Impact windows and doors, installed and permitted.

Empire Installer does not publish a price per window, because the number is driven by the size and shape of each opening, the product line specified for it, and how many openings the job covers. A wide slider costs several times what a small bathroom window costs, and an arched or angled unit costs more than a rectangle because it is fabricated to a measured shape. Permit and engineering work, which some contractors bill separately, is included in every Empire Installer quote. After the measurement you get a written quote listing every opening and its price, not a range over the phone.

No, and Empire Installer quotes partial-home installations as readily as whole-house jobs. If you phase the work, the usual order is the largest openings first, then the elevation with the most exposure. Each phase is its own permit and its own inspection, so nothing is left unfinished on paper. One thing to know before you phase it: the wind mitigation credit on your insurance generally requires every glazed opening on the house to be protected, so the credit tends to arrive with the last phase rather than the first.

An Empire Installer job runs in four stages: engineering and permit submittal, county plan review, manufacture, and installation followed by final inspection. Manufacture is normally the longest stage, and plan review is the one stage nobody controls, because it depends on your municipality's current queue. We give you the realistic window for each stage at the estimate, based on what the county and the manufacturers are actually running that month, rather than a number printed on a website that was true last year. Delivery is scheduled against the installation date, so units are not sitting in a warehouse waiting for a crew.

Empire Installer pulls the permit. We select the Miami-Dade NOA-approved product for each opening, prepare the engineering drawings, file the application with your municipality, and respond to the plan reviewer's comments until the permit is issued. You sign only where the county requires an owner's signature on the application. A homeowner who pulls their own permit becomes the responsible party for the work in the eyes of the building department, which is not a position to be in on a five-figure installation.

In Florida, insurers are required to credit the wind portion of a homeowner's premium for verified opening protection, and impact-rated windows and doors qualify. The credit is applied after a licensed inspector completes a wind mitigation inspection and files the uniform mitigation verification form with your carrier, which records the opening protection alongside the roof and the other rated features. Empire Installer cannot tell you the size of your credit, because your carrier sets it and it depends on your roof, your building's age and your existing premium. What we can tell you is that the credit requires the protection to be documented, and the permit, the product approval and the closed inspection are that documentation.

A Miami-Dade NOA is a Notice of Acceptance: a product approval issued by Miami-Dade County confirming that a specific window or door assembly passed the county's impact and pressure-cycling tests. Miami-Dade's High Velocity Hurricane Zone protocol is the strictest wind-borne debris standard in the United States, and the NOA is what proves a product met it. Empire Installer installs NOA-approved products only, and the NOA is what the plan reviewer checks and what the inspector verifies on site. A product without one will not pass inspection in Miami-Dade or Broward, whatever the sales brochure says.

Yes. Empire Installer works with HOA and condo association approvals routinely, and many associations require the product, the frame color and the glass tint to match a published standard before the board will approve the work. We supply the product approval documents, the drawings and the specification sheets the board or the property manager asks for, in the format they ask for. On condo work the building may also require a certificate of insurance naming the association, and we provide that. Start the association's approval at the same time as the estimate, because it usually runs in parallel with the county permit rather than after it.

Empire Installer's crews mask floors and furniture, contain dust at the opening, and clean the work area at the end of each day rather than at the end of the job. Taking out an old frame disturbs the stucco band outside and the finish around the opening inside, which is normal and expected on every impact window installation. The scope of that patching is written into your quote before the job starts rather than discovered afterwards, and painting to match your existing color is called out separately, because color matching belongs to a painter. In most homes the openings are done a few at a time and the house stays livable throughout.

Yes. Empire Installer installs impact windows and doors in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties, from Key West to West Palm Beach. Each county, and each municipality inside it, has its own building department and its own permit process, and we file in whichever one your address falls under. Miami-Dade and Broward sit inside the High Velocity Hurricane Zone and Palm Beach and Monroe do not, but every Empire Installer installation is specified to the HVHZ standard regardless of which county the job is in.

Every Empire Installer installation carries two separate warranties: the manufacturer's warranty on the window or door itself, and Empire Installer's written workmanship warranty on the installation. The manufacturer's warranty covers the unit, the glass and the hardware, and it belongs to you rather than to us, so it survives if you ever change contractors. The workmanship warranty covers the installation itself, which is where leaks and operating problems actually come from. Both are handed to you in writing at final inspection with the terms and the exclusions spelled out, and we will show you both documents at the estimate before you sign anything.