Service // entry and French doors

Impact entry and French doors in Brevard County

A door is an opening in the eyes of the Florida Building Code, held to the same wind-borne debris rules as any window. That single fact is why Brevard County door projects run on the same rails as window projects: the county map decides what your address requires, a Florida product approval or Miami-Dade NOA number proves what the door can do, and the permit ties the two together. This page covers entry and French doors under that framework, and we connect you with an independent Florida-licensed local installer to price the work, free.

Doors are openings, and openings follow the map

Brevard is not in the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, so the standard Florida Building Code wind-borne debris rules apply: opening protection is required where the ultimate design wind speed reaches 140 mph, or 130 mph within one mile of the coastal mean high-water line. The county's official wind speed maps govern by address, and verifying your address is the first move before any quote. Exterior doors, glazed or not, count as openings under those rules, and so do sidelites and transoms around an entry. The full sequence from map to permit to insurance credit lives in the Brevard wind mitigation guide.

The same approval framework as windows

An impact-rated door is a tested assembly, not a thick slab. The lab work covers the whole unit together: panel, glazing if any, frame, hinges, locks, and threshold, subjected to large-missile impact and cyclic pressure testing. Products that pass earn a Florida product approval or a Miami-Dade NOA, and the approval states exactly what the assembly was tested and approved to resist, including the design pressures it holds at a given size. No door makes a home impervious to a hurricane; the honest claim is the approval number, which is public and checkable. Ask for it on every quote line, exactly as you would for impact windows, and note that hardware substitutions can void an approval, which is one reason installation quality is part of the product.

Entry doors versus French doors

The two products solve different problems. An entry door is usually fiberglass or steel, opaque or with modest glass lites, and its impact rating leans on panel strength and a multi-point locking system. A French door is glass nearly edge to edge across two operating panels, which makes it the harder engineering problem: more laminated glass, a meeting point between panels instead of a solid jamb, and wider spans working against design pressure. That is reflected in the approvals, where the same product line often carries different ratings at different widths. Practical consequence: a French door quote without a size-specific approval number is not yet a quote. For the biggest glass opening of all, the slider, see the impact sliding glass doors page.

Doors and the money: the credit and the refund

Two programs treat doors exactly like windows. First, the insurance side: Florida Statute 627.0629 requires insurers to offer premium credits for opening protection, documented on form OIR-B1-1802, and the form classifies a house by its weakest opening. A forgotten entry door can hold the whole opening-protection category down after a five-figure window project, which is the strongest argument for treating doors as part of the plan rather than an afterthought. Second, the refund: qualifying impact-resistant exterior door purchases sit alongside windows and garage doors in the up-to-$500 per homestead refund program (HB 7031, 2026) that runs July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2029. The $500 refund guide covers eligibility and the Department of Revenue paperwork.

Sidelites, transoms, and the garage door

An entry is rarely just the slab. Sidelites flanking the door and a transom above it are separate glazed openings, and each needs its own rating or protection; an impact-rated door framed by unrated sidelites leaves the opening category exactly where it started. Many manufacturers approve the door, sidelites, and transom as one tested entry system, which is the cleaner path, but the approval must say so. The garage door deserves the same attention for the opposite reason: it is the largest opening on most Brevard homes, glass or not, and the 1802 counts it alongside every window and entry. It also sits inside the refund program's list of qualifying impact-resistant purchases. A homeowner planning openings work should at least price the garage door in the same pass, because the weakest opening, wherever it is, sets the classification for the house.

Fold doors into the window project

Most Brevard door replacements happen inside a larger project, and that is usually the right call. The median county home dates to 1988 (US Census ACS), so the entry door and the windows are typically the same vintage and fail on the same schedule. One permit, one crew, and one final inspection cover all the openings, and the wind mitigation inspection afterward documents the house as a finished whole. If you are scoping that larger job, start with the hurricane window replacement page, which walks the code, credit, and refund steps in order.

Where door projects concentrate

Demand tracks the county's older housing. Melbourne adds a paperwork wrinkle worth knowing early: its permit office requires the Florida product approval or NOA number with the application, so the door's approval documents are needed before filing, not after. Palm Bay, the county's largest city and heavy with 1980s construction, is the volume market for original-door replacement, and on Merritt Island the coastal wind-borne debris trigger reaches essentially every address, so replacement doors there are impact-rated as a matter of course. Wherever the house sits, the sequence does not change: look the address up on the county map first, since the map governs by address, then quote products whose approval numbers match what the address requires.