The three pool cage screens used in Southwest Florida

6 October 2026

Your rescreen quote names a mesh in one line and never explains it. It says 18/14. Or 20/20. Or a brand, like SuperScreen. What it does not say is what that choice does to the view off your lanai, to the breeze coming through it, or to how often you are out there with a hose.

That middle line is where homeowners get burned, not the number at the bottom. A contractor working here laid the menu out for a homeowner on camera: "There's 3 main types we use, super Screen or tough screen, 20/20 no-seeum screen or 18/14 phifer screen." What nobody sets beside that list is the price each one charges you in view, airflow and cleaning, whether the frame over it is a full pool cage or a smaller screen enclosure. One mesh at a time.

18/14 standard mesh, and the bug it does not stop

18/14 is a count, not a brand. Eighteen strands per inch one way, fourteen the other. Phifer is the name that usually sits beside it, because it is what suppliers here stock deepest. It is on most cages in Fort Myers and Cape Coral right now, probably including yours.

It is the most open weave of the three. Most light, most air, least visible from a chair on the deck. It is also the cheapest and the fastest to install, which is why it is what you get when nobody asks for anything else.

What it costs you is small insects. 18/14 stops mosquitoes and anything bigger. It does not stop no-see-ums, the biting midges that come off wet ground and canal banks at dusk. That is the call we get from Cape Coral and Bonita Springs a month after a new cage goes up: the screen is perfect and they still cannot sit outside at sunset.

The second cost is strand thickness. A thin strand takes a pool pole, a rake handle or a dropped branch less well than a heavy one. Where landscaping sits right against a cage, that shows up as punctures rather than a panel letting go.

20/20 no-see-um mesh, and the cleaning it adds

20/20 is twenty strands per inch both ways. The weave is square and tight, and the openings are small enough to stop the midges that walk through 18/14. If you are getting bitten inside your own cage, this mesh ends it, and it is the only one of the three that does.

Three things it takes back.

Air. Tighter weave, less open area, less breeze. On a still evening in Lehigh Acres you will feel the difference between a 20/20 wall and an 18/14 one. People who screen a whole cage in no-see-um say the lanai feels closer than it did. They are not imagining it.

Cleaning. Smaller openings catch more and let go of less. Pollen, dust off a dry lot, salt haze and storm grit load a 20/20 panel faster, and a loaded panel stays damp longer after rain. That is where the black growth that shows up on screens gets its start. Wash no-see-um panels more often than standard mesh.

Wind. A tighter panel is a better sail. Less air passes through it, so more of what the wind is doing gets handed to the frame, the spline and the screws. Worth raising with whoever is quoting you, more so on a tall cage.

The heavy mesh sold as SuperScreen or TuffScreen, and the view it takes

The third one shows up under trade names. SuperScreen and TuffScreen are the two written on quotes here, and which name lands on yours comes down to the supplier that contractor buys from. Both mean the same thing: a thicker, heavier strand than standard mesh.

A thicker strand takes a knock better. That part is physical, not marketing. It is the mesh to ask about where a cage takes abuse: pool poles, kids, a dog that leans on a wall, palms dropping fronds on the roof panels.

What it takes is the view. More material in the weave means less open area, so the mesh reads darker from inside and the cage feels more like a wall than like nothing. Some people want that, because it cuts glare off the water. Others find the back yard dimmer the morning after install. Hold a sample against your own sky before you sign, outside, not flat on a counter.

The trap here is that heavy does not mean tight. Strand thickness and weave count are separate questions, and a heavy mesh with standard openings still lets no-see-ums through. If bugs are why you are rescreening, asking for "the good screen" will not get you there. Ask for the count.

The gap in money is real, and homeowners talk about it. One wrote up a finished job this way: "It cost me about $2400 to have mine rescreened and replace all the screws with Superscreen brand ($1700 if I went standard screen)." Those are that homeowner's numbers on that homeowner's cage, not our pricing and not a rate for anybody else's. What travels is the shape of it. Heavy mesh is a step up in cost, and it should be a step you picked.

The line on your quote that names the mesh, and what to do when it is blank

Here is the fear under all of this, and it is reasonable. Being quoted standard mesh at heavy mesh money and not knowing enough to ask. One line of paperwork settles it.

A quote that names the mesh gives you a count or a brand: 18/14, 20/20, Phifer, SuperScreen, TuffScreen. A quote that does not gives you "new screening" or "upgraded mesh". Those are adjectives, not products, and neither survives being asked about. Get the count and the brand written on the estimate before you agree to it. Anyone who works in screen answers that in four seconds, because it is what they order by.

Two more lines worth having in writing. Which faces get which mesh, if the cage is not all one. And whether new spline and new screws sit inside the price. Then, on install day, ask to see the label on the roll. It is printed on the core, and nobody who ordered what they quoted minds the question.

Running one mesh on the roof and another on the west wall

You do not have to pick one mesh for the whole cage. On plenty of cages you should not.

The common split is no-see-um on the faces you sit against, usually the ones toward the canal or the preserve the bugs come off, and standard mesh everywhere else. Bug tight where you sit, air through the rest. The other split is heavy mesh on the roof panels and standard on the walls, because the roof takes fronds from above and is the part you least want to pay to reach twice.

Which faces to spend on is not a guess either. Sun lands harder on one side of a cage than the others, which is why one face of a cage fails first while the shaded side still looks close to new. The face already going is the one to think hardest about.

The honest cost of mixing is that you can see it. Two meshes on one cage never read the same in flat afternoon light. The second cost is memory. The day a panel tears, somebody has to know which wall got which mesh. Keep the quote, or write both meshes on a strip of tape inside the pump closet.

Changing mesh mid-cage, matching a single panel, and which mesh a storm cares about

Can we switch mesh types on a cage that already has screen on it? Yes. A rescreen pulls the old mesh and spline out of the groove and drives new in, and the frame does not care which mesh goes back. The choice reopens every time the cage is rescreened, so make it on purpose.

Can one torn panel go back in a different mesh than the rest? It will hold fine and it will look wrong. A single no-see-um panel in a wall of 18/14 reads as a darker rectangle from the pool, more so from the yard. To move a cage onto tighter mesh a piece at a time, move a full face at a time.

Which mesh survives a storm? Wrong question, and it is the one that costs people money. Screen is the cheapest thing on the cage and the first thing to go, whichever mesh it is. What decides the size of the bill is the frame, the fasteners and the anchors under them: what to check on the cage after a storm. Mesh is the easy part of that conversation. The aluminum is not.

We rescreen cages in Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Lehigh Acres, North Fort Myers, Estero, Bonita Springs, Naples and Punta Gorda, and every estimate we write names the mesh by count and brand. Tell us where you get bitten and where you want the breeze, and we will put the right mesh on the right walls: book a rescreening estimate.

Call (239) 357-7182