Retractable fly screens for openings up to thirteen metres.

It slides back into a slim housing at the side of the opening and effectively disappears. There's no frame sitting across your door and nothing to unclip and store over winter. From inside, the opening looks the way it did before the screen was fitted.

Almost always. The system fits alongside your existing frame and in most cases doesn't require drilling into the main door frames. It works on new builds and existing homes equally well — the measure is where we confirm it for your particular opening.

Pull-across screens suit single doors, French doors, bi-folds, stacker and sliding doors. Pull-down screens suit servery openings, windows and balconies. Motorised vertical screens suit patios and outdoor areas. We also do corner openings, garages, caravans and tiny homes.

The retained zip is the reason it does. The mesh is captured in the top and bottom tracks rather than sitting loose in a channel, and the system has been laboratory tested to 100 km/h. Blow-outs are the most common failure on conventional retractable screens and this is the part that addresses it.

The braking system holds the screen wherever you release it rather than snapping back, which takes care of the main risk with children. No screen is genuinely pet-proof, but Pet-Lite mesh is built for high-traffic doors with dogs and cats and stands up to a lot more than standard mesh.

Standard patio mesh handles flies and mosquitoes. If you're near water or in a midge or sandfly area, the fine midge mesh blocks the smaller insects and still lets air through. Because the zip seals the mesh into the track, there's no gap at the edges for them to walk around.

They cut it, rather than eliminate it. The mesh intercepts a share of the UV coming through an open door, which slows fading on floors, rugs and furniture near a west-facing opening. The finer the weave the more it stops, so midge mesh does more than standard patio mesh. If UV and glare are the actual problem rather than insects, say so at the measure — a motorised screen with a solar mesh is a better answer than an insect screen.

Indirectly, and it can be significant. The saving doesn't come from the screen itself but from being able to leave a large opening open. Cross-ventilation through a screened stacker or bi-fold moves far more air than a single open door, which for a lot of houses means the air conditioner stays off on evenings it would otherwise have run. How much you save depends on your house, your orientation and how you use it, so treat it as a real benefit rather than a number we can quote you.

We re-mesh it. The mesh can be replaced or re-tensioned without replacing the whole system, and tracks can be readjusted if a screen slips. This is a real difference from most retractable screens, where damage to the mesh writes off the unit.

Vacuum or brush the tracks now and then to keep grit out of them, and wipe the mesh with a damp cloth. That's genuinely most of it. We hand over a care kit at installation with silicone spray, a microfibre cloth and a track cleaning tool.

Kept clean, you should get well over ten years out of the system.

Five years on the screen system. Screens supplied with Pet-Lite mesh carry the five-year cover on the mesh as well, which is one reason we recommend it. Mesh on other systems can be replaced or upgraded at any point if it's damaged.

Size, handle and colour. The Zipline is the original system, spans up to 9 metres as a double screen, and comes in black or white. The ZLX is the newer premium system: up to 13 metres, a lower-profile design, upgraded captured mesh, lighter operation, and powder coating matched to your door frames. Both are custom-made and both take the full mesh range.

It depends on the size of the opening, the system and the mesh, but most openings fall between $500 and $3,000. Large corner and 13-metre double-screen installations sit above that. You get a fixed written price at the measure, not a range.