Hurricane code, on both sides of the county line

Broward is inside the HVHZ. That matters.

Broward County sits entirely within Florida's High Velocity Hurricane Zone, alongside Miami-Dade. It is the strictest wind-code jurisdiction in the continental United States, with a design wind speed around 175 mph.

Half our service area is not. Boca Raton, Delray, Boynton and West Palm Beach are in Palm Beach County, outside the HVHZ, working to a lower design speed of roughly 160 to 170 mph under ordinary Florida Product Approval. The line between the two runs right through the middle of where we work, and it is eight miles from Deerfield to Boca.

So the same door can be legal on one side of that line and unapproved on the other. Most contractors work one side and assume the other; we work both every week, which is the whole reason we know which set applies to your address before quoting rather than after.

In the HVHZ a garage door must carry a Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance (NOA), or a Florida Product Approval specifically rated for the HVHZ. And under §105.1 of the Florida Building Code the old like-for-like replacement exemption is gone — every full door replacement needs a permit.

Reinforcing the door you already have

This is the part almost nobody writes about, because replacement is where the money is. A great deal of published guidance jumps straight to a new door.

Many existing doors can be braced instead. Vertical bracing posts, reinforced track brackets, heavier centre hinges and additional wall anchors all measurably improve how a door handles wind load — and all of them are repairs rather than replacements.

We will tell you honestly when bracing gets a door to a genuinely better place and when it does not. Bracing an existing door does not make it a code-compliant HVHZ assembly; only an approved door does that. What it does is make the door meaningfully harder to blow in, which is the outcome most homeowners actually care about.

After the storm

Wind damage is not always obvious. A door that still opens can have a bowed panel, track pulled out of true at the anchors, or a spring that took a shock load and is now on borrowed time. We check all three.

Where damage is claimable we provide an itemised invoice with photographs of each fault — what adjusters ask for, and what most contractors do not supply without being asked twice.

Do it in spring, not in September

During storm week every garage door company in Broward is booked, parts are short, and prices are whatever the market bears. A tune-up and a bracing assessment in April costs a fraction of the same conversation the week a named storm enters the Gulf.

It is also the honest time to have the replacement conversation, if your door genuinely needs one. Permits and approved product take time that a storm warning does not give you.