Gottfried Green

The NY Times, offers some info on how to reduce insurance premiums.

"FLORIDA

Vacation homeowners qualify for discounts if they add hurricane protections to their homes, said Teri Johnston, the president of Fair Insurance Rates in Monroe, a consumer advocacy group based in the Florida Keys.

Hurricane shutters and improvements that help strengthen roofs are on the checklist of “hurricane mitigation additions,” or improvements that can shore up a home and trim insurance costs. By taking those measures, Ms. Johnston said, “you can lower premiums by 45 percent” off the highest rates."

They also provide a website, The Institute for Business and Home Safety www.ibhs.org which offers some guidance as to how you can protect your home from all sorts of natural disasters in general. Since our house will be built to the updated building codes and we'll have impact glass a lot of this is already covered for us. We'll be raised and reinforced although nothing is ever hurricane proof of course.

Important to point out about the roof is that it will slope. It will be 8ft high along the kitchen and bathroom side and it will be 10ft where it ends on the other side at the end of the lanai. This should further help the indoor/outdoor feeling as one large space.

Labels: design, floorplan, insurance, weather

At the Link, the NY Times writes of insurance woes in Fl. From the article, "I'm in a pickle," Mrs. Litt Lyon said. "I want to have it for my peace of mind, but do we really need insurance? I just spent $8,000 for storm shutters. We live in this 1961 concrete building that's a fortress. Even if you make a claim, the deductibles are so high that you don't even really make a claim." We were hoping to incorporate features that would give us a maxium in incentives since we are starting from sratch anyway. We'll have to investigate further all the specifics.

Labels: insurance