Is My Pool Cage Hurricane-Code Compliant?
Seminole County is not in the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, whatever one competing page claims. The real dividing line for an Altamonte Springs cage is Florida’s 2002 statewide Building Code — and nearly every documented subdivision here finished building before it existed.
Two separate questions, often run together.
“Hurricane code” gets used loosely to mean two different things: whether a jurisdiction sits in the Florida Building Code’s High-Velocity Hurricane Zone (HVHZ), and whether a structure was built before or after Florida adopted its first unified, statewide Building Code in March 2002. For an Altamonte Springs cage, only the second question actually applies.
Seminole County is not in the HVHZ
The HVHZ is defined in the Florida Building Code as Miami-Dade and Broward counties only. At least one screen company page covering this county states otherwise. A contractor working from that assumption is quoting the wrong product approvals for your address. Full correction →
The date that actually matters here
What does apply statewide is the shift to a single Florida Building Code, effective March 2002, replacing the patchwork of local and regional codes that preceded it. A cage built before that date was engineered, if at all, to an older local standard rather than the current statewide wind-load provisions.
Nearly every subdivision documented in this research finished building well before that line: Weathersfield by 1978, Spring Oaks by 1979, Spring Lake Hills by 1980, Sandy Cove and Altamonte Heights by 1975, Country Creek and Bona Vista by 1997. On a cage that old, the relevant question is not which code era it was built in — it is almost certainly pre-2002 — but whether five decades of Florida weather have kept the original fasteners and frame sound. That is covered on rust stains on anchors and rescreen vs. repair.
No design wind speed (mph) figure is published on this site for Seminole County.