In August, 2001 we moved into our new house. We had lots of things to worry about. Hurricanes weren’t on the high-priority list, but we’ve been in the Houston area long enough to know that, eventually, one would become a very high priority. Over the years, we had a series of conversations that can be summarized as follows:

Four years ago: As soon as we get the sod on the lawn and the miniblinds hung in the windows, we should really go out and buy enough plywood to cover the windows. No point in waiting until the last minute.

Two years ago: We’re in the middle of our third hurricane season in this house, and we still don’t have plywood for the windows. Remember, we don’t want to wait until the last minute!

Last year: Florida’s really getting hammered this year. One of those storms could easily come our way. When are we going to buy the plywood? Are we going to wait until the last minute?

This May: We’re about to begin our fifth hurricane season. We still need plywood for the windows. I guess we’ve waited this long, we can just wait until the last minute.

Three weeks ago: Holy cow, Katrina ravaged the LA-MS-AL gulf coast. This should really be our warning call to go out and buy some plywood. Look what happened to those people who waited until the last minute!

This morning: The updated forecast for Rita has her drawing a bead on Houston. It’s not the last minute, but it sure does look like the two-minute warning!

So, immediately after work this afternoon, Wendy and I took measurements of all the windows around the house and calculated how many sheets of plywood we would need. Whoever designed this house did so with a perverse sense of humor. Where we could get by with one window, that idiot architect put three!:

By my count, we will need 27 sheets of plywood. And I gave myself a margin of error and bought 30 sheets. I suppose I could try to cover these windows with a single sheet of plywood, but the best way to cover windows with plywood is to inset the plywood into the window openings. That keeps the wind from getting behind the plywood and shaking it loose.

If we have to cover the windows, I’ll be using gadgets called plylox. I’ve never used one before, or seen them installed, but a former co-worker whose opinion I trust (hi, Jon) says they will do the job. Ploylox are metal spring clips that hook around the edge of the plywood. When you insert the plywood into the window opening, the clips get compressed so as to grip the brick or wood around the opening.

Plylox are expensive, at about $1.50 each in packages of twenty. There’s no guide to how many plylox to use for each window, but I figure that one every two feet should do the job. Doing a little quick math, I came up with a figure of 252. I ended buying 14 bags of them, to have a few extra, and so I can put them a little closer together if it seems necessary.

We took the seats out of the van and drove the half-mile down the road to Home Depot. We walked up to the stack of half-inch plywood sitting out on the floor and told the man working there that we needed thirty. A guy who arrived at the same time (and who turned out to be a neighbor from down the street) said he needed thirty, too. There were sixty-six in the pallet, so between the two of us, we bought nearly all of them.

One of the design criteria for the 96 Chrysler Grand Voyager was that it should be able to carry four-by-eight sheets of plywood inside, with the rear hatch closed. However, it doesn’t have a great load capacity: only about nine hundred pounds. After we had twenty sheets loaded, the van really began to squat down on its springs. I imagined something like this happening

so I called a halt to the loading, and said we’d have to come back to collect the balance. The Home Depot guys were really great about it. They marked my receipt to show that they still owed me ten sheets, then they set the ten aside and strapped them together to ensure no one else would load them up. When we got back fifteen minutes later, they loaded us up pronto.

I don’t know how many other people are going to be shopping for plywood in the next couple of days, but by the time we left with our last load of the stuff, there were four or five trucks lined up to load their purchases. I imagine those lines will only get longer. Here’s to waiting until the last minute!

Update: The six windows on the upper floor in the back of the house aren’t inset, so I can’t use plylox to secure the wood over them. I just went back to Home Depot to pick up some deck screws and washers, and it’s pickup trucks as far as the eye can see - the lot is full of them. I wonder why all those people waited until the last minute.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 19th, 2005 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Home, Weather. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.