Hear from Our Customers
When you invest in a custom pool in Cordele, you’re not just adding water to your backyard. You’re creating the place your family spends their summer and in Crisp County, where temperatures push into the low 90s with humidity that makes it feel worse, that matters more than people realize. A well-designed pool is where the kids want to be from April through October. It’s where you host on weekends instead of fighting traffic on US 280 to share a spot at Lake Blackshear with everyone else.
The difference between a pool that delivers on that and one that disappoints almost always comes down to what happened before construction started. Concrete gives you unlimited flexibility the shape, the depth, the features, the way it fits your specific lot. Fiberglass gives you a catalog. If your Cordele property has any grade change, drainage complexity, or a layout that doesn’t match a standard shell, concrete is the only material that actually works with your land instead of against it.
And beyond the lifestyle benefit, a quality inground pool in a warm-climate market like Cordele adds real value to your home. In a market where the median property value sits around $121,500, a well-built pool can add 5–8% that’s a meaningful number, not just a talking point. You’re building something that lasts 30 years and earns its place in your home’s value every single summer.
We’re based in Douglas, GA a South Georgia company that has been working in Cordele and surrounding communities long enough to know what the soil does, what the county requires, and what happens when those details get skipped. Deep Waters Pools was founded in 2014, but the experience behind it goes back more than 30 years in concrete construction, plumbing, and custom pool building. That background shows up in how we anticipate problems before they become your problem.
Every permit we pull goes in our name not yours. That’s not a minor procedural point. It means we’re legally accountable for the build from start to finish. Whether your property falls inside Cordele city limits or out in unincorporated Crisp County, we’ve navigated both permitting paths and know exactly what the Crisp County Planning, Zoning & Codes Department requires before a single shovel goes in the ground.
We’re built around one type of work designing and building custom concrete pools. Not maintenance. Not fiberglass installation. Custom pool design and construction, done right, with a safety cover included in every build as standard.
It starts with a conversation about your property and what you actually want. Not a sales pitch a real look at your lot, your goals, and what’s realistic for your budget. From there, the design process begins, and this is where concrete pool building separates itself. Because your pool is drawn from scratch, not pulled from a shelf, the design can follow your yard’s natural layout, account for drainage, and include whatever features matter to you a tanning ledge, a spa connection, a waterfall, an outdoor living area integrated into the overall plan.
Before anything is built, you’ll see it in 3D. That rendering is your chance to adjust, refine, and get genuinely confident about what’s coming. Once you’re locked in, we handle the permit submission either through the City of Cordele’s Community Development office or the Crisp County Planning, Zoning & Codes Department on South 7th Street, depending on where your property sits. The barrier and fencing compliance documentation required by Crisp County is part of that process, and we handle it in-house.
Construction follows a clear sequence: excavation, steel and plumbing, gunite application, finishing, and final inspection. If something unexpected comes up during the dig a drainage condition, a soil issue you hear about it immediately, with options, before anything moves forward. The pool isn’t done until it passes inspection and the safety cover is fitted. That’s what finished looks like.
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Our custom pool design covers the full scope not just the pool shell, but everything that makes the finished space work as a backyard environment. That includes the pool shape and depth profile, coping and decking materials, water features like falls or deck jets, spa integration, tanning ledges, and how the pool connects to any outdoor living space you want to build around it. These aren’t add-ons you bolt on later. They’re decisions made during the design phase, when changes cost nothing but time, not demolition.
For properties near Lake Blackshear or out in the county where lots are larger and terrain varies, our design process accounts for grade changes, drainage direction, and how water moves around the pool pad during Cordele’s heavy rain seasons. South Georgia rainfall is real, and a pool that wasn’t designed with drainage in mind will show you that within a few years. Every build we complete addresses this in the structural and grading plan upfront.
The 3D rendering process means you’re not approving a sketch you’re approving a detailed visual of your finished pool before a single dollar of construction cost is committed. Infinity edge configurations, landscape pool integration, custom water features, and outdoor living spaces are all designed within that same visualization. What you see is what gets built.
Yes and the process is more specific than most people expect. If your property is within Cordele city limits, your pool permit goes through the City of Cordele’s Community Development office. If you’re in unincorporated Crisp County, it goes through the Crisp County Planning, Zoning & Codes Department at 210 South 7th Street and that process requires a formal plan review before the permit is issued. The time it takes depends on how complete your application is when it’s submitted.
