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A gunite pool that holds up starts with a builder who understands what’s under your yard. Coffee County’s clay subsoil expands when it’s wet and pulls back when it dries. That ground movement is exactly what causes pools to crack not the concrete itself, but a builder who didn’t account for it. When the rebar is dense enough, the walls are thick enough, and the shell is cured on the right timeline, your pool moves with the ground instead of fighting it.
Out here in rural Coffee County near Lotts, your backyard is your only swimming option most of the time. You’re not a short walk from a neighborhood pool or a municipal facility. When July hits and the heat is sitting in the low 90s with humidity that makes it feel worse, your family needs somewhere to go that doesn’t require a 20-minute drive into Douglas. A well-built gunite pool solves that problem for the next 30 years not five, not ten, thirty.
The long-term math also works in your favor. Vinyl liner pools need replacement every five to nine years that’s $4,000 to $4,500 every time. A quality gunite surface holds for 10 to 15 years before resurfacing is needed. Over the life of the pool, concrete wins on durability, cost, and the fact that you’re never calling someone to swap out a liner mid-summer.
We’re based at 839 Boardwalk Circle in Douglas the Coffee County seat, and the same county where your Lotts property sits. That’s not a technicality. It means we know the Coffee County building department by process, we know what the ground north of Douglas does in a wet spring, and we don’t need to drive two hours to show up for an inspection.
Our founding team brought more than 30 years of hands-on experience in concrete, plumbing, and pool construction before we opened Deep Waters Pools in 2014. That history matters because there’s a difference between a company that has solved every problem that comes up during a build and one that’s encountering it for the first time on your property.
What sets us apart from every other builder reaching into Coffee County from Tifton or elsewhere: every phase of your pool excavation, plumbing, rebar, gunite application, finishing, decking is handled by our own crew. No subcontractors. The same people who break ground are the same people who hand you the keys.
It starts with a site evaluation and a 3D design rendering of your pool in your actual yard. Before any equipment shows up, you’ll see exactly what the finished pool looks like the shape, the depth, every feature so nothing about the final result catches you off guard. For rural properties in the Lotts area, this step also accounts for your lot’s drainage patterns, existing trees, and any outbuildings that affect where the pool sits.
Once the design is locked in, we handle every permit required through Coffee County the building permit, the electrical permit, and every phase inspection in between. You don’t fill out forms, you don’t call the county, and you don’t track down an inspector. That’s handled. For an unincorporated community like Lotts, all of that flows through Coffee County’s building department, and it’s a process we navigate regularly.
Construction moves through excavation, plumbing rough-in, rebar and steel placement, gunite application, and surface finishing each phase completed by our in-house crew, inspected at each required stage. Fall and early winter are the best time to build in Coffee County. Permit queues are shorter, crews are more available, and a pool started in October is swim-ready before the following June. The total timeline for a quality gunite pool runs roughly three to six months and that timeline exists because the concrete needs to cure correctly, not because anyone is dragging their feet.
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Custom gunite pool construction through Deep Waters Pools covers the full scope site evaluation and 3D design, excavation, plumbing, rebar and steel reinforcement, gunite or shotcrete application, interior surface finishing, equipment installation, and deck construction. Every phase is in-house. There’s no handoff to a subcontractor for the plumbing, no outside crew for the gunite application, no third party for the electrical work. One company, one crew, one point of accountability from the first shovel to the final inspection.
The electrical work is bonded and grounded to NEC Article 680 the federal safety standard for swimming pools. That’s not optional, and it’s not something every builder treats with the same seriousness. For a family with kids in the water, electrical safety is the baseline, and it’s built into every Deep Waters Pools pool.
Equipment installation covers all major brands Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, and Zodiac and we service what we install. That matters for Lotts homeowners specifically. If your pump fails on a Saturday in July, you’re not waiting on a company based out of Tifton to schedule a service call. We’re in Douglas, in the same county, and we know your equipment because we put it in. The relationship doesn’t end at the handoff it runs for the life of the pool.
This is probably the most common concern for Coffee County homeowners and it’s a fair one. The short answer is that cracking is a builder problem, not a material problem. Coffee County sits in Georgia’s Lower Coastal Plain, where clay subsoil expands when it’s wet and contracts when it dries. That ground movement is real, and if a builder uses inadequate rebar density, pours walls that are too thin, or rushes the curing process, the shell can crack over time.
