Hear from Our Customers
From June through August, Dublin’s heat is relentless. Temperatures push past 90°F regularly, and that’s not a few weekends that’s months of your family looking for somewhere to cool off. A gunite pool built the right way gives you that outlet in your own backyard, on your schedule, without driving anywhere.
But the season here runs longer than most people realize. With Middle Georgia’s climate, you’re looking at a comfortable swimming window from April through October closer to seven months than three. That’s a meaningful return on a meaningful investment, and it’s one of the reasons a well-built gunite pool makes more financial sense in Dublin than it would in most of the country.
The other thing worth knowing: gunite gives you a shape, depth, and feature set that no fiberglass shell can match. If your lot near the Oconee River has an unusual grade, or your backyard in a Dublin neighborhood like Earlwood or The Hedges has specific dimensions to work around, gunite is built around your space not the other way around. You’re not choosing from a catalog. You’re getting something designed for your property.
We founded Deep Waters Pools in 2014 with more than 30 years of hands-on experience in concrete, plumbing, and custom pool construction. That experience wasn’t accumulated in a classroom it was built on job sites throughout Dublin and Laurens County, through real builds, and through watching what happens when corners get cut.
Our model is simple: no subcontractors. Every phase of your build excavation, rebar, gunite application, plumbing, electrical, surface finishing, decking is done by the same crew from start to finish. That’s not common in this industry, and it’s the reason accountability doesn’t get lost somewhere between phase three and phase six.
Dublin and Laurens County homeowners are making a long-term investment in their property. Whether your home sits near the Carl Vinson VA Medical Center corridor, in a newer development like Moore Station Village, or on a larger lot in unincorporated Laurens County, you deserve a builder who’s accountable for every decision made during construction not one who hands your project off and hopes for the best.
It starts with a 3D design rendering. Before anything touches your yard, you see exactly what you’re getting the shape, the depth, the features, the deck layout. That design is built around your specific property, not a template pulled from a brochure. Once you’re happy with what you see, the process moves forward.
Permitting comes next, and this is where a lot of builders create headaches they don’t warn you about. Dublin has a dual-jurisdiction reality: depending on your property address, you’re dealing with either the City of Dublin’s permitting process or the Laurens County Building Inspection Department. We handle both the building permit, the electrical permit, and every required inspection at each phase of construction. You don’t call a department, file a form, or track a timeline. That’s handled.
From there, our crew moves through excavation, rebar installation, gunite application, plumbing, electrical bonding and grounding, surface finishing, and deck construction in sequence all performed in-house. Middle Georgia’s Coastal Plain soils, particularly in areas near the Oconee River, require site-specific evaluation before the shell is engineered. That evaluation happens before the first shovel breaks ground. When the build is complete, we walk you through startup and hand you a pool that’s ready to run not a punch list of things to figure out on your own.
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A full gunite pool build with us covers every phase without exception. The scope includes 3D design, all permits for both City of Dublin and Laurens County jurisdictions, excavation, rebar framework, gunite shell application, full plumbing, electrical bonding and grounding to NEC Article 680 standards, equipment installation, surface finishing, deck construction, pool startup, and a custom safety cover. Nothing is handed off. Nothing is skipped.
The electrical work is worth calling out specifically. NEC Article 680 governs the bonding and grounding requirements for swimming pools, and it exists because improperly wired pools are a genuine safety hazard. We build to that standard on every job not as an upgrade, but as a baseline. Georgia Power and local EMCs won’t activate power to a pool without Building Inspection Department sign-off, and that sign-off requires the work to be done correctly. It will be.
We also service Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, and Zodiac equipment, which means the relationship doesn’t end when the build does. If something needs attention six years from now, the company that built your pool is the same company that knows it from the inside out. For Dublin homeowners who want a long-term relationship with the builder not just a transaction that continuity matters.
It depends on where your property sits. If you’re inside Dublin city limits, you’re working with the City of Dublin’s permitting process. If your property is in unincorporated Laurens County, you’re dealing with the Laurens County Building Inspection Department reachable at (478) 272-4755. Both require a building permit and a separate electrical permit before any construction begins.
