Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to the Hunker Down Guide show where we're going to talk about hurricane preparedness.
[00:00:09] I'm your host, Jamie Robe, and I'd like to welcome you. Today we're going to talk just a little bit about a potential source of lower cost hurricane shutters. Now, lower cost and hurricane shutters don't usually get spoken about in the same sentence because these things can be pretty expensive. If you looked at any of the stuff, even, even cutting plywood out these days is expensive. And.
[00:00:38] But years ago I had tried many different types of shutters on my home.
[00:00:44] And I'll just show you a image here of, of the front of my house.
[00:00:51] What you're looking at are these metal corrugated, very, very rigid panels. They're everywhere from 2 to 3ft all the way up to 6 and even higher length and they're usually a couple of feet wide and they have bolts or you can get, sometimes you can get little connectors that you can fasten to the walls of your home or the.
[00:01:19] But anyway, you can see on this picture I have a one car garage completely covered over.
[00:01:25] And then I have an old, an arched window there.
[00:01:30] And on the left side of the screen you can see a, a bay, part of a bay window there. So I have them going horizontally as well as vertically, all different sizes. And I had to acquire these by buying them from different places over time. And one of the things you can do is get shutters at your big box stores. So you know, they've got displays set up now if you wait until, you know, a day or two before they might be completely sold out of the panels or other parts that go with it.
[00:02:05] But if you walked over there and there was no threat going on, you could see, you know, what these go for. Now this is just some examples, but they're pretty pricey. Each piece of a panel. So you can see if you had to have dozens of these, it could add up pretty quickly.
[00:02:25] Now I did find a place that locally here in the Tampa Bay area, a restore, which is a.
[00:02:37] It's an. It's a store that's run by Habitat for Humanity that sets the great, you know, non profit that builds homes for, for affordable homes for people.
[00:02:52] And they run on donations and contributions. And one of the way you can help support Habitat for Humanity is to go to Restores and buy things that either builders have donated that they don't need or they get all sorts of stuff. It's amazing. Furniture, doors, you name it. But one of the things that they had today, when I was at our local one, I will hit this little video. The this is a section of literally hundreds of metal hurricane shutters. It really, really is amazing. These are the same types of shutters we just saw in that big box store.
[00:03:33] And they're all different sizes, all stacked up there. They look like great condition to me. And look at this pricing. It's unbelievable.
[00:03:41] 3 foot and under section $11, 3 to 6 foot $17 and, and 6 foot and above $22. Now that's like a third or a quarter of the price of brand new panels. And these metal panels really do last, you know, forever. And if you take good care of it, store them properly and stuff. And these, you know, you can see they have holes for bolts and other types of connectors just like they're all standardized that I've found.
[00:04:13] I was also able years ago when we had a hurricane coming, I had about a week's notice and I was able to travel probably about 15, 20 miles around and I was able to buy some used panels from different individual people by looking on Craigslist. You could look on Facebook Marketplace if you're, if you're, if there's no threat going on. There are definitely panels available. Used panels and again we say used that means you know how often where they actually even ever put up or anything. It's just amazing. But the I just thought I would share this potential resource out there. Again, if you do buy something from Habitat for Humanity from their restore and and There are about 900 restores around the country so it's possible you've got one near you and didn't even know it existed but you are supporting a great organization at the same time.
[00:05:15] So I just wanted to take a moment and share that idea with you at this point in the hurricane season and I hope that that helps you.
[00:05:27] Again, I'd like to invite you to our website, hunkerdownguide.com where we have a community of like minded people who are all trying to get prepared for hurricane season and, and we hope to see you there. Thank you very much.
