Hear from Our Customers
When a gunite pool is built right engineered for the actual ground conditions under your property it doesn’t crack, it doesn’t shift, and it doesn’t become a problem you’re calling someone about five years down the road. That’s just what happens when the structural design accounts for what South Georgia clay actually does when it gets wet and dries out again.
For Lenox homeowners, the swimming season runs roughly April through October. That’s nearly seven months of real use from your backyard. A pool built to last 30-plus years with a resurfacing cycle of 10 to 15 years isn’t a luxury it’s a long-term investment in your property and your family’s time at home. With median home values in Lenox sitting around $81,000, a custom gunite pool is a significant commitment, and the builder you choose matters more than any other decision in the process.
The families who end up regretting their pool almost never regret the pool itself. They regret the builder. Twenty-five percent of pool owners say they’d choose a different contractor if they could do it again not a different pool type, a different contractor. That’s the number that should drive your research, and it’s exactly why we were built the way we were.
We’re based in Douglas, GA a South Georgia company that works in the same agricultural, rural landscape as Lenox. Our founding team brought more than 30 years of hands-on concrete, plumbing, and pool construction experience before we opened our doors in 2014. That experience came directly from watching too many South Georgia families get burned by contractors who overpromised and disappeared and deciding to do it differently.
The difference isn’t just experience. It’s structure. In the standard pool construction model, a single company farms out excavation, steel, gunite application, plumbing, electrical, and finishing to separate subcontracted crews. The homeowner thinks they hired one company. They actually hired six. We don’t work that way. Every phase of your build from the first shovel in Cook County clay to the final electrical inspection is handled by our own team. That’s not common in this industry. It should be.
It starts with a 3D design session. Before any ground moves on your Lenox property, you’ll see your pool every shape, depth, and feature rendered in three dimensions and designed around your actual yard. Larger lots are common in this part of Cook County, and that flexibility gets used intentionally. Nothing gets finalized until you’re confident in what you’re looking at.
Once the design is locked, we handle the building permit and electrical permit through the appropriate Cook County permitting authority. You don’t fill out forms, schedule inspectors, or track paperwork. Unpermitted pools in Georgia create real liability at resale especially in a small community like Lenox where property transactions are visible and neighbors notice. We take that off your plate entirely.
From there, excavation, rebar installation, gunite application, plumbing, electrical, surface finishing, and decking all happen in sequence with our in-house crew. The realistic timeline for a quality gunite build in South Georgia is three to six months. Builders who quote eight weeks either aren’t accounting for permit lead times or are planning to rush the cure and rushed cure is one of the main reasons pools need resurfacing in five years instead of fifteen. The best time to start in Lenox is fall or early winter, so your pool is finished and ready before the April heat arrives.
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Gunite is the material. The build is the service. What you’re getting with us is a fully custom inground concrete pool any shape, any size, any configuration engineered specifically for the ground conditions under your Lenox property. The rebar density, wall thickness, and structural approach are all calibrated for South Georgia’s clay-bearing subsoil, not copied from a generic template designed for a different part of the country.
Every build we complete includes full permit handling building permit, electrical permit, and all required phase inspections along with NEC Article 680-compliant electrical bonding and grounding. That’s the federal safety standard for pool electrical systems. For families in Lenox with kids in the water all summer, electrical safety in a pool environment is non-negotiable.
After the build, the relationship doesn’t end. We service every major equipment brand Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, and Zodiac meaning the company that built your pool is also the company that maintains it. For a Lenox homeowner, that’s one phone number for the life of the pool, not a construction company that hands you off to someone else once the check clears.
This is the most common concern raised by homeowners in Cook County, and it’s worth a straight answer. Gunite pools can crack but cracking is a builder problem, not a material problem. When a pool shell is engineered with adequate rebar density, proper wall thickness, and a structural design that accounts for how clay subsoil expands and contracts with moisture, normal South Georgia soil movement does not crack the shell. The cracking stories you’ve read about online happened on pools built by contractors who applied a generic construction template to South Georgia ground without adjusting for local soil behavior.
