Impact Doors in Tampa: Ratings, Cost and What They Do for Your Insurance

October 6, 2026 · Impact Protection Program

Close-up of laminated impact glass, the same glass used in impact sliding and entry doors

Most hurricane upgrades in Tampa start with the windows and stop there. The original sliding glass door stays, the front door with the glass insert stays, the builder-grade garage door stays — and the wind mitigation inspector still marks the house as unprotected. This guide covers impact doors in Tampa: the door types, how to read the ratings, what the insurance form asks about doors, how permits work inside and outside city limits, and what a door package really costs.

What Counts as an Impact Door

An impact door is an exterior door that was tested as a complete assembly — panel, glass, frame, locks and hardware together — to take a large-missile strike and then repeated cycles of wind pressure without being breached. The test standards an inspector and an insurer recognize are the Florida Building Code’s TAS 201, 202 and 203, ASTM E1886 and E1996, and SSTD 12.

A door sold as “hurricane resistant” or “storm rated” is not automatically an impact door. Some are rated for wind pressure only. On a solid door that rating has value, but on any door with glass it does not count as opening protection. The same trap exists with windows: hurricane windows vs impact windows.

The proof is paperwork, not a brochure. Florida law lists exterior doors among the building products that must carry a product approval (section 553.842, Florida Statutes), alongside windows, skylights and shutters. Every approved door has a Florida Product Approval number (often written FL#) or a Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance (NOA). That document states whether the door is impact-rated, the design pressures it was tested to, the largest size it was approved in, and exactly how it has to be anchored. Approvals can be looked up by number on the Florida Building Commission’s product approval site at floridabuilding.org.

The Door Types on a Tampa Home

The wind mitigation form sorts every opening into one of two groups: glazed openings, meaning anything with glass, and non-glazed openings, meaning solid entry doors and solid garage doors. Which group a door falls into decides what it has to be rated for.

Door	Counts as	What to check
Sliding glass door	Glazed opening	Impact rating on the approval; panel size and count inside the approved limits
Entry door with glass, sidelites or a transom	Glazed opening	The glass, sidelites and transom are rated as part of the door unit
French doors	Glazed opening	Rated as a pair, including the center post and the lock that hold the two panels together
Solid entry door (no glass)	Non-glazed opening	Impact rating for the top level; at minimum a wind-pressure rating that can be verified
Garage door	Non-glazed opening (glazed if it has windows)	A label showing design pressures; an impact rating; rated glass if it has any

Sliding glass doors

The slider is usually the largest piece of glass in the house. On an older Tampa block home the glass in an original slider is tempered safety glass at best, which is made to crumble when it breaks: that protects people from cuts and does nothing against wind-borne debris. An impact slider uses laminated glass in a reinforced frame, and the whole unit carries the rating, rollers and locks included.

Entry doors and French doors

A half-glass door, a decorative insert, sidelites and a transom are all glazed openings on the form. Impact entry doors are available with rated glass, so the light at the front of the house does not have to go.

Garage doors

On many homes the garage door is the widest opening on the building. When one fails, wind gets inside and pushes outward and upward on the walls and roof. Florida’s residential building code requires garage doors to be tested for wind pressure (ASTM E330 or ANSI/DASMA 108), and inside a wind-borne debris region the glass in a new garage door has to be protected as well. A rated garage door carries a label listing its design pressures. A door with no label is very hard for an inspector to credit.

How Doors Decide Your Opening Protection Rating

Florida’s wind mitigation form (OIR-B1-1802) does not rate windows and doors separately. It rates the whole house on its weakest opening. My Safe Florida Home’s own guide to the form describes the three top levels this way:

A.1, the highest. Every opening is large-missile impact rated: windows, all doors, the garage door, skylights and glass block.
A.2. Every glazed opening is large-missile impact rated, and the solid entry doors and garage door are verified to be wind and pressure rated.
A.3. Every glazed opening is large-missile impact rated, but the solid doors or garage door cannot be identified as wind and pressure rated.

Two things follow. First, a single unprotected glazed opening — one original slider, one half-glass side door, one garage door with unrated windows — keeps the house out of all three levels, no matter how many impact windows were installed. Second, the solid doors are what separate the top level from the two below it.

Florida law requires insurers to offer credits for wind mitigation features (section 627.0629, Florida Statutes), and the form is how those features are documented. The Program does not publish savings estimates for a specific home; the result depends on the carrier, the policy and the rest of the report. Florida homeowners who completed these upgrades have seen premiums drop 30% or more, some by 50%+. For what the inspector looks at line by line, read the Tampa wind mitigation inspection guide, and for how the opening protection line reaches the premium, how much you save on insurance with impact windows.

Are Impact Doors Required in Tampa?

