Hear from Our Customers
When a gunite pool is built right, you stop thinking about it as a project and start thinking about it as part of your property. No callbacks, no structural concerns, no wondering if the crew who poured the shell knew what they were doing. You just use it from late April straight through October, which is the reality of a South Georgia swimming season.
That matters more in Doerun than people realize. You don’t get a three-month summer. You get closer to six months of heat that makes a backyard pool less of a luxury and more of a practical decision. Colquitt County’s clay-heavy Coastal Plain soil expands and contracts with every wet-dry cycle. A pool shell that isn’t engineered for that specific movement will show it eventually and that’s not a gunite problem, that’s a builder problem. When the engineering is done right from the start, the shell holds.
Long-term residents here in Doerun and most homeowners have been here a long time don’t want to redo this decision in five years. A quality gunite build, maintained properly, lasts 50+ years. That’s the outcome worth paying for.
We were founded in Douglas, GA in 2014 but our team had already spent 30+ years working in concrete, plumbing, and pool construction across South Georgia before we ever opened our doors. That experience didn’t come from a training manual. It came from working the same kind of land, the same kind of soil, and the same kind of conditions that exist right here in Colquitt County, where Doerun sits.
Every phase of your build excavation, rebar, gunite application, plumbing, electrical, decking, and final inspection is handled by our own crew. No subcontractors. No handoffs. No accountability gaps between a dig crew and a plumbing crew who’ve never spoken. The same team that breaks ground is the same team that walks you through the finished pool.
We handle every permit and every required inspection in-house. For a Doerun homeowner who already commutes down GA-133 to Moultrie for most services, not having to manage a permitting process on top of a major construction project is a real convenience not a small one.
It starts with a site evaluation. Before anything is designed or priced, we look at your property the grade, the soil conditions, the drainage patterns, and how your lot sits. In Colquitt County, that step matters more than most builders will tell you. The clay-heavy Coastal Plain soils in this area have a history of being farmed, drained, and worked over generations. That affects how we engineer the shell, and we account for it before the first shovel breaks ground.
From there, you’ll see a 3D rendering of your finished pool before construction begins. You’ll know the exact shape, depth, and feature layout mapped to your actual backyard not a template. Once design is locked in, we pull every required permit: building permit, electrical permit, and all required inspections through Colquitt County. You don’t make a single call to the permit office.
Construction runs through excavation, rebar installation, gunite shell application, all plumbing and electrical work (bonded and grounded to NEC Article 680), equipment installation, and pool deck construction. The honest timeline for a quality build in South Georgia accounting for permitting, weather, and proper curing is 3 to 6 months. We tell you that upfront, not after you’ve signed.
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A lot of pool builders in South Georgia will manage your project and hand the actual work to someone else. That’s how you end up with six different crews on your property, none of them accountable to each other, and a finished product that reflects it. We don’t operate that way. Excavation, rebar, gunite or shotcrete shell application, all plumbing, all electrical, decking, and finishing our crew handles every bit of it.
The electrical work is bonded and grounded to NEC Article 680 the federal safety standard for swimming pools. That’s not a detail most builders lead with, but for a family in Doerun with kids who’ll be in this pool for the next 20 years, it’s not a footnote. It’s the baseline.
We also service what we build. Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, Zodiac if it runs a pool, we can work on it. When your equipment needs attention down the road, you’re not tracking down a separate service company or driving to Moultrie to find someone who knows your system. You call the same number you called when you started. That’s what a long-term build relationship actually looks like for a Doerun homeowner who plans to be here for the long haul.
This is the most common concern we hear from Colquitt County homeowners and it’s been fueled largely by fiberglass pool companies who have a financial interest in making gunite look risky. Here’s the honest answer: gunite pools can crack, but cracking is a construction quality problem, not a material problem. A shell that’s engineered with the right rebar density, correct wall thickness, proper curing time, and soil-specific structural design does not crack from normal ground movement including the clay expansion and contraction that’s common in South Georgia’s Coastal Plain.
Colquitt County’s soil has been farmed, drained, and altered for generations. That history matters when you’re engineering a pool shell. The builders who skip the site evaluation, rush the rebar, or don’t account for local drainage patterns are the ones whose pools develop problems. When the engineering is done correctly from the start which is what 30+ years of South Georgia construction experience is for the shell holds. The “gunite cracks in Southern soil” story is a builder failure story, not a material failure story.
