When a screen roof over the lanai should become a solid roof
The short version
- A rescreen answers one complaint: bugs and leaves. Midday sun, blown rain, ruined furniture and an unusable July are not screen problems, and new mesh does not touch them.
- The pocket slider is the tell. If it stays shut because of bugs, rescreen. If it stays shut because of sun and rain, the roof is what is in the way.
- Three paths: rescreen the cage, put an insulated roof over the same footprint with the screen walls kept, or add acrylic panels to that roof so the space closes up.
- Look at the eave above the slider, what sits under the existing cage, and where water leaves the deck. Those three decide which path the house is set up for.
You are collecting quotes to rescreen the lanai, and a thought keeps interrupting: you already know you will not sit out there in July.
That is the question under a lot of the patio enclosure calls we take in Cape Coral and Fort Myers. Not whether the mesh is bad. You can see it is. Whether new mesh makes the space a room you use.
A homeowner put the trade plainly. "It does need to be fully enclosed though because there is a 4 door pocket slider that opens the whole living room out to the lanai and in Florida that means bugs if you do not have a cage. I can't use the slider without a roof." Two needs at once, and mesh answers one of them. So, sorted by the complaint that sent you looking.
Sun on the deck from eleven until four
Screen does almost nothing to sun landing on a deck at noon. Midday sun comes in close to straight down here, so the panel doing the work is the one over your head, not the ones on the walls. A screen roof panel is a filter with holes in it.
That is why a lanai feels fine at nine and is off limits by eleven. The wall panels shade you early and late, when the sun is low and sideways. From eleven to four they are not in the path at all. New mesh up top is the same filter with a fresh coating, and that coating keeps the strands flexible, it does not block light.
A solid roof is the only change that puts shade on that deck at lunchtime. It puts something opaque between the sun and the concrete. That is the whole mechanism, and it is not a claim about degrees.
Rain blowing sideways onto the furniture
Screen stops bugs and slows a mist. It does not stop rain that is moving sideways, and a Fort Myers afternoon storm moves sideways for the first ten minutes of it. It comes through the roof panels and the west wall and lands on the cushions before you have carried them in. No mesh turns a screen room into a dry one.
A solid roof gives that water a route that is not your deck. The panel carries it to an edge, the edge to gutters, the gutters away from the slab. Walls still let blown rain in around the edges. The middle stays dry, and the middle is the part you use. A covered lanai build handles the roof and the drainage as one drawing, not a panel over a puddle.
The pocket slider nobody opens
Homeowners apologize for raising this one, as though it were small. It is not. A four panel pocket slider exists so the living room and the lanai become one room. If opening it fills the house with bugs, that slider is a very large window.
Here the answer splits. If the mesh is torn, the slider stays shut because of bugs, and new screen is the whole fix. Read the wall panels first, because screens fail on one side first and three panels is a different job from the whole envelope.
If it stays shut because of rain, midday sun or pollen off the oaks in spring, screen was never what stood in the way. A roof puts the space under cover, so the slider opens on days a screen room sent you back inside. To open it with no bugs and no blown rain, acrylic panels for a lanai close the space in without walling it off. They are not glass and not a window unit, just clear panels that slide in tracks.
Cushions, a rug and a television that keep not surviving
Everybody tries this once. Outdoor furniture goes on the lanai, and inside two seasons the cushions are stiff and streaked, the rug smells, and the television has water marks behind the glass.
Sun and water, in that order. Direct sun bleaches whichever part of the deck gets it, which is why the chair against the north wall still looks new and the one by the pool does not. Then rain, because upholstery that never dries in Cape Coral humidity grows something. Screen does neither job. A roof does both, which is why a covered lanai holds real furniture and a ceiling fan while a screen room holds plastic chairs you hose off.
July, and the room you walk past on the way to the pool
This is what people are actually afraid of. You pay for the rescreen, the cage looks sharp, and in July you still cross the lanai on the way to the water and go straight back into the air conditioning. The space was never the problem screen was solving.
Shade makes a July afternoon survivable, and a fan makes shade worth sitting in. A screen roof gives you shade early and late, none in the middle, and an open frame overhead instead of a ceiling. A roof gives you both. It does not become an air conditioned room. What changes is the hours you get out there.
Three ways this goes, and what each one changes
Rescreen the cage. Frame stays, old mesh out, new mesh in at the right tension. Bugs out, leaves out of the pool, the slider usable on a good day. Smallest of the three, and right when the complaint is bugs. It does not touch sun, rain or heat.
Roof the same footprint, keep the screen walls. The middle path, and where most people land. The screen walls keep doing the bug work and the roof takes the sun and the rain. An insulated roof over a lanai is a bigger job than a rescreen, with posts, footings and a new roof line tied into the house. It is not a weekend.
Roof plus acrylic panels. Same roof, clear sliding panels in front of the screen walls. Largest of the three, and the one that has people leaving the slider open in December.
Reading your own roof line before anyone quotes it
Three things out back decide which of those fits.
How much roof already sits above the slider. If the eave reaches a few feet past the glass, there is something to tie a new roof into. If the wall runs straight up off the slab with a second story on it, the roof has to land on that wall, and that changes the design.
What is under the existing cage. A screen cage is built light, because it carries screen. A roof is a different load. Expect posts and footings to be part of the job rather than something you inherit.
Where the water leaves. The far edge of a lanai is often the low point of the yard. If there is standing water out there now, a roof makes more of it unless the gutters and the grade get handled in the same job.
On the paperwork, we handle it and meet the inspector on site.
Questions that come up once a roof is on the table
Can you keep the screen cage and just put a roof on it?
The footprint usually carries over. The frame usually does not. Shape, post locations and the deck tend to stay, while the aluminum that was holding screen gets replaced with structure built for a roof.
Does a solid roof darken the living room?
It changes the light. The slider ends up under cover, so the room behind it gets less direct sun and more reflected light. Some people want that, because glare on the television is why the blinds are shut. Others miss the brightness. Stand in there and picture a ceiling where the sky is.
Should we do the screen and the roof at once?
If the mesh is spent and a roof is the plan inside a year or two, do the roof first, so you are not paying for screen that comes straight back out. If the roof is a someday and the bugs are now, rescreen and stop there.
We build lanais, insulated roofs and acrylic enclosures across Lee County, from Cape Coral and North Fort Myers down through Estero and Bonita Springs. Estimates are free and in writing. Call us and we will stand on your deck at the hour you hate it.