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Screen enclosure permits and code in Winter Springs
If your address is inside Winter Springs city limits, your building authority is the City of Winter Springs Building Division at 1126 East State Road 434, reachable on 407-327-5963 — not the Seminole County Building Division. The city has its own screen enclosure ordinance, its own permit fee schedule and its own counter. A contractor who sends you to the county has not worked this city.
Who actually issues the permit
Winter Springs is a municipality with its own building department. Seminole County’s Building Division has jurisdiction over unincorporated addresses, and the neighbouring cities — Oviedo, Casselberry, Longwood — each run their own. Three of those authorities can be within a mile of each other on the ground, which is why the ZIP code on your mail is not a safe guide to any of this.
ZIP 32708 is the Winter Springs delivery ZIP, but parts of it fall in Casselberry, Longwood, Black Hammock and Oviedo. Everything on this site was built from the city tax district instead, which follows the city limit.
- Authority
- City of Winter Springs Building Division, Community Development Department
- Office
- 1126 East State Road 434, Winter Springs, FL 32708
- Permitting line
- 407-327-5963
- Fax
- 407-327-4753
- Counter hours
- Mon-Fri 8am-5pm
- Applications
- Through the city's Civic Access permitting portal
Source: City of Winter Springs Building Division building permits page, winterspringsfl.org/263/Building-Permits, and the city’s paper permit forms index. Fire permits and inspections are handled separately by the Seminole County Fire Department per the city fee schedule.
Does a rescreen need a permit here?
This is the question the page exists to answer, and the truthful answer is that the City of Winter Springs does not publish one. There is no “work exempt from permit” list on the Building & Permits page, and the paper permit forms index contains no screen enclosure form at all.
Ring 407-327-5963, Mon-Fri 8am-5pm, and ask. That is a two-minute call and it is the only authority whose answer counts. The general Florida position is that replacing mesh is maintenance while structural work is construction — but general positions are not what an inspector reads from.
What we will not do is state a definitive exemption on a page in order to make a sale look simpler. If a competitor’s site tells you flatly that no permit is ever needed to rescreen in Winter Springs, ask them which city document says so.
Where the line sits, in plain terms
- Mesh only, frame untouched. Spline out, new mesh in, nothing moves. Maintenance in every practical sense — and the reason a rescreen cannot conflict with a setback, because the footprint on the city’s record does not change.
- Fasteners and isolated members. Replacing corroded screws, an upright or a beam on an existing enclosure is repair to an existing structure. Worth declaring when you call.
- Dimensions change, or new area is enclosed. Construction. Permit, Sec. 6-86 setbacks, wind-load design, inspections. This is also where we stop — we rescreen and repair, we do not build enclosures.
Setbacks that bind a new cage, not a rescreen
Winter Springs Code Sec. 6-86, “Screen enclosures/rooms”, is a dedicated city provision, and it carries two numbers worth knowing before anyone designs a new enclosure on your lot:
- Rear setback
- Seven (7) feet from the rear property line for screen enclosures and screen rooms. Ordinance No. 2024-07 proposes reducing this to six (6) feet.
- Lakefront
- No screen enclosure or room closer than twenty-five (25) feet from the shoreline, measured at the existing or established high-water control level.
The only copy located is an unsigned draft with blank reading dates, and Municode blocks automated retrieval, so Sec. 6-86’s current text could not be read independently. Treat the rear setback as seven feet, with six feet as the proposed amendment, and confirm at the counter.
The twenty-five-foot shoreline rule is a Winter Springs number, driven by the city’s Lake Jesup and Howell Creek frontage. It is the reason Parkstone — the northernmost of the major subdivisions, mean parcel centroid 28.70739, -81.28239 — is the plat where it most often comes up. Neither figure touches a rescreen, because a rescreen does not move the frame.
What the city charges
Winter Springs sets building permit fees at $12.00 per $1,000 of construction valuation, with valuation taken from the ICC Building Valuation Data table. Plan review is charged at one-half the building permit fee, with a $25 minimum plan-services fee. Fee schedule effective 18 November 2024.
That is the city’s fee, not a contractor’s. It applies when structural work triggers a permit; it is not a line item on a mesh-only rescreen.
Fee schedules are revised; check the date on the copy you are quoted from.
