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A gunite pool isn’t just a hole in the ground with water in it. It’s a structure engineered for your specific property your yard’s footprint, your family’s use, and the soil conditions underneath your lot. Thomas County’s characteristic sandy loam profiles drain differently than the heavy clay soils you find further north in Georgia, and a builder who doesn’t account for that during excavation and shell engineering is cutting a corner you’ll notice in five years.
For a family in Coolidge with kids at home and 34% of households here have children, which is above the county average a backyard pool means summer afternoons that don’t require a 15-mile drive. It means birthday parties in your own yard. It means your kids are home instead of somewhere else when the heat index hits triple digits in July.
Beyond the daily use, a properly built gunite pool adds real value to your property. Homes in Coolidge and Thomas County range widely in value, and in a county with a tradition of well-maintained residential properties and large lots, a custom pool and deck is a legitimate long-term investment. A gunite shell built correctly gets structurally stronger as it cures and ages it’s not a product you replace every decade. That’s a different calculation than a fiberglass shell or a vinyl liner, and it’s worth understanding before you sign anything.
We’re based in Douglas, Georgia, and have been building custom gunite pools across Southeast Georgia since 2014 backed by a founder with more than 30 years of hands-on experience in concrete, plumbing, and pool construction before we ever opened our doors. That depth of experience shows up in the details: how a site gets evaluated before excavation, how permits get managed, and how the build holds up over time.
When you hire Deep Waters Pools for your Coolidge property, the same crew that breaks ground handles every phase through completion. No subcontractors. No rotating cast of workers who don’t know each other’s work. One team with full accountability from the first shovel to the day you swim.
That matters more in a community like Coolidge than it might somewhere else. In a town this size, word travels. The people in your backyard represent you as much as they represent us, and we take that seriously.
It starts with a site evaluation not a phone call, not a brochure. Before any design gets finalized, our team looks at your actual property: how your yard drains after a heavy rain, what the soil profile looks like, and how your lot’s specific conditions should shape the engineering of your pool shell. In Thomas County, the Tifton and Dothan sandy loam soils common to this part of southwest Georgia behave differently under excavation than what you’d find in other parts of the state, and that evaluation matters.
From there, the design gets locked in and permitting begins. If your property is inside Coolidge city limits, there’s a specific step most out-of-area builders don’t know about: you need a Land Use Compliance Form from the Coolidge City Clerk before Thomas County will issue a building permit. We handle that process in-house the city compliance form, the county building permit, the electrical permit, and every required inspection along the way. You don’t track paperwork or make calls to a city clerk’s office.
Once permits are in hand, excavation begins, followed by rebar installation, the mandatory rebar cage inspection required under Georgia building code, and then gunite application. Plumbing, electrical bonding and grounding, equipment installation, and deck work follow in sequence all handled by the same crew. A custom safety cover is included with every build as a standard deliverable, not an upsell. Start to finish, the construction phase typically runs six to eight weeks, with the full project timeline from first conversation to first swim running three to six months depending on design complexity and permitting.
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Every pool we build is a complete project, not a base package with a long list of add-ons. The scope covers excavation, rebar, gunite shell, all swimming pool plumbing, NEC Article 680-compliant electrical bonding and grounding, equipment installation, pool deck construction, and a custom safety cover written into a single contract with a clear scope before work begins. What you’re quoted is what you’re building.
For Coolidge homeowners in new construction particularly in areas like the Marshall Trace Subdivision where new builds are actively going up this is the ideal time to add a pool. Your yard hasn’t been landscaped yet, excavation is cleaner, and you can design the pool and deck together as a unified outdoor space rather than retrofitting around existing features later. The lots coming out of new construction in this area give you real room to work with, and a custom gunite pool takes full advantage of that.
The equipment we install is built around efficiency and longevity not the cheapest option that meets spec. Variable-speed pumps, energy-efficient filtration, and durable surface finishes are standard considerations on every build. And because we also offer ongoing service and maintenance, the relationship doesn’t end when construction does. If something needs attention mid-July when your pump isn’t performing right, you’re not starting from scratch trying to find someone who knows your pool.
Yes, and there’s a step specific to Coolidge that catches a lot of people off guard. Because Coolidge is an incorporated city, properties inside the city limits require a Land Use Compliance Form from the Coolidge City Clerk before Thomas County’s building inspections office will process a pool permit. This is a published requirement from the Thomas County Board of Commissioners, and it applies to Coolidge along with a handful of other incorporated cities in the county it does not apply to unincorporated Thomas County properties.
