After Isaias: Don’t Haul Your Damaged Enclosure to the Curb Yet
Part of our series on the 10 most common mistakes homeowners make after a hurricane damages their screen enclosure, pool cage, screen room, or patio cover.
The first few days after a hurricane run together. The power may be out, the yard is a mess, and the pile of bent aluminum where your pool enclosure used to stand is the first thing you want gone. We understand that.
But some of the most expensive mistakes we see happen in these first 72 hours, and nearly all of them come from moving too fast. Here's what we'd tell a neighbor.
Don't haul anything to the curb yet
Debris pickup is starting across the area this week. Santa Rosa, Escambia, and unincorporated Okaloosa begin collection on Wednesday, October 14, and Fort Walton Beach expects to start midweek. Walton County says collection will begin shortly. Bay County won't offer curbside pickup in unincorporated areas, but it's accepting residential storm debris for free at Steelfield Landfill through Sunday, October 18.
Every one of those options makes it tempting to get rid of everything right away, and in Bay County a free landfill run makes it easy to load up the truck this weekend. Once your damaged enclosure is gone, so is the best record of what happened to it.
Before anything leaves your property:
Photograph the whole structure from every side, then move in close. Get the bent members, the torn panels, and anything resting on the pool deck or in the pool.
Shoot a slow video walk-around and talk as you go: "this is the back wall, this beam folded here." It takes five minutes and explains the damage better than a stack of photos.
Get close-ups where the frame meets the slab, the house, and the roof. Those connection points are where failures usually start, and they're what an adjuster or contractor will want to see.
Photograph debris in the pool before you fish it out.
Hold on to the damaged pieces until you've asked your insurance company whether they want to inspect them.
Then find your paperwork: the original contract, permit, and engineering drawings if you have them, plus any photos of the enclosure from before the storm. Look through your phone's camera roll or an old real estate listing. Proof of what you had matters when it comes time to replace it.
"The photos you take in the first day or two are worth more than anything anyone can describe later. Take more than you think you need. Nobody has ever told us they took too many." — Eric Vanheteren, Aluminum Building Systems
Don't let temporary protection turn into new damage
Some temporary protection is worth doing right away. Keep receipts for anything you pay for.
Reasonable temporary steps usually look like this:
If your enclosure was your pool's safety barrier, put up a temporary one. Without the cage, there may be nothing keeping children or pets out of the water. Temporary fencing is cheap compared to what it prevents.
If a solid-roof patio cover or screen room attached to your house is leaking, get it covered. Water getting into the house is a bigger problem than the cover itself. Tarp it only if you can do it safely from the ground, or have a professional do it.
If loose screen is flapping and you can reach it from the ground, tie or tape it down. If you can't reach it safely, leave it alone.
What goes too far:
Cutting apart or pulling down a partly standing enclosure yourself. Bent aluminum can be under tension and can move without warning when it's cut.
Letting someone demolish the whole thing on day two "to get it out of the way," before it's photographed and before anyone has checked whether part of it can be saved.
Paying for "emergency" work without a receipt or a written description of what was done and why.
"We'd always rather see an enclosure left standing, taped off, and photographed than torn down in a hurry. A few days won't usually make it worse. A rushed teardown can cost you." — Eric Vanheteren, Aluminum Building Systems
What you don't need to do in the first 72 hours
One call worth making this week: contact your insurance company or agent to report the damage and ask what they need from you. Beyond that, you don't need to sign a contract, choose a contractor, or decide between repair and replacement this week. Those decisions turn out better with a few days, a clear head, and more than one opinion. Our upcoming posts in this series cover how to check a contractor's license, why a big upfront deposit is a red flag, and why you should walk away from any contractor who wants to handle your insurance claim for you.
