What to check on your pool cage before you call anyone after a storm
The short version
- Look up at the roof beams from the doorway before you step outside. A beam that is bent, dropped or sitting lower than its neighbors means that section is not something to walk under.
- Take four wide shots, one from each corner, before any close-ups, and shoot the debris where it landed. Once the branch is at the curb and the screen is in a bag, the morning is gone.
- Write it down by wall: which wall, how many panels, does the door still latch, screws backed out, rust streaking under a screw head.
- A few torn panels on a straight frame is a panel job. Screen gone on most walls is a rescreen. A beam that moved is a separate question from the mesh.
The wind drops off, the power is either back or it is not, and you walk to the slider to see what the screen enclosure looks like. Screen hanging off one wall. A branch sitting in the pool. And somewhere on the street, a truck you did not call going door to door.
A homeowner put the next part plainly: "I lost some screens during hurricane Milton and I am trying to replace them myself." Fair instinct. It is also where people cost themselves something, because the first ten minutes decide what you have to work with for the rest of the repair. Here is that ten minutes, in order.
Look up at the beams before you step outside
Do this from the doorway, feet still on the tile. Run your eyes along the roof beams and the top plate where the cage ties into the house. You want one thing: a beam bent, twisted, dropped, or sitting lower than the ones either side of it.
If you find one, that section is not something to walk under. Not for a better photo, not to pull a branch out. A cage roof spreads its load across the whole frame, so when one member gives, the ones beside it are carrying more than they were built to. Shoot it from the yard with the zoom, and leave a roof panel holding water exactly where it is.
Walk the outside first, on the ground, at a walking pace
Start at a corner and go around the outside with the camera already open. No ladder, nothing to climb on. A wet paver deck the morning after a storm is the wrong place to be standing on a chair.
Take a wide shot from every corner before a single close-up. A close-up alone has no context, because a photo of a torn panel could have come off any cage in any year. Walk all four sides even when only one looks hit. Wind wraps around a house, so the wall that took the gust head on is often not the wall that lost its screen.
Photograph the mess before you clean up a piece of it
The instinct is to start cleaning. Fight it for ten minutes. Debris where it landed is the only record of what happened, and once the branch is at the curb and the screen is in a bag, your yard is an ordinary yard with some screen missing.
The branch through the panel gets photographed still in the panel. The screen that blew into the hedge gets photographed in the hedge. The spline gets photographed on the deck where it fell.
We do not give insurance advice, and nothing here says what any policy covers. That belongs with your agent. What we can tell you is that the state of the cage before anybody touched it is something only you can record, and only this morning.
Write the damage down by wall, not by feeling
Photos are not notes. Open the notes app out there and keep the lines short.
- Which wall. Pool side, house side, canal side, street side. Use the same names throughout.
- How many panels are torn on each wall, and where. Bottom row, top row, next to the door.
- The door. Does it latch, does it swing square, has the bottom corner dropped.
- Screws backed out or missing, and rust streaking under a screw head.
- Whether water got inside the lanai, and how far in.
- Cracked pavers, a base plate lifted off the concrete, anchors pulled.
Weeks later you remember a bad morning. A note written the same morning says three panels on the canal wall, bottom row, and a dropped door corner.
The door and the screws say more than the screens do
Torn screen is the loud damage. It is also the cheap damage. What tells you whether the structure moved is the door and the fasteners.
Work the door a few times. One that dragged before the storm and drags the same way now is old news. One that latched clean last week and will not latch now means a frame member shifted, and the screen is not the story. Then the screw heads at the base plates and corners: backed out screws, a plate standing proud of the concrete, rust bleeding down a beam. Salt works on hardware long before sun finishes the mesh, which is why a cage can lose screens on one side with a sound frame underneath.
What you can secure yourself, and what to leave hanging
A panel that let go at one edge keeps pulling on the spline of the panels next to it every time the wind picks up. One torn panel becomes three. On a low wall, with no bent beam above it, cutting that flap away with scissors from the ground stops it taking its neighbors with it. Photograph it first.
Leave alone anything on the roof, anything under a beam that moved, anything needing a ladder. And do not tarp a cage. A tarp over screen has nothing solid to bite into and it holds wind like a sail.
The truck that shows up before you have called anyone
They come. Somebody is on your street with a clipboard the same day, and the pitch is always urgency. The crew is in the neighborhood right now. The price is good today. Sign here. You do not owe anyone a decision on your own deck. Three things to hold to.
- Get the scope in writing before any money moves, with walls and panel counts named.
- Take the company name and write down how you would find them months from now.
- A price that is only good today is a reason to wait, not a reason to sign.
Hand that same list to everybody who quotes and the quotes compare line for line.
After the photos: panels, a full rescreen, or the frame
A few torn panels on a straight frame is a panel job. Spline out, mesh in, tension matched to what is already hanging. No reason to touch the walls that held, and single panel screen repair is worth doing on its own.
A cage that lost screen across most of its walls is different math. Panel by panel means paying for the same setup again and again while the next one gets ready to go. That is when a full storm rescreen of the enclosure is the cheaper answer, and every wall goes back on the same tension. One customer wrote after Ian: "Tommy J repaired and totally rescreened our pool cage after Hurricane Ian badly damaged it."
Bent beams, dropped headers and lifted base plates are a question about the cage structure itself, quoted on its own, because new mesh on a frame that moved does not stay tight. When a job calls for it, we handle the paperwork and meet the inspector on site.
Tarps, screen kits, and waiting out the season
Should I cover the cage until somebody can come?
No. There is nothing on a cage for a cover to grab except the frame you are protecting, and anything stretched across screen becomes a sail on the next gust. If a room under the cage roof is taking water, that is a house roof problem and belongs to a roofer.
Can I put the screen back in myself?
On a low wall, on a straight frame, with a clean spline groove, yes. A spline roller is sold at any hardware counter in Cape Coral or Fort Myers. Where it stops being a home job is height, roof panels, any wall needing a ladder, and any panel next to a beam that moved. And a panel rolled in loose looks fine the first day, then bellies out in the first real wind.
Should I wait and see if another storm comes first?
Waiting turns a panel job into a wall job. Torn mesh hands the wind a place to grab and start on the spline beside it, and a frame that shifted once shifts easier the second time. Get the record made today and the scope written. When the work happens is yours to decide.
When you have the photos and the list, call us. Read it off your phone wall by wall and we will tell you which of the three your cage is. We cover Fort Myers, Cape Coral, North Fort Myers, Lehigh Acres, Estero, Bonita Springs, Naples and Punta Gorda. Estimates come in writing with the panels named by wall, and the work carries a two year workmanship warranty.