The clay subsoil profile common throughout Cook County does require a specific engineering approach. We’ve been building pools in South Georgia soil for over 30 years. That experience isn’t a marketing claim it’s the difference between a pool that performs for decades and one that shows stress fractures in year four. If a builder hasn’t specifically addressed how they engineer for your local soil conditions, that’s the question to ask before you sign anything.
For a full custom gunite pool build in Georgia, the realistic range is $75,000 to $150,000 depending on size, shape, features, and site conditions. That range accounts for everything design, permits, excavation, rebar, gunite application, plumbing, electrical, surface finishing, and decking. What it doesn’t account for is the cost of choosing the wrong builder and having to fix it later, which is a real scenario for roughly one in four pool owners.
For Lenox homeowners, it’s worth framing this as a property investment. A quality gunite pool adds approximately 7% to your home’s value upon completion and gives you nearly seven months of use per year given South Georgia’s swimming season. The per-use math is favorable compared to northern markets. What you want to avoid is the low bid that skips permit fees, rushes the cure time, or subcontracts phases to crews you’ve never met because those savings tend to show up as problems within the first five years.
The honest answer is three to six months from contract to completion for a quality gunite build in South Georgia. That timeline includes permitting through Cook County, excavation, rebar, gunite application and cure time, plumbing, electrical, surface finishing, and inspections. Builders who quote eight to twelve weeks are either not accounting for permit lead times or planning to compress the cure phase and compressing cure is one of the primary causes of premature surface failure.
The most strategic time to start in Lenox is fall or early winter. Permit queues are shorter, construction crews are more available, and a fall start means your pool is finished and ready before April. Homeowners who wait until spring to begin the process often find themselves watching construction through the summer and missing their first swimming season entirely. If your goal is to be in the water by May, the conversation needs to start well before the holidays.
Yes and the permit process matters more than most homeowners realize. Pool construction in Georgia requires a building permit and an electrical permit at minimum, along with inspections at each required phase. In Lenox, permit authority runs through the Town of Lenox and Cook County, consistent with Georgia’s general contractor licensing requirements. Electrical work must comply with NEC Article 680, the federal standard governing bonding and grounding for aquatic environments.
The red flag to watch for is a builder who suggests pulling permits in the homeowner’s name “to save time.” When you pull your own permit, you assume legal liability for the construction which means if something fails inspection or causes a problem later, that’s on you. Unpermitted pools also create complications at resale, and in a small community like Lenox where property transactions are visible, that kind of liability follows a home for years. We handle every permit and inspection in-house. You never touch a form.
Both gunite and shotcrete are pneumatically applied concrete meaning they’re shot through a hose under pressure rather than poured. The practical difference is in how they’re mixed. Gunite is mixed dry and combined with water at the nozzle. Shotcrete is pre-mixed wet before application. Both can produce a high-quality, durable pool shell when applied correctly by an experienced crew.
What matters more than the terminology is the quality of the application and the engineering behind it. Proper rebar placement, adequate wall thickness, correct water-to-cement ratio, and sufficient cure time are what determine whether a concrete pool shell holds up for 30 years or starts showing problems in five. The debate between gunite and shotcrete is largely a contractor preference conversation the structural outcome depends on the crew doing the work and the engineering behind the design. If a builder is leading with the label rather than the process, that’s worth paying attention to.
Yes and larger rural lots common throughout Cook County are actually well-suited for custom gunite construction. Unlike vinyl liner or fiberglass pools, which come in fixed shapes and sizes, a gunite pool can be built in virtually any configuration. Irregular lot shapes, sloped terrain, and larger footprints that would limit a prefabricated pool aren’t obstacles with gunite they’re design opportunities.
The 3D design process we use is especially useful on larger properties, where the relationship between the pool, the yard, and the home’s footprint has more variables to work with. You’ll see exactly how the finished pool sits on your property before any ground moves. For Lenox homeowners with acreage or non-standard lot layouts, that visualization step tends to be where the design really comes together. The build process is the same regardless of lot size same in-house crew, same permit handling, same structural engineering approach.
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