Bladder control: Water mattress protects roofs

Lose a roof in a hurricane, and chances are you’ll lose the house and everything in it. That's why metal hurricane clips, the kind that anchor a roof to a house’s walls, are now required in areas threatened by these tropical windstorms. But retrofitting those clips to an existing roof - one built before the clips were mandated - is next to impossible; it’s just too hard  to reach the point where the rafters and wall plate intersect after a house is built.

The Storm Proof Roof offers an easy solution to this hurricane-retrofit dilemma by temporarily weighing down the eaves with water-filled bladders. You simply unroll the empty, 15-foot-long, nylon-and-plastic modules along the perimeter of the roof – each one weighs only 6 pounds – then pump water into them with a hose.

Each bladder holds about 150 gallons and takes 15 to 20 minutes to fill. A full bladder weighs 1,200 pounds, which studies shown increase the chance of a roof surviving a 150-mph, Category 5 breeze by up to 50 percent. Water coming down the roof won't accumulate because the modules have channels that allow the  to pass freely underneath. After the storm, simply drain the bladders -they run about $230 apiece - fold them up, and store them until the next hurricane comes barreling through.

Note: The Storm Proof Roof works only on low-slope roofs - those with pitches no greater than 3 in 12 - which are quite plentiful in the hurricane belt.