Estates · Storm preparation
Closing a waterfront estate before a storm
Most of what decides how a house comes through a hurricane is settled in spring, and most of what goes wrong afterwards was avoidable in the last day. Here is the whole sequence for a waterfront house whose owners are away.
The sequence
What is the right order for closing a waterfront estate before a storm?
Work in four windows: checks in May and June, exterior preparation at seventy-two hours, isolation and valuables at twenty-four hours, and nobody on site once conditions turn.
Each window is limited by something different: trades and parts in spring, workable weather at seventy-two hours, who can still reach the house at twenty-four.
May to June
What should be done before hurricane season starts?
Finish everything that needs a tradesman, a part or a permit by the end of June, because once a storm is forecast the trades are booked and the parts have gone.
- Shutters and glazingOperate every shutter, not a sample, electric roll-downs on the motor and the manual crank, since power fails first. Number panels to their openings and count hardware into labelled bags. Check glazing seals and anchors, and the garage door’s wind rating: it is the largest opening, and if it fails the interior pressurises and the roof is at risk.
- GeneratorA licensed technician services and load-tests it. Stored diesel degrades and collects water, so test or polish it and fill the tank before June. A gas-fired set depends on a utility main, which can be shut in a flood, or a propane tank, which can float. Siting and wiring are electrician’s work: above likely water, outdoors, clear of every opening, because carbon monoxide kills quietly.
- Drainage and outfallsFloat-test every sump and its battery backup, and clear roof drains and catch basins. Then find the tidal outfalls: yard drains on a seawall lot often discharge through a flap valve, and one held open by a shell lets the bay up through the lawn at high tide. Often missed: how the lift pit drains.
- Trees and palmsArborists book out in May. Remove dead fronds, seed pods and coconuts from palms, and dead limbs from hardwoods. Decline a “hurricane cut”: University of Florida extension staff have found palms stripped of live fronds more likely to lose their crowns.
- Furniture inventoryA written list of every movable object outside, each with a storage place and, if heavy, a weight. Decide now what comes indoors, so two people can do it in an hour.
- Dock lines and fendersReplace chafed or glazed lines and cut a separate set of storm lines long enough for the rise of the water. Confirm that cleats are through-bolted with backing plates, and measure the piles (see the dock section).
- Insurance and contentsThe hurricane deductible is a percentage of the dwelling limit and is applied once per calendar year. A homeowners policy excludes flood. A federal flood policy pays at most $250,000 on the building and $100,000 on contents and takes effect thirty days after purchase, so it cannot be bought with a storm on the chart; large houses need excess cover. Then photograph every room, cabinets included, with serial numbers and art appraisals, and keep a copy off site.
- Keys, codes and authorityOne written list: key holders; gate, alarm, shutter, lift and network codes; where each shutoff and breaker is; and who may authorise spending when the owner cannot be reached. Remove codes of anyone who has left.
Seventy-two hours out
What should be done 72 hours before a hurricane arrives?
Fuel the generator and vehicles, engage the recovery trades, bring in everything that can move and put the shutters up in a fixed order while crews can still work safely at height.
- Fuel and suppliesFill the generator tank and every vehicle. Hold portable fuel at a safe place, never inside the house. Supplies are for the recovery crew: tarps, heavy sheeting, fixings, lamps and water.
- Recovery tradesOften missed. Confirm in writing with a licensed electrician, a roofer and a water-mitigation firm that they will attend this house first, and what each may spend unasked. After landfall the good trades are committed within hours. Check licences on the state register.
- Shutters, in orderBegin with the largest openings and any that need a ladder, while winds are light. Leave the door you will leave by until last; electric roll-downs close as you go out. Walk the perimeter and test each opening by hand. If the garage door is not wind-rated, ask its installer about bracing.
- What comes indoorsEverything on the inventory. Anything that cannot is tethered to the structure, not a railing. Stand propane cylinders upright outdoors, never in the house or garage. Do not put furniture in the pool: it damages the finish and solves nothing.
The pool
Should you drain a pool before a hurricane?
No. Leave the pool full, because an empty shell can be pushed out of the ground by groundwater, and the repair is a rebuild.
Groundwater presses on the underside of the shell and the weight of the water inside holds it down, the same force that floats a boat. A hurricane raises the water table by rain and surge, so the pool emptied the day before is the one that lifts or cracks.