After the city compliance form is obtained, the permit process moves through Thomas County: address confirmation through the 911 addressing office, health department sign-off if well or septic is involved, and then submission to Thomas County Inspections and Planning with the required construction documents. Georgia state law also requires that all permitted construction use professionals licensed by the Georgia State Licensing Board. We manage every step of this process in-house and pull all permits in our name you don’t have to navigate any of it on your own.
The honest answer is three to six months from your first conversation to your first swim, depending on design complexity, how quickly permitting moves, and where you fall in the build schedule. The construction phase itself from excavation through deck completion typically runs six to eight weeks. What adds time is everything before the shovel hits the ground: finalizing the design, completing the Coolidge city clerk compliance step, working through Thomas County’s permit process, and scheduling the build.
Southwest Georgia’s summer thunderstorm pattern is also worth knowing about. Frequent afternoon storms from July through September can affect excavation timing and gunite application windows a builder who accounts for weather delays in the timeline is being realistic, not making excuses. If you want a pool ready for the start of Coolidge’s swimming season in April or May, the conversation needs to start no later than October or November of the prior year. That timeline isn’t unique to us it’s just the reality of how pool construction works in this region.
Fiberglass pools arrive as a pre-molded shell. The shape and size are fixed before it ever gets to your property, which means your yard has to work around what the factory made. Gunite pools are built from scratch on your specific lot the shape, depth, and dimensions are engineered around your space, not the other way around. For a Coolidge homeowner with a larger rural lot off Hall Road or Sherrod Road, that flexibility matters. You’re not limited to catalog shapes.
Beyond the customization, gunite is a structural concrete product that cures and strengthens over time. A properly built gunite pool is still performing at full integrity 30 or more years after construction. Fiberglass shells are durable but can oxidize, fade, and develop surface issues over time and they’re not repairable in the same way a concrete shell is. The upfront cost of gunite is higher, but the long-term math is different. In a climate like Coolidge’s, where you’re using that pool seven months a year, the durability argument carries real weight.
It’s a fair question and one that not every builder thinks to ask before they start digging. Thomas County’s soils particularly the Tifton loamy sand and Dothan fine sandy loam series common to this part of southwest Georgia drain quickly after rain, which is different from the heavy clay soils you find in parts of Coffee County or north Georgia. Sandy loam profiles can shift under certain moisture conditions, and a pool shell engineered without accounting for local soil behavior is one that may develop problems over time that a proper site evaluation would have caught.
Before we break ground on any Coolidge property, our team does a pre-excavation site evaluation. We look at how your specific yard drains, what the soil profile looks like at depth, and whether there are any site-specific conditions that should influence the engineering of your pool shell. This isn’t a formality it’s the step that determines how the pool gets built. A builder who skips it and applies a one-size-fits-all approach to every job in every county is taking a shortcut that eventually shows up in the finished product.
In most parts of the country, the answer depends heavily on climate a pool adds less value in a market where it’s usable three months a year. Coolidge doesn’t have that problem. With a swimming season running from April through October, a properly built inground pool is usable for more than half the year, and buyers in Thomas County understand that. Active real estate listings in the Coolidge area range from the low $100s to well above $700,000, and on properties with the lot size to support a pool and deck, the addition is a genuine differentiator.
The key word is “properly built.” A gunite pool that was engineered correctly, permitted correctly, and built without shortcuts adds value. A fiberglass shell that’s showing its age, or a pool with documented permit issues, does the opposite. The way a pool was built and whether it was pulled with proper permits comes up in any real estate transaction. We pull every permit in our name and build to Georgia code on every project, which means the documentation is clean when you need it.
For a custom gunite pool in the Coolidge and greater Thomasville area, you’re generally looking at a range of $55,000 to $95,000 for a complete build pool shell, plumbing, electrical, equipment, deck, and safety cover included. That range moves based on pool size and shape, deck square footage and material, equipment tier, and any site-specific conditions that affect excavation. Larger lots with room for more ambitious designs will naturally sit toward the higher end.
What you want to be careful about is comparing quotes that aren’t covering the same scope. Some builders quote the pool shell and leave plumbing, electrical, and deck as separate line items that show up later. We build from a single contract that covers the full scope what you’re quoted at the start is what the project costs, without change orders appearing mid-build because something wasn’t included. For a Coolidge homeowner making a long-term investment in their property, knowing the real number upfront is worth more than a low opening bid that climbs before the pool is finished.
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