Originally developed for protection from severe weather that South Florida is so vulnerable to, impact-resistant windows and doors are quickly building a strong reputation as a way to protect homes against intruders.
Judy Ryerson, who’s from a sleepy little New England town that reminds her of, “a Norman Rockwell painting,” is pleased to have installed impact-resistant windows and doors throughout her home.
Where Judy comes from, doors aren’t locked and windows are left open with little concern for personal safety or home security. Daily broadcasts of home invasions and burglaries in her own and nearby South Florida neighborhoods, however, have been, “quite a culture shock for a New Englander,” Judy explains, and her main motivation for outfitting her home with impact-resistant hurricane windows and doors.
- Impact-resistant window systems are a combination of heavily reinforced frames, two panes of glass that are bonded together with a layer of tough, flexible polyvinyl butyral (PVB) and glazed to maintain the stability of the glass in its frame.
- Designed to withstand impacts of sledgehammer force, impact-resistant glass may crack but will remain in one piece as an impenetrable barrier because of the interlayer of PVB and continue to withstand additional impacts and attempts at forced entry.
Watch evidence from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office of how impact-resistant glass windows and doors resist two thieves’ attempts to kick in and shoot through a sliding glass door. The impact-resistant sliding glass door is not compromised after at least nine gunshots.
- The heavy-duty frames and glass of impact-resistant windows cannot be compromised by crowbars or laymen’s tools and resist attempts at forced entry such that fire fighters require special training using chainsaws and carbide-tip power saws to break through impact-resistant glass windows.
- The impenetrability of impact-resistant window systems is so absolute that CGI, a pioneering manufacturer, warrants reimbursement to the original homeowner for property loss from a burglary due to entry through a locked pane of glass which has been smashed or broken by a burglar, for a period of ten years.
Impact-resistant window systems offer an unbeatable solution to, and investment in, the safeguarding of your home, family and peace of mind.
As Judy reiterates, “I now feel completely safe at home as well as when I’m away. I know that I made a sound investment in both my welfare and the integrity of my home.”
