Hear from Our Customers
Hazlehurst summers are not subtle. From April through October, temperatures climb into the 90s and stay there. That’s nearly seven months of usable outdoor pool time one of the longest swimming seasons in the country. A well-built gunite pool doesn’t just sit in your backyard looking nice. It becomes the most-used space on your property.
Jeff Davis County sits across multiple river drainage basins the Lower Ocmulgee to the north, the Altamaha to the northeast, and the Little Satilla and Satilla systems to the south. That means soil moisture and drainage behavior vary depending on exactly where your property sits in Hazlehurst or the surrounding area. A pool built without accounting for those conditions is a pool that will show problems within a few years. Proper rebar density, correct wall thickness, and a curing schedule matched to your specific site aren’t optional they’re what separates a pool that lasts 30 years from one that needs rescuing at year five.
And because more than a third of Hazlehurst households have kids under 18, this isn’t an abstract quality-of-life upgrade. It’s a backyard that keeps your family home all summer not one you’re constantly driving away from to find somewhere to cool off.
We’re based in Douglas about 30 miles from Hazlehurst down U.S. Route 23. That’s not a detail we throw in to sound local. It means we know this region, we’ve worked in neighboring counties including Jeff Davis, and we understand what the ground actually does in Southeast Georgia.
We founded Deep Waters Pools in 2014, but our team had already spent more than 30 years doing the hands-on work concrete, plumbing, custom pool construction before the name existed. That experience is why we have a no-subcontractors policy. Every phase of your build, from excavation and rebar to gunite shell, plumbing, electrical, and decking, is done by our own crew. Not a rotating cast of subs. The same people who start your pool finish it.
We also handle every permit in-house including knowing whether your Hazlehurst property falls under City of Hazlehurst authority or the Jeff Davis County Commissioners office. That’s not a small thing. It’s the kind of detail that delays projects when a builder doesn’t have it figured out before they break ground.
It starts with a site evaluation. Before anything is designed or priced, we look at your property the grade, the drainage, the access points, and what the ground is doing. In Hazlehurst and Jeff Davis County, that matters more than most builders will tell you. Properties near the Altamaha watershed behave differently than those draining toward the Satilla. We build to what’s actually there, not to a standard template.
From there, you get a 3D design rendering of your pool before a single shovel hits the ground. You’ll see the shape, the depth, the deck layout, and any spa or water feature elements all of it before committing to construction. Once the design is locked, we pull every required permit. Building permit, electrical permit, the right jurisdiction for your specific address. That process runs through either Hazlehurst City Hall on Latimer Street or the Jeff Davis County Commissioners office, depending on where your property sits. We handle it completely.
Construction follows in sequence: excavation, steel reinforcement, gunite shell application, plumbing, electrical bonding per NEC Article 680, surface finish, and deck construction. The realistic timeline for a custom gunite pool in South Georgia is three to six months. If you want to be swimming by April, the best time to start is fall. We’ll tell you that upfront because a builder who gives you an honest timeline is worth more than one who tells you what you want to hear.
Ready to get started?
We handle custom gunite and shotcrete pool construction for residential and commercial properties throughout Jeff Davis County and the surrounding region. That includes everything from the initial site evaluation and 3D design through excavation, rebar framework, shell construction, all plumbing and electrical, pool deck construction, and final startup. Nothing is handed off. No phase is subcontracted.
For Hazlehurst homeowners, that matters for a practical reason beyond quality control: Hazlehurst is not a suburb with a dozen pool service companies competing for your business. When your pump fails in July or your chemistry gets away from you in August, you need a company you can actually reach one that knows your equipment because we installed it. We offer weekly, monthly, and seasonal maintenance, along with equipment service and repair for every major brand: Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, and Zodiac. If a previous builder left you with a pool that’s struggling, we also do full pool rescue and restoration.
The scope of what we build is genuinely custom freeform designs, geometric builds, attached spas, water features, patio and deck construction. If you’ve seen something you want, bring it. If you’re not sure what you want, the 3D design process is where that gets figured out. Either way, you’re not choosing from a catalog. You’re building something specific to your property and your family.
It depends on where your property is located. If your home is within Hazlehurst city limits, your building permit runs through Hazlehurst City Hall at 28 Latimer Street. If your property is outside city limits but still in Jeff Davis County, permits are handled through the Jeff Davis County Commissioners office at 14 Jeff Davis Street. Both offices are in the same town, but they are separate jurisdictions with separate processes and getting that wrong at the start of a project creates delays that push your timeline back weeks.
