics
The 50% Rule
If the cost of repairs or improvements reaches half the structure's value, floodplain rules can require the entire building to be brought into current compliance — which may include elevating it. That is a different project from replacing windows.
Read more →
A Two-Year-Old Rebuild
Most Florida markets deal with old repair work of uncertain quality. Here the work is recent, and the problem is the opposite one: it has not had time to settle, and a share of the people who did it are no longer in the state.
Read more →
Wind Product, Water Market
Impact glazing is tested against a flying object and a pressure cycle. It is a wind product. In the parts of this region worst hit in 2022, the destroying force was water, and no window on the market addresses that.
Read more →
Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.