This dual-jurisdiction setup trips up a lot of out-of-area builders who assume one process covers everything. We handle both we know which department governs your Dublin address, which forms are required, and which inspections need to be scheduled at each phase. Georgia Power and local EMCs won’t activate electrical service to a pool without Building Inspection Department approval, so skipping or shortcutting the permit process isn’t just a legal risk it creates real utility complications that are expensive to unwind. You won’t have to think about any of this. We manage it from start to finish.
A realistic timeline for a custom gunite pool build runs somewhere between 10 and 16 weeks from permit approval to startup, depending on the scope of the design, the complexity of the site, and the current permitting queue. The permit process itself can add time at the front end which is another reason it helps to have a builder who knows the local Dublin and Laurens County system and can move through it efficiently.
One thing worth knowing for Dublin specifically: if you want your pool ready for summer, fall is the right time to start. Permit queues are shorter, crews are more available, and you’re not competing with the spring rush that hits every year when temperatures start climbing and everyone realizes they want a pool by June. Starting in October or November puts you in a strong position to be swimming by Memorial Day. Starting in March usually means you’re watching your neighbor swim while your build is still in the permit phase.
The short answer is that gunite is the right choice when you want a pool built around your specific property and in Middle Georgia, where soil conditions vary significantly by neighborhood and lot, that matters more than people often realize. Areas near the Oconee River in Dublin can have higher water table conditions and variable subsurface moisture. A gunite shell that’s properly engineered for those conditions with the right rebar density, adequate shell thickness, and site-specific structural design performs for decades without issue.
The cracking problem that fiberglass sellers use to argue against gunite is real, but it’s a builder problem, not a material problem. Cracking happens when shells are applied too thin, cured too fast, or built without accounting for what the ground actually does on that specific lot. A properly built gunite shell doesn’t crack from normal soil movement. It also doesn’t limit you to the shapes and depths that fiberglass manufacturers happen to offer if your backyard has a specific layout, grade change, or feature requirement, gunite is built around it. Fiberglass is not.
A custom gunite pool in the Dublin area typically runs between $75,000 and $150,000, depending on size, shape, depth, features, and the scope of the deck and equipment package. That range reflects a full build design, permits, excavation, shell, plumbing, electrical, surface finishing, decking, equipment, and startup with no phases handed off to subcontractors.
It’s a real investment relative to Dublin’s median home values, and it’s worth thinking about it that way: a well-built gunite pool adds roughly 7% to your home’s value, which on a $181,300 home represents real equity. More practically, Dublin’s swimming season runs April through October seven months of genuine daily use in your own backyard. The ROI isn’t just financial. It’s the difference between a summer your family spends at home versus one spent looking for somewhere to cool off. The builders who come in significantly under that range are usually cutting something subcontractors, permits, shell thickness, or all three. Those cuts show up later, and they’re expensive to fix.
This is one of the most important questions to ask any pool builder before you sign anything, and most homeowners don’t ask it until there’s already a problem. The risk with subcontracted builds is that accountability disappears after the last crew leaves. No single company knows every phase of the construction, and when something fails, the finger-pointing starts.
Because we build every phase in-house, there’s no ambiguity about who’s responsible. The same team that placed your rebar, applied your gunite, ran your plumbing, and wired your equipment is the same team that comes back if something needs attention. We also service Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, and Zodiac equipment which means ongoing maintenance and repairs stay with the builder who knows your specific pool, not a maintenance company that inherited a pool they’ve never seen from the inside. In a city like Dublin, where contractor options are more limited than in a metro market, that long-term relationship is worth a lot more than it might seem on day one.
Yes. We serve both properties inside Dublin city limits and homes in unincorporated Laurens County including communities like East Dublin, Dexter, Rentz, Cadwell, and the surrounding area. The permitting process differs depending on your address, but that’s handled on our end regardless of which jurisdiction your property falls under.
Laurens County is one of the largest counties in Georgia by land area, and a meaningful portion of the homes we build for are on larger rural lots outside the city properties with more space, more flexibility in pool placement, and sometimes more complex site conditions due to soil variation or proximity to drainage areas. If your property is outside Dublin proper, that doesn’t change the scope of what you get: same crew, same process, same build standards, same in-house permit management. The only thing that changes is which building department we’re working with and we know both.
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