Hear from Our Customers
Funston sits in the middle of one of the hottest, most reliably warm stretches of Georgia. Your swimming season runs from April through October seven months where a pool isn’t a luxury, it’s a backyard you actually live in. That’s not a small thing when you’re deciding whether this investment makes sense for your property.
Home values in Funston have climbed significantly over the past two decades, and a properly built pool adds roughly 7% to your property’s value on top of that. But that return only shows up when the pool is built right permitted, engineered for the site, and finished the way a future buyer or appraiser would expect. A pool with structural problems or skipped inspections doesn’t add value. It creates liability.
Colquitt County’s red clay soil is one of the most common reasons pools in this region develop cracks or shift over time. When we evaluate your specific site before excavation starts and engineer the rebar cage and shell to handle that ground movement, you get a pool that holds up for 30 years. That’s the difference between a concrete pool and a concrete problem.
We founded Deep Waters Pools in 2014, but our founder spent more than three decades working in concrete, plumbing, and pool construction before that. That’s not a marketing detail it means the person responsible for your pool has been building them in Georgia soil conditions since before most of our competitors were in business.
We’re based in Douglas and serve communities throughout South Georgia, including Funston and the broader Colquitt County area. Every build uses the same in-house crew from excavation through deck installation. No subcontractors rotating through your property. No “that’s not our department” when something needs adjusting mid-build.
In Funston, where people know real work when they see it, we show up the same way every time. The crew that starts your pool is the crew that finishes it and that’s not an accident. It’s how we’ve operated since the beginning.
It starts with a site evaluation. Before any equipment touches your yard, we look at your specific lot soil conditions, grade, setbacks, drainage and design the pool around what’s actually there. In Colquitt County, that means accounting for clay-heavy soil that behaves differently depending on how much rain you’ve had. That evaluation isn’t a formality. It directly affects how the rebar cage is engineered and where the plumbing runs.
Once the design is locked in, we pull every permit required building, electrical, all of it. Georgia building code requires a rebar inspection before gunite can be applied, and we schedule and manage that inspection in-house. You never have to call a building department or track down an inspector. That’s handled. After the rebar cage passes inspection, the gunite shell is applied, the plumbing and equipment are installed by the same crew, and the pool deck goes in.
The final step before water goes in is a custom safety cover included with every build, not offered as an add-on. From first conversation to a finished pool ready for your family, most builds run 8 to 12 weeks depending on site conditions and seasonal scheduling. Starting the process in fall or winter means your pool is typically ready before the South Georgia heat sets in.
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Every Deep Waters pool is a fully custom gunite build. That means you’re not choosing from a catalog of pre-set shapes and sizes the pool is designed from scratch to fit your yard, your family’s needs, and your property’s specific site conditions. Shape, depth, configuration all of it is built around what works for your lot, not what’s easiest to install.
What’s included in every build: full excavation, rebar cage installation and inspection, gunite shell application, all swimming pool plumbing, NEC Article 680-compliant electrical bonding and grounding, equipment installation, pool deck construction, and a custom safety cover. Building permits and all required inspections are managed in-house. In Colquitt County, where the permitting process involves coordination between the county building department and Georgia’s statewide licensing requirements, having that handled by us not handed back to you is a real difference in how the job runs.
There are no change orders added mid-project for things that should have been in the original scope. The price you agree to at the start reflects the full build. That’s not a standard practice in this industry it’s a specific commitment we make because we’ve seen what happens when it isn’t.
Yes and pulling those permits is not something you should be doing yourself. In Funston and the broader Colquitt County area, inground pool construction requires a building permit and an electrical permit at minimum. Georgia building code also mandates a rebar cage inspection before gunite can be applied, which is a required hold point in the construction process meaning work legally cannot move forward until that inspection is completed and signed off.
We manage every piece of this in-house. Permits are pulled in our name, which is how a contractor takes legal responsibility for the work meeting code not the homeowner. All required inspections are scheduled and coordinated by our team. If you’re comparing contractors, ask each one directly who pulls the permits and whose name they’re pulled under. The answer tells you a lot about who’s actually accountable for the work.