On top of the permit itself, Crisp County requires that all outdoor pools be surrounded by a compliant barrier meaning your fencing or safety cover setup has to meet specific code standards. A lockable safety cover that meets ASTM F1346 can satisfy certain requirements for spas and hot tubs. We handle all of this permit application, plan review submission, barrier documentation and pull the permit in our own name, which means we’re the ones legally accountable for the build, not you.
For a custom concrete pool in Cordele, you’re generally looking at a range of $50,000 to $85,000 depending on size, features, and site conditions. That range covers a straightforward custom pool on a flat lot on the lower end, and a more complex build think spa integration, water features, a tanning ledge, outdoor living space, or a lot with grade changes on the higher end. Fiberglass installations typically come in lower upfront, but they’re not custom, and they’re not built for the Coastal Plain soil conditions in Crisp County the way a properly engineered concrete pool is.
In Cordele’s market, where the median home value is around $121,500, it’s worth thinking about a pool as a long-term asset. A well-built inground pool in a warm-climate market like this one can add 5–8% to your home’s value and it’s an asset you’re using seven months out of every year without a heater. That’s a different return calculation than most home improvements.
The core difference is flexibility versus convenience. Fiberglass pools are pre-molded shells you pick a shape from whatever the manufacturer offers, and that shell gets dropped into your yard. Installation is faster, but what you can build is limited entirely by what exists in that catalog. No custom shapes, no infinity edges, no design features that require structural customization. If your lot doesn’t match the shell’s dimensions perfectly, you’re compromising.
Concrete and gunite pools start from scratch. The shape, depth, features, and layout are all drawn specifically for your property. That matters especially for Cordele-area lots near Lake Blackshear where terrain varies, or for homeowners who want something beyond a standard rectangle a vanishing edge, a custom water feature, a pool that integrates with a larger outdoor living design. Concrete also holds up better over decades in South Georgia’s sandy clay loam soil conditions, where ground movement and drainage behavior can stress a fiberglass shell in ways that don’t show up until years later.
If you want to be swimming by summer, the planning conversation needs to happen in late fall or winter ideally between November and February. The design phase, permit submission, plan review at the Crisp County Planning Department, and permit issuance all take time. Getting into that queue early is the difference between breaking ground in March and being finished before Memorial Day, versus starting construction in May and spending your first summer watching it get built.
The good news for Cordele homeowners is that South Georgia’s mild winters mean construction can move forward year-round without the weather interruptions you’d face further north. There’s no hard stop on pool building in December or January here. But contractor schedules fill up fast as spring approaches, and the permit review timeline doesn’t compress just because you’re in a hurry. Starting the conversation early gives you the most control over your timeline.
Yes and this is actually one of the more common situations in the Lake Blackshear residential area. Properties along and near the lake often have grade changes, elevated water tables in certain spots, and drainage patterns influenced by proximity to the Flint River watershed. These aren’t dealbreakers for a concrete pool build, but they do require real engineering attention during the design phase. A contractor who hasn’t worked in these conditions before may either refuse the project or underprice it and cut corners on the drainage and structural design.
We specifically address difficult lots sloped terrain, drainage-challenged sites, and properties with soil or grade conditions that require custom engineering. The drainage plan, pool wall design, and backfill approach are all part of the upfront design work, not something figured out mid-construction. If another contractor looked at your lot and hesitated, that’s worth a second conversation with a builder who has actually solved these problems in South Georgia’s Coastal Plain conditions.
Quite a bit and the key is that these decisions need to happen during the design phase, not after the pool is already built. Water features like deck jets, spillover spas, sheer descent waterfalls, and grotto-style falls are all structural elements that get engineered into the pool from the start. Adding them after the fact means tearing into finished concrete, which is expensive and disruptive. The same goes for tanning ledges, beach entries, and infinity or vanishing edge configurations these are design decisions, not afterthoughts.
On the outdoor living side, we design the pool as part of a complete backyard environment meaning the pool, the deck, the spa, any fire features, and the surrounding landscape integration are all considered together. For Cordele homeowners who already spend their summers outdoors whether that’s on Lake Blackshear or in their own backyard having a cohesive design that connects the pool to the rest of the space makes a real difference in how the finished yard actually functions. The 3D rendering process lets you see all of it together before any of it is built.
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