129 mph, not 139
Screen enclosures are Risk Category I structures — low hazard to human life on failure — so the ultimate design wind speed that governs a cage in Seminole County is not the number people quote for houses.
| Risk category | Vult | Figure | What is in it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Risk Category I | 129 mph | Figure 1609C | Screen enclosures. Low hazard to human life on failure. |
| Risk Category II | 139 mph | Figure 1609A | Ordinary buildings, including houses. Commonly quoted, but not the figure that governs a cage. |
| Risk Categories III and IV | 149 mph | Figure 1609B | High-occupancy and essential facilities. |
Source: Seminole County, “Ultimate Design Wind Speed Designations”. Seminole County is not in Florida’s High-Velocity Hurricane Zone — that designation covers Miami-Dade and Broward. A Central Florida page that claims otherwise has been copied from a South Florida one.
Four steps, in order
Confirm you are inside city limits
A 32708 address is not automatically a Winter Springs address. If you are outside the line, your authority is Seminole County or a neighbouring city, and everything on this page changes.
Decide what is actually being touched
Mesh only, or mesh plus structure? Walk the cage and look at the screw heads and the kickplate channel, not just the panels. That answer determines the rest.
Call 407-327-5963 and ask
City of Winter Springs Building Division, Mon-Fri 8am-5pm. Describe the work in the terms above. Write down who you spoke to and what they said.
Get the scope in writing before the deposit
A quote should say which panels, which mesh, and what happens if corroded fasteners are found once the old mesh is off. That last clause is the one that turns into an argument on a 1980s cage.
Permits, barriers and claims
Do I need a permit to rescreen my pool cage in Florida?
It depends on who your building authority is and on how much of the enclosure you are touching. For an address inside Winter Springs city limits the authority is the City of Winter Springs Building Division, not Seminole County, and the city publishes no list of work exempt from permit and no screen enclosure form in its paper permit index, so there is no definitive answer printed here.
Call 407-327-5963 and ask before you let anyone tell you either way. What is not in doubt is the other half: replacing structural members, changing the enclosure’s dimensions or enclosing new area is construction, and that is a permitted job with Sec. 6-86’s setbacks and a wind-load design behind it.
Do you have to have a screen around your pool in Florida?
No. A screen enclosure is not itself required anywhere in Florida. What is regulated is the pool barrier — the fence, wall, door alarms or cover arrangement that keeps a small child out of the water — and a screen enclosure is one of the ways a property can be built to satisfy that. The two get confused constantly.
The exact statutory text and the current code citation are worth reading rather than taking from a contractor’s website. If your enclosure is part of how your property meets its barrier requirement, that is a reason to keep the mesh and the door hardware in working order rather than a reason to panic about a torn panel.
Is pool screen damage covered by homeowners’ insurance in Florida?
Sometimes, and the distinction that decides it is usually sudden damage versus wear. A cage crushed by a falling oak limb in a named storm is a different claim from mesh that has chalked and split over twenty-nine years, and Florida policies commonly treat screen enclosures under their own sub-limit rather than as part of the dwelling.
We are not insurance advisers and will not pretend to read your policy. What we can do is write a repair scope that itemises what failed, which is what an adjuster asks for. Hurricane Milton in October 2024 put Howell Creek, Gee Creek and Soldier Creek into major flood stage here, so this is not a hypothetical in Winter Springs.
- City of Winter Springs, Building & Permits — https://www.winterspringsfl.org/263/Building-Permits
- City of Winter Springs, Paper Permit Forms index — https://www.winterspringsfl.org/264/Paper-Permit-Forms
- City of Winter Springs Ordinance No. 2024-07, amending Chapter 6 Sec. 6-86 (unsigned draft copy; adoption status unconfirmed) — http://www.ordinancewatch.com/files/82613/LocalGovernment151518.pdf
- City of Winter Springs Community Development Fee Schedule, effective 11/18/2024 — https://www.winterspringsfl.org/DocumentCenter/View/199/Community-Development-Fee-Schedule---Effective-11182024
- Seminole County, Ultimate Design Wind Speed Designations — https://www.seminolecountyfl.gov/core/fileparse.php/3171/urlt/SC_WindSpeedDesignations.pdf
- City of Winter Springs, Flood Prevention and Preparedness — https://www.winterspringsfl.org/484/Flood-Prevention-and-Preparedness
Tell us what the cage needs and we will tell you which side of the line it is on
Mesh, fasteners or structure. That distinction decides whether you are booking a Saturday rescreen or making a phone call to the city first, and it costs nothing to establish.
- Phone
- (689) 330-0968
- Serving
- Winter Springs, FL 32708 and Seminole County