Most builds run 8 to 12 weeks from the start of excavation to a finished, water-ready pool. That timeline can shift depending on site conditions, weather, and where your build falls in the schedule South Georgia’s rainfall pattern, which regularly exceeds 50 inches annually, can affect excavation timing and gunite application windows. Applying gunite in rain compromises the mix and the cure, so we plan around weather rather than pushing through it.
The best way to control your timeline is to start the conversation early. Builders who are serious about quality fill their spring and summer slots well before the season starts often by January or February. If you want a pool ready for April or May, the fall or winter before is the right time to get on our schedule. Starting in the cooler months also means excavation and concrete work happen in more favorable conditions, which is a practical advantage in Colquitt County’s climate.
Gunite is a dry-mix concrete applied pneumatically over a steel rebar cage that’s been built and inspected on your property. The result is a fully custom shell any shape, any depth, any configuration that becomes a permanent structural part of your yard. Unlike fiberglass pools, which arrive in fixed factory shapes and have to fit whatever lot you have, a gunite pool is built around your specific site from the start.
For properties in Funston and Colquitt County, gunite is particularly well-suited because of the region’s clay soil. Clay expands when wet and contracts when dry, creating ground movement that affects any below-grade structure. A gunite shell engineered with the right rebar spacing and shell thickness for those conditions handles that movement far better than a fiberglass shell dropped into the same ground. Vinyl liner pools are another option, but liners need replacement every 10 to 15 years a recurring cost that adds up over the life of the pool. A properly built gunite pool, maintained correctly, is a 30-year structure that gets stronger as the concrete cures.
Based on Georgia real estate data, a pool completion is associated with roughly a 7% increase in property value. In Funston, where the median home value sits around $117,530, that’s a meaningful return approximately $8,000 in added equity, on top of years of use. But the return depends heavily on how the pool is built. A permitted, properly engineered pool with a finished deck and compliant electrical work is an asset an appraiser and a future buyer will recognize. A pool with skipped inspections, structural issues, or unpermitted work can actually complicate a sale.
Funston’s housing market has shown real appreciation over the past two decades values have nearly tripled since 2000. That’s a market where property investment is paying off, and a well-built pool fits that trajectory. The ROI argument also gets stronger when you factor in South Georgia’s 7-month swimming season. You’re not buying a pool for two months of summer. You’re buying something your family uses from spring through fall, every year, for decades.
When different subcontractors handle different phases of a build one crew for excavation, another for plumbing, another for the deck accountability gets fragmented. If something doesn’t line up between phases, each crew points at the other. The homeowner is left in the middle trying to figure out whose problem it is. That’s one of the most common ways pool construction goes sideways.
We use the same in-house crew from excavation through deck installation. The people who dig your pool install your plumbing and finish your deck. That continuity means the crew doing phase two already knows exactly what happened in phase one they were there. It also means there’s one point of contact and one team accountable for the entire build. In Funston, where people have long memories and strong word-of-mouth, that kind of accountability isn’t just a policy. It’s what makes the work worth standing behind.
Custom gunite pool construction in South Georgia typically ranges from $60,000 to $90,000 for a complete build, depending on pool size, shape, depth, deck design, and equipment selection. That range reflects a full scope of work excavation, rebar, gunite shell, all plumbing, electrical, equipment, pool deck, permits, inspections, and a custom safety cover. It’s not a base price with a long list of add-ons behind it.
In Colquitt County, where the cost of living runs well below the national average, that investment represents a significant commitment relative to local home values. The buyers who get the most out of it are the ones who think in terms of total cost over time rather than upfront price alone. A gunite pool built correctly doesn’t need a new liner in year 12 or structural repairs in year 15. When you factor in the durability, the 7-month South Georgia swimming season, and the property value return, the math looks different than it does at first glance. The goal isn’t the cheapest pool it’s the one that holds up, holds its value, and doesn’t cost you more money down the road.
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