Not on the home you already own. No Florida law makes an existing house retrofit its doors. What the Florida Building Code controls is new work. It defines a wind-borne debris region as anywhere the ultimate design wind speed is 140 mph or greater, plus land within one mile of the coast where the design speed is 130 mph or greater and open water sits upwind. Most of Tampa is mapped at roughly 140–150 mph, which puts it inside that region.

In practice, a replacement exterior door needs a permit and a product approval rated for the design pressure at that opening. Whether a particular replacement must also be impact-rated is settled at permit review for that house and that scope of work. What is certain either way: only an impact-rated door, or a door covered by a rated shutter, earns the protection rating on the insurance form. The county-level picture is in impact windows in Hillsborough County.

Permits: City of Tampa or Hillsborough County

A Tampa mailing address does not tell you who issues the permit. The parcel does.

Inside Tampa city limits the permit goes to the City of Tampa Construction Services Division through its online permitting portal. Replacing a door with one of a different size calls for signed and sealed plans and the product approval; a same-size replacement goes through the city’s express permit route.
In unincorporated Hillsborough County — which covers a large share of “Tampa, FL” addresses — the permit is filed with Hillsborough County Development Services through the HillsGovHub portal.

Either way the job ends with an inspection. The inspector compares the installed door to its approval document: the anchors, their spacing and the fasteners are part of the rating. A rated door installed the wrong way is not a rated opening. Keep the permit, the final inspection record and the approval numbers for your insurance agent. The Tampa homeowner guide covers the city and county line in more detail.

What Impact Doors Cost in Tampa

Doors are priced by the opening, and no two houses have the same set, so there is no honest per-door price to publish. The published number is the whole-home one: most window-and-door projects the Program completes in Tampa Bay run $12,000–$29,000, and door packages are what define the top of that range. What moves a door’s price:

Size and panel count. A two-panel slider and a four-panel slider are very different doors. Large sliders and garage doors move the total the most.
Glass and style options. Sidelites, transoms, decorative glass and tinted or low-E glass all add cost.
The design pressure the opening needs. An opening near a corner of the house sees higher wind pressure than one in the middle of a wall, and the door has to be rated for it.
The opening itself. Sizing the new door to the existing opening keeps stucco and trim intact; changing the size is structural work and a bigger permit.

The practical rule when comparing quotes: every door should be its own line, with its own approval number. A quote that leaves the sliders out will always look cheaper. The full cost picture is in how much impact windows cost in Tampa.

Paying for a Door Package

County-approved financing. Qualified homes get $0 down, with approval not based on your credit score, and windows and doors are covered in one project. Eligibility depends on the parcel. Many addresses with a Tampa mailing address sit in unincorporated Hillsborough County and can qualify; homes inside Tampa city limits are not eligible. The address is verified before anything is quoted. See the financing page and how impact windows financing works in Florida.
The state sales-tax refund. Florida’s refund on impact-resistant windows, exterior doors and garage doors is worth up to $500 for a homesteaded home. The steps are in Florida rebate for impact windows: how to apply.
My Safe Florida Home. Exterior doors and garage doors are among the improvements listed in the state program’s law. Grants are limited to low- and moderate-income homeowners and depend on the program having funding. Work started before approval is not reimbursed, so the order of steps matters. Start with the Tampa Bay guide to the program.

Can a Shutter Do the Job Instead?

On the form, yes. A rated shutter over a sliding glass door protects that opening the same way an impact door does, as long as the shutter itself carries an impact rating and can be documented. A common mixed plan in Tampa is impact windows on the front and sides and rated accordion shutters across a lanai slider, which can reach the same rating at a lower total cost. The trade-off is that a shutter only works when someone closes it before the storm. The full comparison is in impact windows vs hurricane shutters.

Seven Questions for Any Impact Door Quote

What is the Florida Product Approval or NOA number for each door?
Does the approval list a large-missile impact rating, or wind pressure only?
What design pressure does this opening need, and what is the door rated to?
Is the door’s size inside the largest size on the approval? This matters most on wide sliders.
Is every door on the house counted? Include the garage door and the side door from the garage to the yard.
Are the permit and final inspection included, and which office is it filed with?
What paperwork is handed over at the end? Approvals, permit and final inspection record.

How the Impact Protection Program Handles Doors

The evaluation walks every opening on the house, not only the windows, and the proposal lists each door on its own line with its approval number. Every project is permitted through the city or the county and inspected on completion, and the homeowner receives the records to send to the insurance agent.

For the full door lineup, see impact doors: entry, sliding glass, French and garage. For local detail on windows and doors together, see impact windows in Tampa.

If your windows are done and your doors are not, or you are pricing both at once, check whether your home qualifies for a free evaluation and $0-down county-approved financing.

We serve homeowners across Hillsborough, Pasco, Manatee and Sarasota counties. Start with the page for your area:

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