When I was a kid I lived in Florida for a year, and our house had a swimming pool with a screened enclosure, and all of the pools in the neighborhood were also screened in. It was made of regular screen window material. That is the only place I have ever seen these screened in pools. Are they common anywhere outside of Florida? And what are the benefits to having your entire pool area screened in?
First things that come to mind: Keeps out mosquitoes, keeps leaves/trash/dogs out of the pool.
And alligators. An alligator in your pool will screw up your day pretty good!
I watched something on TV about that years ago. I think it was a combonation of keeping kids out of the pool as well as hurricane debris.
Joey, I’d think that a screen probably isn’t going to cut it against hurricane debris.
Many of them are designed with hurricanes in mind. They aren’t your typical screen door type screens. Also, the one’s that aren’t designed to withstand hurricane forces will still keep a lot of hurricane debris out of the pools (small rocks, leaves, sticks etc)
So yes, they will cut it against a hurricane.
Here’s the first page of google when searching for “screen enclosures for polls florida hurricane”
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu_K2M55JUFkAySJXNyoA?p=screen+enclosures+for+pools+florida+hurricane&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-501
Stop.
They are for use in FLA, so it’s nice if they can take 68mph Hurricane force winds, but they are meant to keep out critters, both human and non-human, but really…really…they keep out critters. FLA just has a lot of them.
Did you actually click on any of them?
This is the image that comes up on the first one.
The 2nd mentions Hurricane shutters, the 3rd also mentions hurricane shutters, and that’s where I stopped…
Only the first one specifies that their enclosures are built for hurricanes, and even then I doubt they’re built to withstand hurricanes, but more stuff getting tossed around lightly.
Hurricane debris conjures images of 60 MPH 2x4’s and flying cars / cows. Not twigs and pebbles blown around.
The screens are to keep out alligator-sized mosquitoes. Or possibly mosquito-sized alligators. I’m not sure which would be worse.
Uh hello, palmetto bugs. Try cleaning those out of a filter system sometime. ughhh.
If an alligator wanted to get into a swimming pool, those screen enclosures would not keep him out. Unless maybe it was just a cute, teeny little baby alligator. Those enclosures are too keep trash and the neighbor’s kids out of the pool. And to keep away the mosquitoes when you are enjoying the late night benefits of having your very own swimming pool where you can turn off the lights and swim in the darkness with your SO and swimwear is optional or maybe even prohibited and-------I’m sorry, I got carried away.
The main problem with the screens is that they don’t keep out enough creatures. Midges (“no-see-ums”) scoff at such screens and fly right through, which is bad news for all those people living near one of S. Florida’s many, many canals.
The screens do keep out most 'skeeters, squirrels, birds, opossums, cats, dogs, and strongly discourage the undisciplined spawn of litigious neighbors from trespassing. The screens might also effectively keep out raccoons for the most part, but I suspect a desperate-enough 'coon might be able to breech a panel to get at, say, a bowl of dog food. If your screen door[s] have sizeable gaps underneath, you will see your quota of roaches, lizards and snakes. (We caught a number of small and medium-sized snakes over the years on the screened-in patio.)
Maybe the best thing the screens do is separate your pet cats and dogs from the wildlife beyond, which is good for all parties concerned, and sometimes makes for mighty entertaining viewing (as with cats that stalk, chatter, and pounce/climb after squirrels, some of whom intentionally bait them, scamper around the screens just out of reach of the cat, get comfy on a roof panel and chatter right back).
OTOH, any company that claims their screens will hold up to a hurricane is full of B.S. You have to understand that it’s not mere wind speed in ideal wind-tunnel testing conditions that are the measure of how well a structure holds up to a hurricane, but the real-world conditions of actual storms, in which debris often plays a decisive factor. A wind of 150 mph buffeting your house is one thing, but that wind slamming heavy debris at your house is another thing entirely. [Recall your high-school physics: force = mass x velocity; F=ma].
It wasn’t the wind acting alone that punched a hole through a wall in my parents’ home during Hurricane Andrew [admittedly, a Category 5, and we lived in the hardest-hit “Red Zone”], but that wind slinging a big chunk of our neighbor’s roof at the wall that did it. (We found that piece of roof a few feet away the next morning. It looked plenty guilty and offered no alibi when we accused it, heh.) We had trees deposited on the front lawn from neighboring yards several doors up the street… and a neighbor’s small skiff ended up on top of a tree. No friggin’ screen enclosure will hold up to a strong hurricane that slings shit around like that. As for our patio screen enclosure, most of it ended up in our pool… to be listed on an insurance claim form’s list of damages.
Missed the edit window: Looks like I don’t remember my high-school physics very well after all… F=ma should be “force equals mass times acceleration,” not velocity. :o (But the real-world application of hurricanes slinging heavy shit at your house still applies, acceleration or velocity or speed or whatever be damned.)
So how does an alligator get in through that kind of enclosure? Knocks it over? I’ve never seen one up close so I don’t know how it works.
Party at LouisB’s place! I’ll bring the Cheetos. 
The benefit is that you won’t be charged with breaking the law. Florida leads the nation in infant swimming pool drownings, and has enacted a number of laws over the years that require varying degrees of pool enclosure for residential homes. A screen around the pool is typically the cheapest way of satisfying the restrictions, but more upscale dwellings will feature other and less unsightly ways of complying with the laws.
One time I was staying at a hotel in the Keys, and there were a couple of dead scorpion-like creatures (not sure if they were scorpions or not) the size of a small lobster lying dead in one of the chairs and in the pool, just another example of the myriad nasties that abound in Florida.
Given the weather in north and central FL, I’d go for a full-on indoor pool, air-conditioned.
I thought they came in through the drain in the bottom of the pool. :eek:
I am never going to Florida! :eek: Lobster sized scorpion things?!
I (and any other Florida resident) can assure you that swimming pool enclosures are actually made from your typical screen door mesh and are absolutely useless in hurricanes.
They do keep out most of the debris, but they also cost much more to repair than it would cost to have someone come and clean up the debris.