Rescreening under Longwood’s oak canopy
Longwood Rescreening rescreens pool cages, lanais and screen rooms in Longwood, Florida — inside city limits and out in unincorporated 32750 and 32779. Inside the city, a like-for-like mesh replacement is named as exempt from permit in Longwood’s own adopted building code amendments. In unincorporated Seminole County it is not that simple. Both answers are on this site.
The canopy is protected. Start there.
The trees over your cage are not going anywhere
West Longwood sits inside Seminole County’s Wekiva River Protection Area, where a minimum of 50 percent of trees must be preserved. The City itself protects trees of three inches DBH and up under Tree Ordinance No. 09-1894, requiring a permit not just to remove a tree but to alter one — topping, root pruning, hatracking.
Every screen decision in this town follows from that. The live oaks over The Springs, Sweetwater Oaks and Sabal Point were there before the cages were, they are legally difficult to remove, and most owners do not want them gone anyway. So the practical question is never “how do I stop the debris” — it is what mesh, what fasteners and what maintenance interval make sense underneath a canopy that stays.
One useful exception, and it comes up on nearly every job under a big limb: Longwood exempts owner-occupied single-family dwellings from the tree removal permit, and exempts emergency removal after storm damage. A rental, a landlord-owned house or an HOA common-area tree is a different conversation. The details are in the permit guide.
What lands on the roof panels, and when.
The Longwood calendar is unusually crowded
Oak pollen starts in late February and peaks March through April, coating roof panels in a yellow-green film that shows every seam. Lovebugs fly twice — late April into May, then late August into September — for roughly four to five weeks each time, and they plaster screens. Between April and November the chironomid midges are out. Hurricane season runs 1 June to 30 November, on top of all of it.
None of that is unique to Longwood by itself. The combination is: a protected ancient-oak canopy directly overhead, a river system and three lakes within a couple of miles, and forty-year-old aluminium underneath. That is why the panel that fails here is usually a roof panel, and why the honest advice is that a two-storey roof panel is not a homeowner job.
Water on the west side changes the mesh answer.
Blind mosquitoes, no-see-ums and the case for a tighter weave
Sweetwater Oaks owns a private beach and boat ramp on spring-fed Lake Brantley. Sweetwater Club has its own Lake Brantley access and fishing dock. Wekiva Cove is built around Sand Lake with a lakeside walkway and pier. The Springs sits against the Wekiva River Conservation Area around a natural spring-fed lagoon.
UF/IFAS documents that chironomid midges — the “blind mosquitoes” — breed in the muck on the bottom of lakes and sluggish rivers, peak April through November, are strongly attracted to lights, and “can easily penetrate ordinary window screens.” They also stain paint and stucco. Biting no-see-ums peak roughly March through October, worst at dawn and dusk.
That is the whole argument for 20x20 no-see-um mesh on a lakefront or Wekiva-side cage, and it is an argument, not a script: on an inland east-side lot with no standing water nearby, standard 18x14 is usually the right call and the upgrade is money you do not need to spend. Which mesh, street by street →
The frame is older than you think.
A Longwood cage is typically 40 to 55 years old
Wekiva Hunt Club’s roughly 280 homes were built between 1974 and 1984, with a median year built of 1977. Sweetwater Oaks’ 2,500-plus homes went up mostly between 1971 and 1987. The Springs was developed in the 1970s on the old Sanlando Springs park.
So the cage attached to a typical Longwood pool is original 2x2 aluminium uprights with mansard roof geometry, a chalked white finish, spline grooves worn wide by two or three previous rescreens, and self-tapping screws that have been sitting in Florida humidity for four decades. New mesh stretched onto a groove that no longer grips is a callback waiting to happen.
Which is why a Longwood quote should routinely include fastener replacement and a frame inspection rather than assuming mesh-only. In a 2005-built subdivision you would assume the opposite. Here, assuming mesh-only is how a cheap quote becomes an expensive one halfway through the job.
The permit answer flips at the city line
This is the single most useful thing on the site, and every competitor page for this city skips it.
The City of Longwood’s adopted Florida Building Code Chapter 1 amendments (Ordinance No. 21-2196) list, under §105.2 work exempt from permit, Building item 11 “Building exterior”:
“Minor repair and replacement of small areas of trim and siding, fascia and soffit, broken panels of glass, replacement of pool enclosure screening, painting and patching of exterior surfaces, fence repair, existing roof repairs if no greater than 300 square foot total area during a 12 month period and additional attic insulation.”
City of Longwood, adopted FBC Chapter 1 administrative amendments, Ord. No. 21-2196 (2020 7th Edition FBC), Exhibit A §105.2. Source documentInside city limits, a mesh-only rescreen is named in black and white as work that does not require a permit. Seminole County’s own adopted amendments contain no equivalent building-exterior exemption, and the County’s published list of work that does require a permit includes “Replace or install screen enclosure.”
