Surface, inside or recessed: how a screen mounts

The housing bolts to the face of the structure above the opening, and the side tracks run down the face of the jambs. It is the most forgiving installation — it asks nothing of the building except a solid header and enough face width — and it is the one that shows most.

If your building will not give up a cavity, or you are retrofitting an existing porch that was never designed for a screen, this is usually the answer.

The housing mounts up inside the opening, on a mounting angle, so the unit sits within the reveal rather than proud of it. You lose a little of the opening height to the housing and you gain a much tidier line.

This needs a header condition that can carry the angle and enough clear height inside the opening to give the housing away.

The housing and the side tracks disappear into the structure. SunPro's recessed drawing set covers concealment in a ceiling cavity and inside columns, with bottom or side access panels so the motor and roll tube can still be reached, plus flange-mount and web-mount details for connecting tracks to structural columns.

This is the best-looking option and the least flexible one: it has to be designed in. Retrofitting a recess into a finished ceiling means opening the ceiling. If you are building or renovating and you know a screen is coming, tell your architect now — it is the single decision that most changes the finished result.

SunPro's header drawings pair a 5 1/2 in standard housing with roughly 15 ft of width and 11 ft of height, and a 7 in alternative housing with roughly 30 ft of width and 12 ft of height. The wider the screen, the larger the roll tube and housing it needs — which feeds straight back into how much cavity a recessed installation requires.

The component set behind all three configurations is the same: housing, roll tube with collar and collar brackets, motor mount, side tracks (standard or recessed) with covers, screen track, slide bar, bottom brush seal, mesh, end caps.

That is a site question and it gets answered at the measurement, standing under your header. What decides it is what the header is made of, how much depth sits behind the face, and how much flat width each jamb can give up. Photograph those three things and we can usually tell you before we arrive.