Palm Beach specifics · You Are Not in the HVHZ
The High Velocity Hurricane Zone Stops at Your Southern County Line
The High Velocity Hurricane Zone is Miami-Dade and Broward. It is not Palm Beach. Your openings are governed by statewide Florida Product Approval, which is a wider field, and knowing that changes what you should be quoted.
Give us the address. In this county the address decides the pressure, the review, and often the price — before the window does.
Not HVHZ
Palm Beach uses statewide approval, not a Miami-Dade NOA
Still required
The county sits in the wind-borne debris region
Our crews
We measure, we schedule, and our own people install
Licensed
A licensed Florida general contractor
Broward pricing carried north across the county line
The HVHZ boundary is a county line, not a weather system, and a great many contractors quoting in the south of this county are based below it. They specify what their supply chain carries and what their estimators know, which is a Miami-Dade acceptance. The result is a Boca Raton or Delray Beach homeowner buying into the narrowest and dearest approved field in the country without ever being told there is a wider one, because nobody in the transaction had a reason to mention it.
What changes outside the HVHZ
- Statewide Florida Product Approval governs, not a Miami-Dade NOA.
- The approved field is far wider — more manufacturers and configurations.
- Sizes and shapes unavailable under an NOA often are available here.
- Pricing is generally lower for the same calculated performance.
- The requirement to protect openings does not go away.
What the HVHZ actually is
The High Velocity Hurricane Zone is a specific set of provisions in the Florida Building Code that applies only in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. It arose from Hurricane Andrew and it requires products to pass large missile impact testing followed by cyclic pressure loading, administered through Miami-Dade County Product Control.
Everywhere else in the state, including here, products are approved through the statewide Florida Product Approval system. The testing standards behind it are real and the pressure requirements are calculated the same way. What differs is the protocol, the administering authority and, in practice, how many products are in the field you get to choose from.
How we handle it
- 01Establish the approval regime that actually applies to the address.
- 02Quote from the full statewide field rather than an HVHZ subset.
- 03Name the approval number for every opening.
- 04Explain plainly where an HVHZ product is genuinely the better buy.
We work in all three counties and specify differently in each, which is the whole point. A crew that specifies the same way in Wellington as in Hialeah is not being careful, it is being uniform, and uniformity here has a price attached to it that the homeowner pays.
Said plainly
Where we stop
This is not an argument that Palm Beach County has an easy code or a soft requirement. It has a demanding one. It is an argument that the demanding requirement which applies to you is not the same as the one which applies twenty miles south, and that being quoted the southern one by default is worth questioning.
FAQ
Common questions
- Does the HVHZ really stop at a county line?
- Yes, literally. It is defined by county boundary in the code, which means a house on the Broward side of the line and a house half a mile north in Boca Raton are governed by different approval regimes. That is a regulatory boundary, not a meteorological one, and it is worth knowing which side of it you are on.
- Should I buy a Miami-Dade product anyway to be safe?
- You may, and on a high or very exposed coastal opening the calculated pressure sometimes points there. What you should not do is buy one by default without seeing the calculation, because on most openings in this county it means paying a premium for a test protocol your building does not require.
- Is my house less protected under statewide approval?
- No, provided the product meets the calculated design pressure for your opening and is installed to its approval. The number your opening has to hold is derived from your address, exposure and height, and it does not change based on which approval system the product came through.
What we install
Impact Windows
The core product, and in this county the one most often over-specified. Palm Beach is outside the High Velocity Hurricane Zone, so the approved field is wide — and the job is choosing correctly inside it rather than defaulting to the most expensive label.
Read more →
Sliding Glass Doors
Sliders are the largest glazed openings in most Palm Beach homes and the ones where a size-based approval limit is most likely to be exceeded. They are also where the structural question above the opening gets skipped.
Read more →
Impact Entry Doors
An approved entry door is an assembly. The slab, frame, hinges, lock, threshold and glazing are approved together, and changing one part outside the approval invalidates the whole thing.
Read more →
Impact Garage Doors
A double garage door is usually the biggest single opening in the building envelope. It is also the one clients most often leave off a window quote, because it does not feel like a window.
Read more →
French & Specialty Shapes
Arched heads, radius tops, oversized fixed glass and French pairs are common on Palm Beach houses and are made to order. They carry the longest lead times on any job and the least flexibility if something is measured wrong.
Read more →
Glazing Into Existing Frames
Where the existing frames are structurally sound and an approval exists for glazing into them, replacing only the glass is cheaper, faster and less disruptive than a full replacement.
Read more →
More palm beach specifics
The Debris Region
The second mistake in this county is the opposite of the first. Being outside the High Velocity Hurricane Zone is not being outside the requirement — Palm Beach County sits in the wind-borne debris region, and openings need protecting.
Read more →
Design Review on the Island
The Town of Palm Beach reviews the appearance of exterior work, and several other municipalities in the county run their own review. Where that applies, the design question is settled before the code question, and the order is not negotiable.
Read more →
The Western Communities
Move inland from the coast and the calculated pressures fall while the houses get larger. That combination changes the economics of a job here more than anything else in the county.
Read more →
Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.