Hear from Our Customers
Most people who regret their pool don’t regret the pool they regret the builder. A rushed timeline, a crew they never met, a permit that sat for three months because no one followed up. That’s the version of this story you want to avoid.
When your pool is built correctly engineered for the sandy loam and coastal plain soils that run through Telfair County, not just stamped out like every other South Georgia backyard it performs differently. The shell holds. The drainage works. The equipment runs clean. You’re not calling someone six months after the build trying to figure out who’s responsible for what.
McRae-Helena gets real summer heat, and the swim season here runs from April through October with outdoor living stretching well beyond that. Little Ocmulgee State Park is two miles up the road, and if your family already spends weekends near the water, you already know what that lifestyle feels like. A gunite pool brings it home on your schedule, without the drive, without the crowds.
We’re based in Douglas about 25 miles down US 341 from McRae-Helena and have been building custom gunite pools across South Georgia for over 30 years combined. Not 30 years of being in business. Thirty years of hands-on work in concrete, plumbing, and pool construction before the company even launched.
What makes the difference here isn’t a sales pitch it’s the model. No subcontractors. The same crew that digs the excavation applies the gunite, runs the plumbing, handles the electrical, and pours the deck. That’s not common in this industry. Most builders hand off every phase to a different crew, and when something goes wrong, everyone points somewhere else.
In a community like McRae-Helena, where your builder’s reputation travels fast and a bad project is hard to hide, that kind of accountability isn’t optional. We handle every permit in-house too including coordination with McRae-Helena’s Code Enforcement Division so you never have to navigate city hall or chase down an inspection on your own.
It starts with a site visit and a real conversation about what you want, what your property allows, and what the ground beneath it will require. In Telfair County, that last part matters more than most builders will tell you. Properties near the Ocmulgee River basin or Sugar Creek can see elevated water table conditions after heavy rain, and a pool that isn’t engineered around that specific drainage profile will show it eventually. We evaluate your site before anything gets drawn up.
From there, you’ll see a 3D design rendering of your pool before a single shovel breaks ground. Once you’ve approved the design, we pull every permit building permit, electrical permit, all of it through McRae-Helena’s Code Enforcement Division. You don’t fill out forms or schedule inspectors. That’s handled.
Construction moves through excavation, rebar and steel framing, gunite application, plumbing, electrical, surface finishing, and deck installation all by the same in-house team. In McRae-Helena’s mild climate, construction can move forward in most months of the year. If you start the process in fall, a spring completion is realistic. The full timeline runs three to six months from permit approval, and we’ll tell you that upfront not after you’ve already signed.
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A gunite pool from Deep Waters Pools isn’t a catalog item. The shape, depth, features, and engineering are specific to your property and what you’re trying to build. Custom concrete pool design means your pool can be freeform, geometric, or anywhere in between with integrated spas, tanning ledges, water features, or whatever your backyard calls for.
Every build includes full in-house permitting through McRae-Helena’s Code Enforcement Division, NEC Article 680-compliant electrical work, and phase inspections at every stage. The shell is built to handle South Georgia’s coastal plain soil conditions not a generic spec that works fine in North Georgia’s red clay but hasn’t been thought through for Telfair County’s ground. Rebar density, shell thickness, and drainage engineering are all accounted for before the gunite truck arrives.
The median home in McRae-Helena lists around $174,900. A properly built gunite pool adds roughly 7% to property value that’s approximately $12,000 in equity on top of eight to nine months of use per year. We also service what we build. Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, Zodiac if it runs your pool, we can maintain it. Your builder and your long-term service provider are the same company, and we’re 25 miles away, not in Atlanta.
Most custom gunite pools in South Georgia fall somewhere between $75,000 and $150,000, with the majority of residential builds landing around $100,000 depending on size, shape, features, and site conditions. That range can shift based on what your property requires a lot near the Ocmulgee River corridor with drainage considerations will have different engineering needs than an elevated lot with well-draining sandy loam.
