Hear from Our Customers
Lumber City’s position at the Ocmulgee and Oconee river confluence means the soil on your property isn’t uniform. You’ve got upland sandy loam in some spots and heavier alluvial deposits closer to the water and those two soil types behave very differently when you’re digging 8 feet into the ground and pouring concrete. A pool built without accounting for that isn’t just a risk during construction. It’s a problem that shows up three years later when the shell shifts, cracks, or the plumbing starts leaking.
When your pool is engineered to match what’s actually in the ground at your address, it performs the way it’s supposed to for decades. That means no premature resurfacing, no mysterious cracks, and no contractor ghosting you when you call with a problem. It means a finished product that adds real value to your property, holds up through Telfair County’s storm season, and gets used hard from April through October every single year.
South Georgia’s swimming season runs nearly seven months. That’s not a seasonal luxury that’s a primary outdoor living space for most of the year. When the pool is built right, it earns back its investment in family time, property value, and the simple fact that your backyard becomes somewhere worth being every summer.
We’re based in Douglas, GA about 35 miles down US 23/341 from Lumber City and have been building custom inground pools across South Georgia since 2014. Our founding team brought over 30 years of hands-on experience in concrete, plumbing, and pool construction before we ever broke ground on our first pool.
What separates us from most builders in this region is straightforward: every phase of your build is handled by our own crew. Excavation, rebar, gunite application, plumbing, electrical, surface finishing, decking all of it. No subcontractors. No six different companies with six different excuses when something goes wrong. One team that’s accountable from the first shovel to the final inspection.
For homeowners in Lumber City and Telfair County, where skilled trade contractors aren’t exactly lining up at your door, that kind of accountability isn’t a small thing. It’s the difference between a pool that gets finished and one that doesn’t.
It starts with a site evaluation not a sales pitch. Before any design work begins, we look at your specific property: the grade, the soil conditions, your proximity to the Ocmulgee River corridor if that’s relevant, and any drainage factors that affect how the pool gets engineered. That evaluation drives every decision that follows.
From there, you’ll see your pool in 3D before a single shovel hits the ground. Every shape, depth, and feature is designed around your actual backyard not a catalog template. Once you approve the design, we handle every permit. The building permit, the electrical permit, every required inspection at each phase of construction. You don’t visit a city office. You don’t schedule an inspector. That’s handled.
Construction itself runs 3 to 6 months for a quality gunite pool and that’s the honest number, not the 8-week figure some builders use to win the sale. The gunite shell needs proper curing time. The plumbing and electrical need to be inspected before they’re buried. Rushing any of those phases is exactly how you end up with a pool that cracks in year three. When the timeline is done right, the pool is done right and we stay available to maintain it long after the build is complete.
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A Deep Waters pool build covers the full scope 3D design, site evaluation, excavation, rebar and steel framework, gunite shell application, all pool plumbing, electrical bonding and grounding to NEC Article 680 standards, equipment installation, pool deck, and custom safety covers. That’s not a list of things we coordinate. That’s a list of things our own crew physically does.
Equipment installation and service covers every major brand Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, and Zodiac. For homeowners in Lumber City, where the nearest pool equipment service provider is a real drive away, having the builder also be the service provider matters. The team that built your pool knows exactly how it was constructed, what equipment is running it, and what to look for when something needs attention.
Telfair County’s history with hurricanes, flooding, and tropical storms makes the quality of your shell construction a genuine long-term concern, not a theoretical one. A properly reinforced gunite pool, built with the right wall thickness and curing process, handles ground stress and weather events in ways that thinner, faster builds simply don’t. That’s what you’re getting when the same experienced crew handles every phase without cutting corners to hit a deadline.
For a residential gunite pool in Lumber City and the surrounding Telfair County area, you’re generally looking at a range of $75,000 to $150,000, with most custom builds landing around $100,000 depending on size, features, decking, and equipment. That range reflects a fully permitted, fully finished pool not a base price with a long list of add-ons that push the final number well past what you were quoted.
The honest answer is that the cost varies based on your specific property. Soil conditions near the Ocmulgee River corridor, site grading, and the distance utility lines need to run all affect the final number. We quote you a firm price only after seeing your property and that’s where every conversation with us starts.
The realistic timeline for a quality gunite pool from permit filing through final inspection is 3 to 6 months. That number accounts for permitting, excavation, rebar installation, gunite application, proper curing time, plumbing, electrical, surface finishing, and all required inspections at each phase. It’s not the 8-week figure you’ll hear from some builders, and there’s a reason for that gap.
Gunite requires a specific curing window before the next phase begins. If that window gets compressed to hit a faster timeline, the shell is more vulnerable to cracking especially in soil conditions like those found in parts of Telfair County, where the ground can shift seasonally near river bottomlands. The 3-to-6-month range isn’t a delay. It’s what a pool that lasts 30 years actually requires.
Gunite pools can crack but it’s almost always a builder problem, not a material problem. The cracking you hear about in South Georgia typically happens when the shell is poured too thin, cured too fast, or when the builder didn’t account for the actual soil conditions at that specific site. Lumber City’s location at the Ocmulgee and Oconee river confluence means the soil variability here is real alluvial deposits near the river behave differently than upland sandy loam, and a builder who doesn’t evaluate that before construction is taking a risk at your expense.
Proper prevention starts with a site evaluation, continues with adequate rebar density and wall thickness during the build, and depends on allowing the gunite shell to cure fully before moving to the next phase. When those steps are followed and when the same crew handles every phase without rushing a well-built gunite pool in this region holds up for decades without structural issues.
In Lumber City, pool construction requires a building permit and an electrical permit before any work begins. Georgia follows the International Swimming Pool and Spa Code with state amendments, and multiple inspections are required at different phases including a structural inspection before concrete is poured, an electrical inspection, and a final inspection at completion. Fencing and safety barrier specifications also need to be included in the site plan submitted with the permit application.
For homeowners in Lumber City, where permits are handled through the local city office, navigating that process alone adds a layer of complexity that most people don’t anticipate. We handle every permit filing and every inspection scheduling in-house, so you’re not tracking paperwork or trying to figure out which inspector needs to sign off before the next phase starts. It’s handled from the first form to the final sign-off.
For the right property, yes and Telfair County has more of those properties than people assume. Recent sales data shows homes in the Lumber City area transacting in the $275,000 to $300,000+ range, and a well-built gunite pool adds measurable resale value while significantly improving the daily livability of the property. With a swimming season that runs from April through October, a pool in this part of South Georgia isn’t a warm-weather novelty it’s a functional outdoor living space for nearly seven months of the year.
The caveat is that the investment only holds up if the pool is built correctly. An unpermitted pool, or one built with substandard materials and rushed timelines, creates legal liability at resale and often costs more to repair than it would have to build right the first time. A properly permitted, properly engineered gunite pool adds value. A problem pool subtracts it.
The most practical answer is accountability. Most pool builders in South Georgia subcontract the majority of the work excavation to one crew, gunite to another, plumbing to a third, electrical to a fourth. When something goes wrong in that model, every company points to the next one, and you’re left making calls that go nowhere. We do every phase with our own team, which means there’s one number to call and one company that owns the outcome.
For Lumber City homeowners specifically, that matters more than it might in a larger market. With limited skilled trade contractors in the area, a bad contractor experience isn’t easily fixed by calling the next company on the list. We’ve been working in South Georgia for over 30 years, we know Telfair County’s terrain, we handle every permit in-house, and we service what we build long after construction is complete. That’s not a pitch it’s just a different way of operating than most of our competition.
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