Roll Down Screens in Cape Coral, FL
Four hundred miles of canals, and almost every house on them has a wide lanai facing
open water with nothing rated in front of it.
The canal is the exposure
A Cape Coral canal lot is a beautiful thing and, in a storm, an unhelpful one. There is open
water on the exposed side of the house, no buildings between you and the wind coming across it, and
the widest opening on the building is pointed straight at it.
Ian made that concrete for a lot of people here. The block held. The roofs mostly held. What went
was screen enclosure, in enormous quantity, and then whatever the enclosure hit on the way past.
Your pool cage is not protecting the lanai. A screen enclosure is not rated
opening protection and was never designed to survive a major hurricane. When one comes apart, its
own aluminum frame is the debris standing ten feet from your sliders. This is the most common and
most expensive misunderstanding in this city.
What actually goes on that opening
Fabric on a track, in a housing above the opening, down over the whole span in one piece and
sealed at both edges. Up to 30 feet wide by 20 feet high in a single screen, which
covers the large majority of Cape Coral lanais with no post in the middle of the water view.
It retracts out of sight when the weather passes, and the fabric on both systems we install
— the MagnaTrack Defender and
UltraShield — is rated for year-round use, so
the same screen works as an insect and solar screen the rest of the time. If you have heard these
called Kevlar screens, that is a nickname rather than the fabric.
The specification most Cape Coral houses end up with
A screen across the lanai, and something on the windows and doors behind it. That order is not
arbitrary — it is what protects the most house per dollar:
- The lanai first. Widest opening, most exposed, currently protected by nothing.
- Then the openings behind it —
accordion shutters for value across a lot of windows,
or roll down shutters on the wide sliders. - Then the rest, as budget allows. Doing it in this order means you are never
half-protected in the way that actually matters.
What the quote depends on
The span, what the lanai structure will take, and where the housing goes. On an older Cape Coral
lanai the structural backing gets verified rather than assumed — a thirty-foot screen puts
real load into whatever it is fixed to, and occasionally that is the part to sort out first.
Permitting runs through the City of Cape Coral, our home jurisdiction, and is handled as part of the
job.
Talk to us about roll down screens in Cape Coral
Tell us what you are looking at and someone from our team will call you the same business day. We go through it on the phone first — your openings, the products that actually fit, what is involved — and if it is a fit we come out and put a written quote in your hand. No charge and no obligation.
Questions we get asked
Does my pool cage count as hurricane protection?
No. Screen enclosures are not rated opening protection and are not designed to survive a major hurricane. When a cage fails its aluminum frame becomes wind-borne debris a few feet from the openings behind it, which is exactly what happened across this city in Ian.
Will it block my canal view?
Not when it is up, and it is up almost all the time. Deployed you are looking through the fabric rather than at a wall, and there is no post in the middle because the whole span is one piece.
Screen on the lanai or shutters on the sliders?
Most Cape Coral houses want both, and the lanai first. The lanai is the widest and most exposed opening on the building; the sliders behind it are the second move.
More questions? Our full hurricane shutter & screen FAQ covers products, service, permitting and financing.
More in Cape Coral: accordion shutters · Bahama shutters · roll down shutters · storm panels · roll down screens · impact windows · everything we do in Cape Coral
Florida Screen & Shutter, LLC · 883 NE 27th Ln #5, Cape Coral, FL 33909 · (239) 409-0426
License #SCC131152867 · Fully Licensed & Insured Florida Contractor · MagnaTrack President’s Club, #6 in the country, 2025