Why Is My Pool Screen Sagging?
Almost always a spline problem, not stretched mesh. Fiberglass and vinyl-coated polyester screen have very little stretch in them, so a slack panel has usually pulled loose from the groove that holds it — and on a 1970s Altamonte Springs frame, that groove has had fifty years to wear wider than it left the factory.
Two different sags, two different fixes.
One panel sagging with the rest of the cage tight is almost always spline. Florida’s daily swing between a hot aluminum frame and a cooler night works the spline looser in its groove over the years, and it lets go at the weakest point first — re-rolling fresh spline into that one groove is a short repair.
A whole wall or corner sagging, several panels at once, is a frame problem: a bowed rail, a corroded fastener that no longer holds the member rigid, or a bottom rail that has flexed pulls every panel attached to it out of true. New mesh on a frame member that is still moving sags again within months.
- Check the groove. Daylight or a visible gap between the spline and the channel wall means the spline has lifted, not that the mesh stretched.
- Push on the frame member itself. If the aluminum flexes under hand pressure, that is structural, not cosmetic.
- Count the panels. One panel points to spline; several on the same wall point to the member they share.
Why this reads differently across the city
Frame-level sag is more common on Weathersfield’s 1959–1978 stock — the oldest sizeable single-family frames in Altamonte Springs, with no HOA to slow a repair decision down. On the newer condo builds, Bona Vista among them (1997), the frame rarely sags; a slack panel there is almost always spline alone.
If spline has already been re-rolled into the same groove more than once and keeps letting go, the groove itself has likely worn wider than standard spline can grip — see splines popping out.