Most of the big west-side pool-cage neighbourhoods — Sweetwater Oaks, Sweetwater Club, Sabal Point, The Springs, Wekiva Hunt Club, Alaqua Lakes — sit in unincorporated 32779. Same postal city, different building authority, different answer.
What we do
Five things, done on cages that are mostly older than the people who own them.
Panel-by-panel rescreening
Torn or blown-out panels replaced one at a time, matched to the mesh already on the cage. On a 1970s Longwood frame the spline groove and the screws get checked at the same time, because that is usually what failed first.
Full cage rescreen
Every panel stripped and rewoven in one visit — the sensible option once the mesh has gone brittle across the whole enclosure rather than in two or three spots.
Screen door repair and rebuild
Sagging or racked doors, worn rollers, bent frames, and kickplate replacement. Doors take more cycles than any other part of the cage and fail first.
Pet-resistant mesh
Heavier strand for the lower panels where a dog leans, pushes or claws, usually with standard mesh kept above so the cage still breathes and stays clear.
No-see-um mesh (20x20)
A tighter weave for the Wekiva corridor and the lakefront streets, where biting midges and no-see-ums get through ordinary insect screening.
All services, in detail
Including fasteners and spline, roof panels, structural repairs that do need a permit, and where the market price estimates come from.
See services →What it costs, and whose numbers those are
Every rescreening site in Central Florida either hides pricing behind “call for a quote” or quotes numbers with no source. Here is the honest version: below are published third-party ranges, attributed. Our own numbers replace them the moment they exist.
These are third-party market estimates, not our prices and not a quote. They are collected from published Florida and Orlando-area cost guides — two of the three sources are themselves screen contractors, and none of them is Longwood-specific. Longwood Rescreening's own per-panel and full-cage pricing is and will replace these ranges before launch.
| Job | Published range | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Standard 18x14 ground-level panel | $35–$75 (most often $45–$60) | A Screen Repair, Orlando, 2026 guide |
| Upper panel, two-storey or mansard cage | $60–$120 | A Screen Repair, Orlando, 2026 guide |
| Door panel with kickplate | $90–$180 | A Screen Repair, Orlando, 2026 guide |
| Full rescreen, mid-size cage (20–40 panels) | $1,500–$3,200 | A Screen Repair, Orlando, 2026 guide |
| Full rescreen, Florida-wide | $1,500–$4,500+ ($1.50–$3.50/sq ft) | Absolute Aluminum, updated 2 Dec 2025 |
| No-see-um mesh upgrade | +$10–$20 per panel | A Screen Repair, Orlando, 2026 guide |
| Corroded upright replacement | $300–$700 per post | A Screen Repair, Orlando, 2026 guide |
The complete table, including full-cage estimates by mesh type → · or jump straight to full rescreen cost, panel repair cost, mesh upgrade cost or door repair cost.
Questions people actually type
These are verbatim Google and DuckDuckGo autocomplete strings, kept in the wording people type rather than tidied up into marketing questions.
Searched ashow much does it cost to rescreen a pool cage
Published Florida cost guides put a standard ground-level 18x14 fiberglass panel at roughly $35–$75, most commonly $45–$60, and a full rescreen at $1,500–$4,500+ depending on cage size and mesh. Upper panels on the two-storey and mansard cages common along Markham Woods run higher, around $60–$120 each. Those are market estimates from third-party guides, not our numbers. Longwood Rescreening's own pricing is .
Searched ascost to rescreen pool cage in florida
Statewide guides quote roughly $1.50–$3.50 per square foot installed for a full rescreen, with partial rescreens around $200–$900. Longwood sits at the higher end of the labour side of that more often than the low end, because the cages here are old enough that fasteners and spline grooves usually need attention at the same time. See the full estimate table and where the numbers come from.
Searched ashow long do pool cage screens last in florida
Honest answer: we will not give you a number we cannot source. Competitor sites commonly claim 7–10 years, but that figure traces back to vendors rather than to any independent test, so it is not repeated here. What is verifiable for Longwood is the load: oak pollen from late February peaking March to April, lovebugs twice a year, and constant leaf and twig litter from a canopy that is legally protected and therefore is not going anywhere. What to watch for instead of a fixed number →
Searched aspool cage rescreening companies near me
Longwood Rescreening works in Longwood and the surrounding Seminole County ZIP codes 32750 and 32779 — the Wekiva corridor west of I-4, the Markham Woods estate corridor, and the older east-side subdivisions off SR 434. Call (689) 399-6404 or see the service areas page for the streets and subdivisions covered.
Reviews
There are none yet, and there are none printed below, because this is a new business and inventing them would be the single fastest way to lose the right to be believed about anything else on this site — including the ordinance text.
When there are real reviews, they will appear here with the reviewer's own wording and the platform they were left on.
Tell us which street you are on
The street decides three things: which building authority covers you, whether a tighter weave is worth paying for, and whether the frame is old enough that the fasteners need doing at the same time.