Groundwater stays high for weeks, so an overfilled pool returns to its normal level and no lower without a pool builder’s word.
Twenty-four hours out
What should be turned off 24 hours out, and what should stay on?
Isolate what is dangerous to leave running or restart blind, such as pool, dock and outdoor circuits and ground-level plant, and leave live what protects an empty house: pumps, alarms, monitoring and the generator.
One question decides the rest: where will the water reach? If the main panel stands above the highest water the site could see, keep the supply live and isolate only below it. If not, an electrician isolates the main, and the pumps run on the generator or not at all. Gas is closed, and reopened, only by the supplier or a licensed gas contractor. Pulling a meter is the utility’s work.
Isolate
- Pool, dock and outdoor circuits, at the breaker
- Irrigation controller and its supply
- Ground-level plant in the surge zone, condensers included
- Main water valve, once the last person leaves
- Water heater and appliance supplies
- Gas, by a qualified trade
Leave live
- Fire alarm panel and any sprinkler supply
- Sump and ejector pumps, with battery backup
- Generator, its fuel and its battery charger
- Cellular gateway, cameras and leak sensors, on battery
- The panel feeding them, if above the water
Where should a residential lift be left before a flood?
At its highest landing, above any water the site could see, doors closed and main disconnect opened by a lift technician: never at the lowest landing, never left in service. The pit, and often the controller and pump, sit at the bottom of the shaft. A car at the lowest landing stands in the water with its door gear and wiring; a car parked high survives and only the pit needs inspection. Battery lowering devices, the fire alarm and the generator all interact with isolation, so the technician writes the procedure in advance. After water enters the pit or machine room the lift stays off until it has been tested: a wet lift can fail to stop, with you inside.
What happens to refrigeration?
Empty refrigerators and freezers that will not stay on guaranteed power, wipe them dry and wedge the doors ajar. A freezer that must stay gets a cup of frozen water with a coin on the ice: if the coin has sunk when someone returns, everything thawed and refroze, and all of it goes. Ground-level wine rooms are low and power-dependent, so bottles of value move upstairs or inland.
Where should art, documents and vehicles go?
Up and inland. Take art off walls facing glass and off the ground floor, wrap it, and stand it raised in a room with no exterior wall, photographed with its condition noted. Papers and the code list travel with the family. Vehicles go inland with full tanks. A battery pack soaked in salt water can ignite days later, as Florida fire services have reported after recent hurricanes, so keep any flooded electric or hybrid vehicle away from buildings.
The waterfront
How should a dock, boat lift and seawall be prepared for a hurricane?
Take the vessel away, secure everything else against surge and swell, isolate shore power and check the seawall for the voids that appear afterwards.
Vessels and lifts
The best place for a boat in a major storm is out of the water, hauled or in rated storage inland. A boat left on a lift is not safe: the lift is rated to hold it still, not to resist surge and breaking waves. If it must stay, the builder’s storm procedure governs. Stow davit arms and isolate lift and davit motors at the breaker.
Dock, boxes and decking
Empty dock boxes of fuel and gear and strap them down; their contents become debris. Decking that has lost fasteners lifts first, so re-fix it in May. Salt shows first at fixings and pedestal fittings: replace them in marine-grade stainless and have dock electrics inspected.
Piles and surge
A floating dock rides on piles. If surge rises above the pile tops, the dock lifts clear and leaves with its power and plumbing. Measure the pile tops, compare them with the surge the county’s evacuation-zone maps imply, and decide with a marine contractor in May whether to extend them.
What does a seawall need checked?
A seawall fails from behind. Check the cap for cracks and movement, and the weep holes, which must be clear so groundwater can leave. Look hardest at the ground behind it: sunken pavers, dips in the lawn and open joints show where overtopping surge has scoured soil out, and the void often shows only as a sinkhole days later. Repair is engineered, usually permitted work for a marine contractor.
Exposure differs by water. The tidal canals of Fort Lauderdale, the barrier island at Miami Beach and the shallow Gulf shelf at Naples and Sarasota, where surge builds higher, each need their own reading of the property.
While the house is empty
What can remote monitoring and house watch do during a storm?
Monitoring reports what the house is doing until power or the network fails, and a watch service prepares and inspects either side of the storm, but neither can enter or protect a house while the storm is overhead.
