Luxury home developer Todd Glaser teamed up with oil trader Mark Fisher and developer Ron Simkins to create a patented kit that consumers and contractors can install to prevent water intrusion through sliding glass doors.
Fisher teamed up with Glaser after Hurricane Irma struck Florida as a Category 5 in 2017. The storm damaged Fisher’s home and some of Glaser’s developments, prompting them to come up with a solution. Wind and water cause the majority of damage in hurricanes.
“In a condominium, it becomes a disaster,” Fisher said. “The wind and water come in, overflows the tracks, goes into the apartments, ruins the floor, causes mildew, mold.”
Glaser said in high-rises, if water comes in through the 60th floor, “it’s going back down to the ground,” affecting the floors below it.
Glaser develops luxury spec homes and has also been involved in condo projects that include the Zaha Hadid-designed One Thousand Museum in downtown Miami.
The three partners have invested nearly $3 million into StormArmour and are selling the kits at Home Depot and directly from its website. They’re also working with windowmakers that include Miami-based ES Windows, where StormArmour will collect a licensing fee.
They’ve tested StormArmour four times at Florida International University’s Wall of Wind, an experimental facility focused on wind engineering research. Fisher said StormArmour repels up to 97 percent of the water that enters sliding doors through the tracks, which insurance doesn’t cover.
The product was on display at a recent press conference with FEMA’s Kevin Guthrie and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at Home Depot. A kit costs $586 and is available for preorder. The company is also working with condo buildings that include the Bristol in West Palm Beach to have the kits installed in all sliding glass doors, and it is developing custom kits.
Condo associations that install the kits building-wide could be eligible for the My Safe Florida Condo grant, Fisher said. That would mean that condo owners would be able to subsidize a hurricane mitigation project that includes StormArmour.
Hurricane season began June 1. This year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting an above-normal season with up to 19 named storms, six to 10 hurricanes and three to five major hurricanes.
“In trading, one person is a winner, and one person is a loser,” said Fisher, founder and CEO of New York-based MBF Clearing Corp., which brokers worldwide crude oil grades. “In this, we’re trying to help everybody.”
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