The fix isn’t switching to fiberglass it’s building the gunite shell to accommodate the movement that’s going to happen under your specific property. That means the right rebar spacing, the right wall and floor thickness, and enough cure time for the concrete to reach full structural strength before the pool is filled. We’ve been building on Coffee County ground for years and engineer every pool around the soil conditions that are actually there, not some average baseline that doesn’t account for what’s under your backyard in Lotts or the surrounding area.
Most residential gunite pools in Coffee County fall somewhere between $75,000 and $150,000, depending on size, shape, depth, features, and the complexity of your specific site. A straightforward rectangular pool on a flat lot with standard equipment will land toward the lower end of that range. A freeform design with a water feature, custom decking, and upgraded finishes will move toward the higher end.
What’s worth understanding before you focus too hard on the number: the cheapest bid in this market is rarely the cheapest outcome. Twenty-five percent of pool owners say they regret their builder choice not the pool type, the builder. The most common reason is choosing the lower-cost option and ending up with a pool that needs remediation, or worse, a contractor who stops returning calls after taking a deposit. For a $75,000 to $150,000 investment on your Coffee County property, the difference between a builder who does it right the first time and one who cuts corners shows up fast usually within the first few years.
A realistic timeline for a custom gunite pool in Coffee County runs three to six months from permit approval to swim-ready. That range sounds wide, but it depends on the complexity of your design, inspection scheduling through Coffee County’s building department, and the curing time required after gunite application. The concrete needs adequate time to reach full strength rushing that step is one of the primary reasons pools develop surface problems early.
The best time to start the process in this area is fall October through December. Permit queues through Coffee County are shorter, construction crews have more availability, and you’re not competing with the spring rush when every homeowner who waited too long is trying to get a pool in the ground before summer. A pool started in October or November is typically swim-ready by the following May or June, which means you get the full season rather than watching construction wrap up in July.
Yes completely. We pull the building permit and the electrical permit through Coffee County’s building department, and schedule every required phase inspection from excavation through final. You don’t fill out a single form or make a single call to the county.
This is worth paying attention to when you’re comparing builders. Some contractors will suggest that you pull your own permit to “speed things up” or “save on fees.” That should be a red flag. Licensed contractors in Georgia are required to pull their own permits for the work they perform. When a builder asks you to pull the permit, it often signals they’re not properly licensed to do so themselves and it shifts legal liability for the construction onto you as the homeowner. Since Lotts is unincorporated Coffee County, there’s no separate city permit process to navigate. Everything flows through the county, and it’s a process we handle regularly in this exact jurisdiction.
Gunite and shotcrete are both pneumatically applied concrete the difference is in how the mix is prepared before it’s sprayed. Gunite uses a dry mix that combines with water at the nozzle during application. Shotcrete uses a wet mix that’s already combined before it reaches the nozzle. Both produce a structurally sound concrete shell when applied correctly, and both are used in high-quality custom pool construction.
In practice, the method matters less than the crew applying it. An experienced crew using either method will produce a shell with consistent density, proper thickness, and the right cure conditions. An inexperienced crew can produce a weak shell with either method. When you’re evaluating builders in the Coffee County market, the more important questions are who is actually applying the material, whether that crew is in-house or subcontracted, and whether the builder has a track record of builds on South Georgia’s specific soil profile. We use the method best suited to each build and apply it with our own crew not a subcontracted gunite team we called in for the day.
For most homeowners in the Lotts area, yes and the reasons are more practical than they might seem. A well-built gunite pool adds approximately 7% to residential property value in Georgia. On a Coffee County home worth $250,000, that’s roughly $17,500 in added equity. Coffee County’s real estate market has been active homes for sale increased 23.3% in April 2025 compared to the prior month and newer construction on larger rural lots is a growing segment of the market. A pool on a rural lot with real yard space is a meaningful differentiator if you ever sell.
The lifestyle side of the math is straightforward for anyone living north of Douglas. There’s no community pool in Lotts, no neighborhood splash pad, no shortcut. Georgia’s swim season runs April through October close to seven months. When the heat sits in the low 90s with South Georgia humidity behind it, your backyard is either somewhere your family wants to be or it isn’t. A gunite pool built to last 30 years, on a Coffee County property with the space to hold it, is a long-term investment in how your family actually uses the place they live.
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