Lanai & Balcony Cleaning
Pelican Landing Condos

Phase I garden condos sit among lakes and preserve. Lanais facing the water stay damp, screens collect pollen and webs, and floors and frame bottoms turn green on the shaded side.

In The Colony’s towers, wind off Estero Bay leaves a salt film on balcony glass and rails that dulls the Gulf view. Glass and frames on the water side need cleaning most often.

Two kinds of outdoor space, two methods. Pelican Landing’s condos split into the Phase I garden buildings, with roughly 1,130 units spread over eleven low-rise neighborhoods, and The Colony, where seven towers stand beside mid-rise and low-rise buildings. A Phase I lanai is a screened room with aluminum framing, a ceiling and a floor, and we can work it from the floor and a short ladder. A tower balcony is open glass and railing several floors up, and every bit of that work happens from inside the unit, never by leaning over the rail.

Phase I buildings are reaching their late twenties. Listings put the Phase I build years between 1996 at Sandpiper Isle and 2001 at The Pointe. On buildings that age, original screen mesh has often been patched or replaced in places, spline can be brittle, and bottom rails may be chalky where the coating has worn through. That changes how we clean: we photograph any weak panel before touching it, use a fan tip at low pressure, and brush the heavy spots by hand instead of blasting them.

Preserve and hammock pollen. The community is laid out around cypress hammocks, wetlands and tree-shaded roads. In spring the screens facing that canopy take on a yellow-green dusting of pollen, and the webbing spiders build in the screen corners holds it in place. Once a rainy season soaks that layer, mildew starts, and the mesh turns gray on the preserve side long before the side facing the parking lot.

Golf-view coach homes. Palm Colony is built in a two-story coach-home style with tile roofs and golf views, and lanais facing a fairway pick up fine clippings and fertilized irrigation spray on the lower screens. On those units the dirt line usually sits along the bottom third of the enclosure and the kick plate, so that is where the brush time goes.

Upstairs and downstairs. On two-story buildings the upper lanai drains onto the one beneath it. Washing the lower unit first and the upper one after just puts new dirty water on a clean floor. When neighbors stacked above one another both book, we sequence the work top-down, and if only the downstairs owner books, we keep rinse water off the upper unit’s space and tell you if staining is coming from above.

Tower balconies in The Colony. Salt film on glass is not ordinary dirt. It dries into a haze that a garden hose just moves around. We clean balcony glass and rails with a mild solution and a squeegee, work the track at the base of the sliding doors where sand and salt pile up, and keep water on the balcony floor so it does not run down the facade or drip onto the balcony below. Building rules on balcony work vary, so the manager’s approval comes first.

Newer towers, larger terraces. Infinity at The Colony added two towers with nearly 100 residences, the first new high-rise there in several years, and some of its units have more than one private terrace. Larger terraces with outdoor furniture and planters take longer, so we price them by the space rather than by a flat unit rate.

Lanais are often owner items under the association documents, so they tend to be left out when a building is washed. Each association’s own documents decide the split, and the manager can confirm it before you book.

Adding your lanai on the building’s service day solves it: we are already through the gate, the notices have gone out, and you are billed separately from the association.

Timing and seasonal owners. All vendor work runs inside PLCA hours, Monday through Saturday from 7 am to 6 pm. Many owners are away for part of the year, so you do not need to be home: leave access with the manager, a neighbor or your caretaker, and you receive photos and a short written record when the work is done. Owners who return for the season often book the lanai a week or two before they arrive.

What it costs. A small screened lanai under 800 square feet, which fits most Phase I units, starts from $249. A larger standard screened enclosure starts from $299. Chalky aluminum frames can take a heavy oxidation treatment that adds $75 to $150. Tower balcony glass and rails, and the bigger terraces at the newer towers, are quoted per unit once we know the layout and the building’s access rules.