Impact garage doors, by Lee County's actual rules

Is your door rated for your address?

• Nobody can find a Florida Product Approval label on the door, or it has faded past reading.
• Your wind mitigation report graded the garage door below your windows.
• The house faces the river, a wide canal or the Gulf.
• The door was replaced after Ian and you've never seen a permit for it. Look it up from our permits page.
• The door bowed in or rattled hard in the wind during a storm.

Fort Myers sits outside the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone

That zone is Miami-Dade and Broward, nowhere else. You may read that Fort Myers doors must meet HVHZ rules. They don't. What applies here is the Florida Building Code, 8th Edition (2023), in force since December 31, 2023. The 9th Edition has a proposed start date of December 31, 2026. All of Lee County is a wind-borne debris region, and a replacement door needs a permit and a Florida Product Approval rated for its site. A Miami-Dade approval is accepted, but it isn't required.

On the county's design wind map, most of Fort Myers, Cape Coral, North Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach and Lehigh Acres sit in the band of about 160 mph. Sanibel and Captiva fall in the 170 mph band; Alva, parts of Buckingham and eastern Lehigh, at the county's northeast edge, fall in the 150 mph band. The 2023 code didn't raise these speeds anywhere on the peninsula; the only increases were in the western Panhandle.

Speed is only half of it. A house sheltered by other houses and trees is Exposure B. A house that looks out on open water, such as the Caloosahatchee, a wide Cape Coral canal or the Gulf, is Exposure D, and the wind gets to it unbroken. Take a house under 30 feet tall in the 160 mph band: the county's table for replacement windows and doors lists +45.9 / -61.4 psf in Exposure D, where the same house in Exposure B gets +27.6 / -37.0 psf. The rating a garage door needs then turns on its width and height, so we size the door to the address it will stand at.

The wind mitigation form counts the weakest opening

Since April 1, 2026, inspectors use form OIR-B1-1802 (Rev. 04/26). Opening protection is graded by the weakest opening in the house, and that includes the garage door. For the top grade, a garage door has to meet the impact standard ANSI/DASMA 115. A door tested for pressure only can hold the whole house below that grade, even when every window is impact-rated. And a door with no label and no papers can't be credited, however solid it looks.

We leave the label on the door and hand you the Florida Product Approval number, the permit number and photos of the label for your inspector. What the grade is worth on your policy is up to your insurer, so ask your agent before you buy. If your home was built before 2008, has a homestead exemption and meets the income limits, the garage door may also qualify under My Safe Florida Home; check eligibility at mysafeflhome.com.

Doors replaced in the rush after Ian

Ian came ashore at Cayo Costa on September 28, 2022, and on Fort Myers Beach the surge rose 10 to 15 feet above the ground. While the county rebuilt, many doors went in fast, and not every one of them was permitted. If your door was replaced in those months, three checks tell you where you stand: a Florida Product Approval label on the door, a permit for the job that passed its final inspection, and a rating that fits your wind band and exposure.

You can look the permit up yourself; our Lee County permits page shows where, city by city. Or we check all three on a maintenance visit and tell you plainly whether the door needs anything.

Questions about impact & hurricane doors