On top of the building permit, pool construction also requires an electrical permit. All pool electrical work in Georgia must comply with NEC Article 680, which governs bonding and grounding requirements specifically for swimming pools. We handle every permit building and electrical in-house. You don’t call the city or the county. You don’t track inspection schedules. That entire process is managed by our team, and we know exactly which jurisdiction applies to your address before we ever break ground.
For a custom gunite pool in the Hazlehurst area, a realistic budget range is $75,000 to $150,000 depending on size, shape, depth, features, and deck design. That range accounts for a straightforward residential build on the lower end and a more complex project attached spa, water features, custom patio on the higher end. Fiberglass pools typically run lower upfront, and vinyl liner pools lower still, but the comparison doesn’t hold over time. Vinyl liners need full replacement every five to nine years at $4,000 to $4,500 per replacement. A well-built gunite shell, properly surfaced, lasts 30 years or more with a resurfacing every 10 to 15 years.
In a market like Jeff Davis County where median home values sit around $145,000 every dollar of home investment matters. A professionally built gunite pool adds roughly 7% to residential property value in Georgia. On a $145,000 home, that’s approximately $10,000 in added equity, plus the real-world value of a backyard your family actually uses for six or seven months a year. The math on a quality build, over a 20 or 30-year horizon, is consistently in favor of gunite done right.
You’ve probably seen this argument if you’ve been researching pool types in South Georgia the claim that gunite shells crack because of how the ground moves in this region. It’s worth addressing directly, because it’s circulating in this market and it’s misleading. Gunite shells crack when they’re built wrong. Sparse rebar, thin walls, rushed curing, no site-specific engineering those are the conditions that lead to cracking. The ground doesn’t cause it. A builder cutting corners causes it.
Jeff Davis County sits across multiple drainage basins, and soil behavior genuinely varies across the county depending on proximity to the Ocmulgee, Altamaha, and Satilla systems. That variability is real, and it’s exactly why a site evaluation matters before any design work begins. A pool engineered for the actual conditions of your specific property appropriate steel density, correct wall thickness, curing schedule matched to the site performs in this environment without issue. Gunite has been the standard for custom residential pools since the 1940s. The material isn’t the problem. The question is always who built it and how.
The honest answer is three to six months from permit approval to water in the pool. Some builders will quote eight to twelve weeks, and that number is possible under ideal conditions with no weather delays, no permit queue, and a completely straightforward site. In practice, that timeline is the exception, not the rule. Permitting alone whether through Hazlehurst City Hall or the Jeff Davis County Commissioners takes time. Rebar inspection, gunite application, curing, surface finish, and deck work each have their own sequencing requirements that can’t be rushed without affecting quality.
The most important thing you can do to control your timeline is start at the right time of year. In Hazlehurst, the best window to begin a pool project is fall September through November. Permit queues are shorter, crews are more available, and a fall start positions your pool for completion by April or May, right as the swimming season opens. If you start a project in March hoping to swim by June, you’re competing with every other homeowner who had the same idea and fighting a compressed timeline from day one. We’ll tell you this in the first conversation, because setting realistic expectations upfront is how we avoid surprises later.
Gunite and shotcrete are both forms of pneumatically applied concrete the primary construction method for custom inground pools and the end result is structurally the same. The difference is in how the concrete is mixed before it’s applied. With gunite, dry concrete mix and water are combined at the nozzle during application. With shotcrete, the concrete is pre-mixed before it reaches the nozzle. Both methods, when applied correctly by an experienced crew, produce a dense, durable shell that performs identically over the life of the pool.
What actually matters is not which method is used, but the experience and consistency of the crew applying it. Application speed, nozzle distance, water-to-mix ratio, and rebound management all affect the density and strength of the final shell. These are crew-level variables, not material-level variables. We have more than 30 years of hands-on experience with both methods across Southeast Georgia’s varied site conditions. When we evaluate your property in Jeff Davis County, we’ll use the approach best suited to your specific build and we’ll explain why.
Yes and in a market like Hazlehurst, that’s not a minor detail. Jeff Davis County doesn’t have a deep bench of pool service companies competing for your business. When your equipment needs attention or your water chemistry gets away from you during a hot August, your options are limited if your builder walked away after the final inspection. We offer weekly, monthly, and seasonal maintenance services, and we service and repair equipment from every major manufacturer Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, and Zodiac.
Pools in South Georgia’s climate need more active management than pools in cooler regions. The combination of heat, humidity, and a six-to-seven-month swimming season accelerates algae growth, increases evaporation, and puts real stress on circulation and filtration equipment. Having the same company that built your pool also managing its upkeep means nothing gets missed and nothing gets misdiagnosed. We know your equipment because we installed it. That continuity is genuinely useful in a rural county seat where finding a qualified technician on short notice is not always straightforward.
Local Resources
Useful Links
