Storm panels are not glamorous — but on a tight budget, they work

We bought our Jupiter ranch on a stretched budget and could not justify $14,000+ for accordion shutters across 11 openings. Storm panels came in at $2,800 total including a wall-mounted storage rack in the garage. The install crew was efficient — pre-drilled and anchored all the studs in a single day. The honest truth: deployment is a workout. My wife and I do it together over about 90 minutes, and we couldn't manage it alone. For homeowners without a partner or able-bodied helper, this is a real limitation. The Wind Mitigation Inspection went through cleanly and we saw roughly 18% off our renewal, which makes the math reasonable. We'll likely upgrade to accordions in a few years; for now, this works.