Roll Down Screens in Bonita Springs, FL
The lanai is the largest unprotected opening on most Bonita houses, and it is the
one a shutter cannot cover without ruining what you bought the house for.
The opening nobody protects
East of 41, Bonita is preserve and golf frontage — Pelican Landing, Bonita National,
Palmira, Spanish Wells. West of it, the lanais look at water. Either way the lanai is wide, it is
low, it faces the exposure, and it is usually bare.
That is a structural problem, not an aesthetic one. Wind that gets into a large opening
pressurises the building and starts pushing outward on the roof from underneath. It is the failure
mode that takes roofs off, and the lanai is where it starts on most houses here.
The pool cage is not protection. A screen enclosure is not rated opening protection, was never
designed to be, and when a cage comes apart its own aluminum becomes the debris standing a few feet
from your sliders.
The reason most Bonita owners actually buy one
It is not the hurricane. It is the no-see-ums.
A preserve lot is lovely and it comes with insects, and the sand fly season here is nobody’s
favourite month. The fabric on both systems we install is rated for year-round use, which means the
screen you bought for a storm is the screen you drop most evenings from March onwards. Cheaper
polypropylene screens cannot do that — UV destroys them, so they are storm-only and they live
in the housing until a warning goes up.
That is the whole difference in what you get for the money. One product gets used twice a
decade. The other gets used most weeks, and happens to be rated to stop a nine-pound 2×4 fired at
it. We install the MagnaTrack Defender and
UltraShield, both Florida product approved. If you
have heard these called Kevlar screens, that is a nickname rather
than the fabric.
What decides the size of the job
Three things, and none of them is the brochure:
- The span. Up to 30 feet wide by 20 feet high in a single screen, checked
against the approved size and pressure schedule for your address before anything is ordered. - What it fixes to. A screen that size puts real load into the structure. On an
older Bonita lanai the backing gets verified rather than assumed, and occasionally that is the part
that has to be dealt with first. - Where the housing goes. Under the beam, on the face, or recessed if you are
building. Recessed is the nicest result and it is only cheap while the structure is open.
If you would rather close the lanai off completely — dark, quiet, secured for the season
— that is a roll down shutter instead, and
plenty of seasonal owners here choose exactly that.
Permitting in Bonita Springs
A City of Bonita Springs submittal. Structural backing at the lanai gets verified rather than
assumed — a 30-foot screen puts real load into whatever it is fixed to. Permitting is handled
as part of the job.
Talk to us about roll down screens in Bonita Springs
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
Can one screen cover my whole lanai?
Usually. Up to 30 feet wide by 20 feet high in a single screen with the MagnaTrack Defender, which covers the large majority of Bonita lanais with no centre post. Your opening is checked against the approved size and pressure schedule before anything is ordered.
Is the housing visible from the lanai?
You see a box under or on the face of the beam. If you are building or reworking the structure it can be recessed so it disappears almost entirely, which is much cheaper to do while the structure is open than afterwards.
Does my pool cage already count?
No. Screen enclosures are not rated opening protection and are not designed to survive a major hurricane. When a cage fails, its frame becomes wind-borne debris right next to the openings behind it.
More questions? Our full hurricane shutter & screen FAQ covers products, service, permitting and financing.
More in Bonita Springs: Bahama shutters · roll down shutters · storm panels · roll down screens · accordion shutters · everything we do in Bonita Springs
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