Owners of buildings in hurricane zones want to minimize damage and get tenants back in their homes or offices as soon as possible after a storm. So the onus is on the Building Team to find, specify, and—when necessary—engineer products and systems to ever-higher standards. The powerful hurricanes of the past 20 years have resulted in more stringent building codes and standards as well as more rigorous product testing.
In Florida, for example, the Miami-Dade County Building Department issues a Notice of Acceptance (NOA) to products only after they’ve passed intensive tests that simulate the effects of high-velocity hurricanes. The Miami–Dade list is a good place to start when selecting products for a building in a hurricane zone, says Bryan Karsky, AIA, LEED AP, executive vice president of Collman & Karsky Architects in Tampa, Fla. “You’re dealing with assemblies and testing that already give you a baseline for the level of hurricane hardening or wind resistance,” says Karsky. But bear in mind that additional engineering will be needed in areas where wind speeds can reach Category 4 (sustained winds of 131 to 155 mph) or Category 5 (sustained winds greater than 155 mph).
Let’s take a look at four building products that have been recently put to the test and approved for use in hurricane zones.
Wellbilt’s Sure-Board Wall Panel
Bilco’s Type S and Type NB steel and aluminum hatches
Related Stories
| Jul 21, 2014
Narrowing the field: Stirling Prize shortlist announced
The list includes first-time nominees Mecanoo and Renzo Piano Building Workshop, as well as previous winners Zaha Hadid Architects and Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.
| Jul 21, 2014
Designing the process of leadership transition
Transition planning can be one of the more complex challenges that firms face. Effective plans begin by determining the gap between a firm’s current state and the future it envisions for itself. SPONSORED CONTENT
| Jul 21, 2014
16 utility questions to answer during your building project
We need electricity to power our building projects, along with water and gas and a faultless sanitation system. That’s what we think about when we think about utility requirements for our building project, but are we missing something? SPONSORED CONTENT
| Jul 21, 2014
Commercial real estate development growing at strongest pace since recovery began: NAIOP report
Industrial, warehousing, office, and retail sectors see strong gains; Texas leads the nation in construction-value stats.
| Jul 21, 2014
Economists ponder uneven recovery, weigh benefits of big infrastructure [2014 Giants 300 Report]
According to expert forecasters, multifamily projects, the Panama Canal expansion, and the petroleum industry’s “shale gale” could be saving graces for commercial AEC firms seeking growth opportunities in an economy that’s provided its share of recent disappointments.
| Jul 21, 2014
Workplace trends survey reveals generational patterns in office use
Data analysis from Mancini•Duffy indicates significant variations among age cohorts in the workplace.
| Jul 20, 2014
IPD contract saves time and money for cancer center [2014 Building Team Awards]
Partners share the risk and reward of extreme collaboration on this LEED Silver project, which relies heavily on Lean principles.
| Jul 20, 2014
Why every major U.S. city should be nurturing ‘Innovation Hubs’
Today, more than ever, tech districts are the key to economic growth for metro markets. A new report from the Brookings Institution calls tech hubs the superchargers of innovation economies and creators of highly coveted tech jobs.
| Jul 18, 2014
Contractors warm up to new technologies, invent new management schemes [2014 Giants 300 Report]
“UAV.” “LATISTA.” “CMST.” If BD+C Giants 300 contractors have anything to say about it, these new terms may someday be as well known as “BIM” or “LEED.” Here’s a sampling of what Giant GCs and CMs are doing by way of technological and managerial innovation.
