Zip Screens & Outdoor Rooms

The zip difference

The fabric edge is welded into a zipper that runs captive in aluminium side channels — no flapping, no gaps, real resistance to wind. An ordinary drop screen flaps and escapes its guides the moment a gust hits; a zipped screen holds tension through exactly the kind of mountain-funnelled gust this valley produces on its stillest, hottest afternoons.

Fabric choices

• Sunscreen mesh (various openness levels) — keeps the vineyard view, cuts glare and UV, keeps insects out, gives daytime privacy
• Clear PVC / crystal panels — a wind-and-rain-proof enclosure that keeps the view entirely open, right for a winter braai room on a stoep that would otherwise sit unused half the year
• Blockout options for an outdoor cinema evening or killing hard west sun outright

Practical notes

Motorisation is standard on wider spans, and a wind-sensor retract is worth specifying on any exposed stoep here — the same funnelled gusts that argue for a wind sensor on an awning apply just as directly to a screen. Spans run wide (4m-plus class per screen), and channels are colour-matched to the structure rather than left as a stock finish.

Where they earn their keep across the valley

Entertainment decks on the newer wine-estate homes near Groot Drakenstein and open, less-sheltered stoeps out toward Simonsvlei are where these do the most work — both sit further from any windbreak of trees or neighbouring buildings than a town garden would.