For a custom gunite pool in South Georgia, you’re typically looking at a range of $75,000 to $150,000 depending on size, site conditions, features, and finish selections. In Colquitt County, site conditions soil type, lot grade, drainage can affect excavation costs, so a proper site evaluation before pricing is important. Any builder quoting you a firm number without seeing your property first is guessing.
What’s worth understanding is the long-term math. A quality gunite shell lasts 50+ years with proper maintenance. Resurfacing is needed every 10 to 15 years not the 3 to 7 years you’ll hear from competitors selling alternative products. Annual maintenance runs roughly $2,700 to $4,000 per year. Given that Doerun’s swimming season runs close to six months, the cost-per-use over the life of the pool is lower than most people expect when they’re staring at the upfront number. The investment is significant but for a homeowner who plans to stay in Doerun long-term, it’s a permanent improvement to a property you’re committed to.
Building a pool in Doerun requires a building permit and an electrical permit at minimum, along with multiple required inspections at different phases of construction. Pool construction in Georgia falls under the State Licensing Board for Residential and Commercial General Contractors, and electrical work must comply with NEC Article 680 regardless of county. Georgia’s pool construction standards are based on the International Swimming Pool and Spa Code (ISPSC).
Practically speaking, pools in Georgia must be at least 10 feet from property lines, and barrier and fencing requirements apply. Unpermitted pools create real legal liability at resale and can result in fines or required removal so this isn’t paperwork you want to skip or shortcut. We handle the building permit, electrical permit, and all required inspections in-house for every project. You don’t manage any of it. For a Doerun homeowner who’s already making the drive to Moultrie for most services, that’s one less process to navigate on top of an already significant construction project.
The honest answer is 3 to 6 months for a quality gunite build in South Georgia. You’ll hear 8 to 12 weeks from a lot of builders and that timeline is often designed to get you to sign, not to reflect reality. A proper gunite build in Colquitt County involves site evaluation, design, permitting through the county, excavation, rebar installation, gunite shell application and curing, plumbing, electrical, equipment installation, decking, and final inspections. Each phase has a minimum timeframe that can’t be rushed without consequences.
South Georgia’s weather also plays a role. Summer thunderstorms are common in this area, and construction timelines have to account for weather delays. Curing time for the gunite shell is not something you can speed up without affecting the structural integrity of the finished pool. If you’re planning to have a pool ready for next summer, the best time to start that conversation is in the fall permit queues are shorter, crews are more available, and the build can move without competing with peak construction season.
It depends on what you’re actually comparing. Fiberglass pools are faster to install and have lower upfront maintenance in the early years. Gunite pools take longer to build, but they give you complete control over shape, size, depth, and features you’re not limited to a manufacturer’s mold. For a homeowner in Doerun who wants a custom design that fits their specific property, gunite is the only option that delivers that flexibility.
The durability comparison also favors gunite when the build is done correctly. A properly engineered gunite shell lasts 50+ years. Fiberglass shells are susceptible to surface fading, osmotic blistering, and limited repair options over time. The “fiberglass is better for Southern soil” argument you may have heard from local competitors is a sales argument, not an engineering one it applies to poorly built gunite pools, not to shells that were designed and constructed with the local soil conditions in mind. If someone built a gunite pool in Colquitt County without accounting for clay soil behavior, that’s a builder problem. The material itself, built right, holds.
Yes and this is worth thinking about before you choose a builder, not after. We service all major pool equipment brands: Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, and Zodiac. Whether it’s a pump issue, a salt system that needs calibration, a seasonal opening after a South Georgia winter, or a repair that comes up years down the road, you’re calling the same company that built the pool.
For a Doerun homeowner, that matters practically. The nearest pool supply and service options are in Moultrie, roughly 15 miles down GA-133. Having a builder who is also your long-term service contact means you’re not tracking down a third-party technician who has never seen your system and doesn’t know how it was built. The team that engineered your shell, ran your plumbing, and installed your equipment knows exactly how everything is set up. That’s not a small thing over the 20 or 30 years you’ll own this pool it’s the difference between a manageable maintenance relationship and a frustrating one.
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