Useful sensors sit at the water heater, under air handlers, in the lift pit and on the sump float, with power-loss alarms. Each needs its own battery and a cellular path independent of the house network. When the batteries run down the house goes silent, and silence is not safety: a dead dashboard reads as unknown.
Nobody will be able to reach the property for longer than expected. Emergency services commonly stop responding at about tropical-storm-force winds, and bridges close at similar thresholds. No crew should be sent in those conditions.
A watch service’s work lies on either side: preparation and photographs before; during, alerts and a dated log; after, first access once the authorities permit. The written plan names who may enter, and on whose word.
Afterwards
In what order should you re-enter a house after a hurricane?
Assess from outside first, make gas and electricity safe before dealing with water, photograph everything before moving it, and start drying within the first day.
- Wait for the all-clearBarrier islands often control re-entry. Treat every downed line as live, and assume standing water near electrical equipment is energised.
- Walk the outsideLook for roof damage, leaning walls, undermined footings and the signs of gas: a smell, a hiss, dead vegetation around a line. If there is any sign, leave and call the utility. No switches, no flame.
- Electricity before waterIf any of the electrical system has been wet, or the floor is wet, the supply stays off and nothing is switched on. Nobody wades to a panel. A licensed electrician inspects and re-energises; flooded breakers and outlets are often replaced rather than dried, especially after salt water, because corrosion continues. Only the utility or a licensed contractor reopens gas. Assume a boil-water notice.
- Document before touchingPhotograph and video each room, wide then close, and leave damaged items where they lie until recorded. Give the insurer prompt notice: Florida bars a claim not noticed within one year of the loss. Keep receipts for reasonable steps to prevent further damage.
- Make safe, then dryTarps and board-ups keep rain out. Flooded equipment, including the lift, air-conditioning plant, pool equipment and generator, stays off until its specialist has inspected it. Then drying begins, and nothing is more urgent.
Mould’s clock
How quickly does mould start, and what is the first thing to do?
Mould can start within a day or two on a wet surface in this climate, so the single most important early action is to get the house dry: remove the water, strip what cannot be dried and run dehumidifiers before any repair.
A shuttered house without power in a humid month is an incubator. FEMA advises drying the house and contents within 24 to 48 hours and discarding what cannot be dried, with indoor humidity below 60 per cent. That means extraction, wet carpet and underlay out, wet drywall and insulation cut above the wet line, and dehumidifiers running as soon as power is safe.
Surge adds a problem rain does not. Salt draws moisture from humid air, so dried surfaces can go damp again, and corrosion continues in wiring, fixings and air-conditioning coils. Rinse salt-contaminated materials or remove them. Ask for daily moisture readings in writing; they are also the insurer’s evidence.
Florida licenses mould assessors and remediators separately, and a firm may not remediate a structure it assessed within twelve months, so be wary of anyone who offers to find the mould and fix it.
Questions
Quick answers
Four questions owners ask before a storm.
How long before a hurricane should the shutters go up?
Begin about seventy-two hours out with the largest openings and any that need a ladder, and finish well before sustained winds reach tropical-storm strength, around 39 miles an hour.
Should the electricity be switched off before a hurricane?
Only where the panel or equipment is likely to flood. If the main panel stands above the highest water the site could see, leave the supply live for pumps and alarms and isolate the low circuits.
Does homeowners insurance cover flood damage from a hurricane?
Usually not. Wind falls under the homeowners or windstorm policy, but rising water, storm surge included, needs separate flood cover. A federal flood policy takes effect thirty days after purchase, so it cannot be bought with a storm forecast.
Should anyone stay at the house during the storm?
No. Emergency services commonly stop responding at about tropical-storm-force winds, and bridges close at similar thresholds. A person inside a shuttered house cannot protect it, and nobody can reach them.
Amalfi Estates
How does Amalfi Estates prepare a waterfront house for a storm?
Storm preparation and shutter service sit inside the Estates calendar, with house watch for the months the family is away, under one named steward.
The seasonal items above are the “before storm season” line of the calendar on the Estates page. Lift, generator, pool and marine work is done by licensed specialists whom we coordinate, which is why a plan names the electrician and the lift technician in advance. A condition survey is where the plan for your house is written down.
Estate care runs from Boca Raton to Naples, with response targets county by county on the coverage page.
Enquiries
Put this in writing for your house
A condition survey walks the exterior, systems and waterfront structures. No cost, and the report is yours regardless.