It’s worth thinking about that number in context. The median home in McRae-Helena lists around $174,900. A properly built gunite pool typically adds around 7% to property value roughly $12,000 in added equity while giving your family eight to nine months of usable outdoor living per year. That’s not a guarantee, and no builder should promise you a specific return, but it’s a real and documented pattern in the Georgia market. The investment makes more sense when you factor in the full picture, not just the upfront cost.
Pool construction in McRae-Helena requires a residential building permit and an electrical permit at minimum, both issued through the city’s Code Enforcement Division. The city follows Georgia Department of Community Affairs minimum construction standards, which include the 2012 International Construction Codes with all Georgia amendments. Depending on your specific lot and zoning district, there may be additional requirements setbacks, fencing, or variance considerations handled through the Planning and Zoning Commission.
The reason this matters is that most homeowners in McRae-Helena have never pulled a construction permit before, and the process isn’t always straightforward in a small city where the permit office handles everything from residential additions to commercial builds. We manage the entire permit process in-house identifying what’s required for your specific project, submitting the paperwork, and coordinating every phase inspection with the city. You don’t have to figure any of that out on your own.
This question comes up a lot in South Georgia, partly because some fiberglass-only builders have been aggressive about pushing the idea that gunite shells crack in Southern ground. The honest answer is that cracking is a builder problem, not a material problem. Gunite that’s applied with proper rebar density, adequate shell thickness typically six to eight inches and correct curing time doesn’t crack because of the soil. It cracks when builders cut corners.
In Telfair County specifically, the soils are sandy loam and coastal plain material not the highly expansive red clay you find in North Georgia, which is actually harder on concrete structures. The main site-specific consideration in McRae-Helena is water table behavior near the Ocmulgee River basin and Sugar Creek, where heavy rain events can create hydrostatic pressure if the drainage isn’t engineered correctly. That’s exactly why a site evaluation before design matters. A gunite pool built around your property’s actual drainage profile will hold for 30 years. One that ignores it won’t regardless of what material it’s made from.
The realistic timeline from permit approval to your first swim is three to six months. Some builders will quote eight to twelve weeks to get you to sign, and then reality sets in once subcontractors start missing schedules and inspections get delayed. We give you the honest range upfront because a timeline that surprises you halfway through is worse than one you planned around.
One real advantage in McRae-Helena is the climate. Mild winters here mean construction can move forward in most months of the year unlike northern markets where frozen ground shuts everything down from November through March. If you start the planning and permitting process in the fall, a spring completion is genuinely achievable. That means your pool is ready when the swim season opens in April, instead of finishing in August and missing most of your first summer. Timing the start of your project matters, and we’ll walk you through what’s realistic based on when you reach out.
Gunite and shotcrete are both pneumatically applied concrete the difference is in how they’re mixed before application. Gunite is a dry mix that combines with water at the nozzle during application. Shotcrete is a wet mix that’s already combined before it reaches the nozzle. Both are legitimate methods used in quality pool construction, and the debate between them is less important than the skill of the crew applying either one.
What matters more than the terminology is whether the application is done correctly proper water-to-cement ratio, consistent shell thickness, adequate rebar coverage, and correct curing time before the surface is finished. A well-applied gunite shell and a well-applied shotcrete shell will both perform for decades. A poorly applied version of either will show problems within a few years. When you’re evaluating builders, ask about their application process, their rebar specs, and how they handle curing those answers tell you more than which method they use.
Yes. We’re based in Douglas, GA about 25 miles southeast of McRae-Helena via US 341 and serve Telfair County and the surrounding South Georgia region. The drive is straightforward, and because we use an in-house team rather than subcontractors, there’s no coordination overhead that makes rural projects harder to manage. The same crew that handles builds in Coffee County handles builds in Telfair County, on the same timeline, with the same process.
Telfair County doesn’t have a local pool builder with an established web presence or a track record of completed gunite builds in the area. That means most homeowners here are either working with a builder from outside the region who doesn’t know the local soil and permit process, or they’re getting steered toward fiberglass because it’s what the nearest builder sells. We build in concrete because it’s what lasts and we’ve spent three decades learning the specific soil conditions, drainage patterns, and construction environment that South Georgia’s coastal plain presents.
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