Start with documentation, not repairs
The most valuable hour you will spend before hurricane season has nothing to do with plywood. It is spent photographing your house in good condition, with dates attached. Every insurance policy covers sudden damage and excludes gradual deterioration, so the argument after a storm is almost always about whether a condition pre-existed the event. Dated photographs end that argument in your favour.
Photograph each roof slope from the ground, all four elevations of the house, the condition of soffit and fascia, every window and door, the condenser and its pad, fences and outbuildings, and the interior of every room including ceilings. Store it somewhere that is not in the house.
Then find your policy declarations page and read three things: your hurricane deductible and how it is calculated, whether you have flood coverage at all, and what your coverage limits are for other structures. Flood is a separate policy. Storm surge is a flood peril rather than a wind peril. People learn that at the worst possible moment.
The pre-season walkthrough
Roof first, from the ground with binoculars if you cannot safely get up. Look for lifted or missing shingles, cracked or slipped tile, fasteners backing out on metal panels, and cracked rubber boots at plumbing vents. Vent boots are the single most common leak source we find in Northeast Florida and they cost very little to replace before the season rather than after.
Soffit and fascia next, because this is the most under-appreciated hurricane vulnerability in the region. Vinyl soffit panels that are loose or already sagging will be pushed out by wind pressure, and once the soffit is gone, wind-driven rain enters the attic directly. We have seen more interior water damage from failed soffits than from failed roof coverings.
Openings. If you have shutters or panels, put them up now as a test. Tracks corrode, anchors seize, wing nuts vanish, and panel labels fade so nobody knows which panel goes where. Doing this in June is a mild annoyance. Doing it with a storm 36 hours out is not. Label every panel to its opening.
Drainage. Clear gutters and confirm downspouts discharge well away from the foundation. Check that the yard slopes away from the house. Confirm your condensate line is clear. Then look at the trees: dead limbs, limbs over the roof, and anything leaning toward the structure. Tree work is far cheaper before the season than after it.
What the Florida Building Code expects on your openings
In wind-borne debris regions, the Florida Building Code requires that openings be protected to an impact standard — impact-rated glazing, or code-approved shutters or panels. Broadly, those regions cover areas within about a mile of the coastal mean high water line where design wind speeds reach 130 mph or more, and areas where the design wind speed is 140 mph or greater. The exact mapped boundaries and the code edition in force are questions for your county building department, and they are worth asking directly rather than assuming.
That designation touches a lot of Northeast Florida coastline: the Duval beaches, Ponte Vedra, St. Augustine Beach, Flagler Beach, Ormond Beach, Daytona Beach and New Smyrna Beach. It affects what you must install when you replace windows or doors, and it affects whether your home can be credited for opening protection on the wind mitigation form.
The practical point for homeowners: plywood is a stopgap, not compliance. If you are replacing windows anyway, replacing them with rated impact units gets you protection that is always in place and gets the opening protection question answered favourably on the state form. Partial protection generally earns nothing — one unprotected opening usually disqualifies the whole house.
After the storm: the damage you cannot see from the ground
The most consistently missed finding after a wind event is roof deck and fastener damage on a roof whose covering still looks intact. Uplift stresses the connection between covering and deck, and between deck and truss, without necessarily removing anything. The roof looks fine. The next heavy rain reveals otherwise.
Get into the attic after any significant wind event. Look for daylight at penetrations, wet or stained insulation, water tracks on truss members, and nails that have backed out of the deck. Wet insulation is the tell — it holds water long after a surface has dried and it points directly at where the water entered.
Look at the soffit line from below along the entire perimeter. A panel that has come out of its channel and been pushed roughly back is not repaired. Check the seals around windows and doors, particularly on the windward side, and look at the base of interior walls in corners for staining that appeared after the storm.
Outside, check the condenser: bent fins, debris impact, a unit that has shifted on its pad, and the disconnect box for water intrusion. Check fence posts and any outbuilding for racking. Photograph everything before you clean up. Then call your insurer promptly, because most policies have reporting deadlines and most require you to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage.
Should you get a professional inspection after a storm?
If your house took direct wind, lost any roof covering, had water intrusion, or had a tree contact the structure, yes. A documented, photographed condition report from an independent inspector is materially more useful to you in a claim than your own phone pictures, and it establishes scope before repairs begin.
The other case where it is worth it is when the house looks undamaged and you are not sure. That is the situation where uplift damage hides. A few hundred dollars now against a compromised roof assembly that fails in the next event is straightforward arithmetic.
One caution about the weeks after a regional storm: be careful who you let on your roof. Verify licensing, be sceptical of door-to-door solicitation and large upfront deposits, and get scope in writing. We do not perform repairs, which means our assessment has no stake in what the repair costs. That independence is the point.
Rebuilding better while you have the opportunity
If a storm forces a re-roof, that is the moment to make the upgrades that change your wind mitigation rating permanently. Ask the roofer about a sealed roof deck for secondary water resistance. Confirm the deck fastening schedule meets or exceeds current requirements, and get it documented. If the roof is being torn to the deck anyway, adding hurricane straps or clips at the truss-to-wall connection becomes far more feasible than it ever will be again.
Insurance generally pays to restore what was there rather than to improve it, so some of this comes out of pocket. The incremental cost during a job already underway is a fraction of doing it standalone, and every one of those items is a category on the OIR-B1-1802 form.
Then get a new wind mitigation inspection once the work is complete and permits are closed. A re-roof usually changes three or four answers on the form at once. Credits do not update themselves — they follow a report submitted to your carrier.