The ones we ordered are called StormCatcher and they are a strong material similar to trampoline fabric but thinner. They are installed with eye bolts and can be taken down, folded and stored. You can see through them and they are light weight and easier to store than big sheets of aluminum or plywood which is a big plus for us. Also, friends with the permanently installed aluminum type of shutters tell us that they rattle all the time. The curtains claim they stop 96% of water and wind, making it possible (but highly unlikely for me) to stand inside them and watch a cat 4 or 5 hurricane. Heh! No way! There is some video out there of a guy in Asia standing in his screen porch filming a cat 4 typhoon. As I said, NOT ME!!
We have a long wall of glass and sliding doors facing the water and there is a short (around 3') overhang. What they will do is mount the fasteners under the end of the overhang and sunk into the floor of the deck. When the curtain is attached, it will be several feet outside the glass and it's main characteristic is that it repels or bounces back large items that hit it thus saving the windows. On the back side of the condo, the fabric will be attached directly to the wall around the windows and if something large hits it the window can break, but the curtain will still keep out most of the wind and rain so all you need to clean up is a little water and some broken glass. Unprotected, if the winds from a hurricane get inside they can blow out all of the windows in the house. It's the difference in pressure, there are examples of a window breaking and allowing the wind inside and it blows the roof off! Probably not going to happen here where everything including the roof is concrete and rebar but still...
In the past, we've had no protection and we went through 2 cat 4+ and cat 5 hurricanes in 2005. We're on the 3rd floor so we don't get the storm surge damage from boulders and huge chunks of coral crashing through the house, the condos on the 1st floor have that with even smaller hurricanes as well as a couple feet of sand inside. Last year an entire palm tree trunk got into one ground floor condo and did a whirly-gig dance destroying almost everything.
Mainly we need to protect from wind, driving rain and flying objects. What happened in the past is that the workers came in and took everything down off the walls and shelves and moved it all into the most protected bedroom. They then opened the sliding doors about a foot and also opened windows at the back to let it just blow through. Needless to say we got a lot of water damage to furniture they couldn't move and we've replaced the tile floors in 2 rooms from water getting underneath and eventually popping them up. We're hoping to avoid that and not to have to worry so much or come over and do so much moving of stuff. Plus, for every hurricane that actually hits near us there are a dozen or more warnings and you have to go through the whole rigamarole just in case.
The curtains are made to order and we are still about 3 or 4 weeks out from getting them delivered unless I get lucky, he said if they had a lull between large jobs he would put us in sooner. I should have ordered them earlier but I couldn't make up my mind. Really, I didn't want to spend the money but looking at the costs of the 2 new floors and having just had all the furniture sanded down and varnished to get rid of the white marks from water, I think it will be a good investment. Here's a link to the web site
http://www.stormcatcher.com/ jclements, you should keep an eye on the hurricane reports, I use this one
http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/. Right now it shows Dolly heading for the Brownsville area but these tracks change hourly and they change a lot so you need to keep an eye on it. There were models earlier today that had Houston under its path. She was supposed to hit us dead on up to about 4 hours before she moved past us instead. It also depends on how strong she gets, some are saying she could be a cat 3 or larger by the time she crosses the warm waters of the Gulf. They are really only making educated guesses although it sure beats not having any idea at all where they are.
Here's the sat image of her now, she's really big with bands stretching across the entire Gulf of Mexico and back down through almost all of the Caribbean. We have had heavy wind and rain today from that band you see trailing down into the Caribbean. If you look on the right side of the Yucatan peninsula (that seal's head or thumb that is pointing towards Cuba and Florida), there is an island just offshore, that is Cozumel. We are directly across from the southernmost tip of Cozumel, I can see their lighthouse and the cruise ships arriving on a clear night. I'd wave but you can see that we are under some heavy orange that I think means rain.
