Cage over pool or not? (Naples: new home, legal, club) - Florida (FL) -Collier County - City-Data Forum

peteINny · 08-20-2010, 08:07 PM

What are the positives and negatives of having a cage over a pool in the Naples area? I see so many pools with cages in this area. Is it necessary to have one or is it just personal preference and why?

Joy333 · 08-20-2010, 08:14 PM

I'm not in Naples, but I do have a pool with no cage. I would prefer to have a cage but my swimming season is not as long as yours so I have never spent the money. We swim alot after work and at night and we have the underwater pool light on. It's a bug magnet!!!!!! I clean the skimmer out everyday and there are tons of bugs that have gotten into the pool. Also other critters get in, snakes, moles, turtles. Most of them end up, belly up. If I had a cage maybe this would not be the case.

motordavid · 08-21-2010, 03:15 PM

No expert, and have not surveyed every house in Naples area, but what I do see is:
every home I've been to, with a pool, has a cage. Most every home I've been to
without a pool, has a caged lanai, (as we do). Most club community pools do not,
but most are closed, or rarely used after dark.

I think the cages are used almost ubiquitously for looks, to add "structure effect" to
the home, and as Joy noted, to reduce the influx of critters, esp in summer months.

We get lots of anoles, spiders and a few bugs, even in our caged lanai, during our
winter months there. I guess it would be personal pref., but it also might be a code
or legal issue unless your non-caged pool was fenced, to keep kids and idiots out.
GL, mD

peteINny · 08-21-2010, 08:57 PM

Spoke with a pool install guy and he was leaning more toward a pool without a cage. I see that lots of people have screen cages and rooms even if they don't have a pool. My thought is there must be something to this. Cages are very expensive and a liability when a hurricane comes thru. To take that risk and pay quite a bit for one leads me to believe they must provide a very good benefit.

BigMunch · 08-21-2010, 09:01 PM

Cages keep the Hornets, flys, mosquitos, most bugs and birds away from you and your loved ones.

JudiPatooti · 08-30-2010, 06:25 PM

Without a cage you're going to have geckos, frogs, bugs, bugs, and more bugs in your pool--and they'll have easy access to your house, as well! The cage really helps to keep all these things at bay on your lanai and in your pool and away from your indoors, too. We had a house a few years ago where the cage's holes must have been larger than usual or something and we NEVER finished having to skim the gnats, tons of them all the time, off the top. That's a real pest when you have to do it daily in the AM and then again when you want to take a swim in the afternoon--and they still won't all be gone. Now we must have a "normal" type of screen on our cage in our new home and we never have gnats in our pool. Spiders still somehow thrive in the lanai, however, grrrrrr.

Don't think you're going crazy if you get the cage and occasionally still see a gecko or a small frog inside on your lanai. We've had that happen and did a lot of searching for the "hole" they were coming in through. We never found a hole, but finally realized that once in awhile they come through the openings in the drainage strip they put between your lanai and your house to drain the water that gets on the lanai when it rains so that it doesn't get into your house.

Call me nuts, but even though the gnats don't go in the pool, when we have the lights on in the house at night and the lanai sliders open (something you do here in the winter sometimes) some gnats come to the lamps and then find you and drive you crazy. They love flying around you face and are very hard to squash in the air. Sooooo, we finally got screens for the sliders as well, which equals double screening between the lawn and indoors. Because of the additional screens on our sliders we don't have spiders in the house anymore, either. My neighbor had done the same thing which is where we got the idea.

peteINny · 08-30-2010, 08:01 PM

Thanks for the advise

pilgrim7578 · 08-31-2010, 06:48 AM

If your getting a place that already has a cage,, thats great becuase Hurricane season is here and all cages collapse under hurricane winds if you dont remove most of the screens before the storm.

motordavid · 08-31-2010, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pilgrim7578

If your getting a place that already has a cage,, thats great becuase Hurricane season is here and all cages collapse under hurricane winds if you dont remove most of the screens before the storm.

I disagree: during Wilma, the last real serious hurricane to hit Naples, no house in our golf course development had their cage "collapse".
Some did in the next development over, but we only had two screen panels pierced, as did others, but no cages came down.
Wilma was fall of '05, for those that didn't remember...
GL, mD

pilgrim7578 · 08-31-2010, 05:05 PM

WILMA was a small hurricane...cat 1