Hear from Our Customers
A gunite pool built correctly in Manor doesn’t just look good on day one it holds up through decades of South Georgia summers, wet seasons, and everything the Coastal Plain throws at it. The sandy flatwoods soil in this part of Ware County behaves differently than the clay-heavy ground you’ll find further inland. When a builder understands that, they engineer the shell, the drainage, and the structural support to match your specific site not some generic spec sheet written for a different part of Georgia.
You’re also close enough to the Okefenokee Swamp corridor that water table conditions are a real factor on some Manor properties. A properly engineered gunite shell handles hydrostatic pressure in ways that other pool types simply can’t match. That’s physics, and it matters here more than it would in a lot of other places.
South Georgia gives you roughly seven months of genuine swimming weather, from April through October. When the pool is built right, with the right equipment and the right surface, you’re not spending those months chasing problems. You’re using the pool.
We’re based in Douglas, about 35 miles northwest of Manor along US Highway 84 the same road that connects this community to Waycross and the rest of the region. That proximity matters. It means our crew already knows this corridor: the soil conditions, the seasonal patterns, the way Ware County’s building and zoning process works, and what it actually takes to build a pool that lasts in this environment.
We were formally established in 2014, but our team brought more than 30 years of hands-on experience in concrete, plumbing, and custom pool construction before we ever opened the doors. That’s not a startup learning on your property that’s a team that had already seen most of what South Georgia can throw at a build site.
Every phase of your pool excavation, rebar, gunite application, plumbing, electrical, decking, and every permit through Ware County is handled in-house. No subcontractors. No strangers cycling through your yard. One crew, one point of contact, from the first site visit to the final inspection.
It starts with a site evaluation and a 3D design rendering. Before any dirt moves on your Manor property, you’ll see exactly what your pool looks like every shape, every depth, every feature designed around your specific backyard. That step matters because it’s the point where you catch anything that doesn’t work before it becomes expensive to fix.
Once the design is confirmed and permits are pulled through the Ware County Building and Zoning Department, excavation begins. We handle the dig, set the rebar framework, and apply the gunite shell all in-house. Plumbing and electrical follow, with bonding and grounding done to NEC Article 680, which is the federal safety standard for pool electrical systems and a requirement under Georgia building code. Every inspection at every phase is scheduled and managed by us, not handed off to you to figure out.
After the shell cures, surface finishing, equipment installation, and deck construction complete the build. The timeline from permit approval to a finished, water-filled pool typically runs three to six months depending on site conditions and the scope of the project. If your Manor property sits closer to the Swamp corridor where the water table runs higher seasonally, that’s factored into the engineering from day one not discovered halfway through the dig.
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A Deep Waters Pools gunite pool build covers the full scope: 3D design, excavation, structural steel, gunite shell, all plumbing, electrical bonding and grounding, equipment installation, pool deck construction, and every permit and inspection required by Ware County. There’s no phase that gets handed to a subcontractor and no part of the project where accountability goes fuzzy.
Equipment installation includes full compatibility with Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, and Zodiac systems the major brands you’ll find in any reputable pool supply or service network in South Georgia. That matters because it means your equipment can be serviced, upgraded, or repaired by us long after the build is complete. We don’t build your pool and disappear. We offer ongoing maintenance, weekly and seasonal service, and a pool rescue and restoration capability for pools that have been neglected or left in rough shape by a previous contractor.
For Manor homeowners, the full-lifecycle model is especially practical. There’s no dedicated local pool service infrastructure in this part of Ware County the way you’d find in a larger city. Having the same company that built your pool available for maintenance and repairs reachable by phone at (912) 309-9943 removes a real gap that homeowners in rural communities often discover too late. Custom spa construction and patio builds are also available as part of the same in-house scope.
Yes, and it’s one of the first things we assess before any design work begins. The Coastal Plain soils around Manor and the broader Waycross area are predominantly sandy flatwoods well-drained upland sands that behave very differently from the expansive clay soils found in inland parts of South Georgia. Sandy soil doesn’t expand and contract with moisture the way clay does, but it can shift and settle unevenly if the pool shell isn’t engineered with that in mind.
Properties closer to the Okefenokee Swamp corridor can also carry a seasonally elevated water table, which creates hydrostatic pressure against the pool shell. A gunite pool that’s properly engineered for your specific Manor site with adequate shell thickness, appropriate drainage provisions, and a rebar framework sized for the actual soil load handles these conditions well. The issue isn’t the soil type. The issue is whether your builder actually evaluated your site before drawing up a design.
For a residential gunite pool in Georgia, the typical range runs from around $75,000 to $150,000 depending on size, shape, depth, features, and site-specific conditions. That range reflects a lot of variables a straightforward rectangular pool on a flat lot with simple equipment will land toward the lower end, while a custom freeform design with a spa, water features, and a full patio build will push higher.
In Ware County, where median home values run significantly below the state average, a pool addition represents a meaningful investment relative to the existing property base. That’s worth taking seriously when you’re evaluating bids. The cheapest quote rarely accounts for the full scope permits, inspections, equipment quality, and the cost of fixing problems that a rushed build creates later. A realistic budget conversation upfront, with a builder who walks through exactly what’s included, saves a lot of frustration down the road.
Manor is an unincorporated community, which means there’s no city building department all pool permits run through the Ware County Building and Zoning Department in Waycross. The permitting process for an inground pool in Georgia requires at minimum a building permit and an electrical permit, along with a series of inspections at each major phase of construction. Georgia enforces the state minimum standard codes, and Ware County’s inspection process follows that framework.
We handle every permit and every inspection in-house. You don’t fill out forms, schedule inspectors, or track down county offices. That’s not a minor convenience navigating a county permit process you’ve never dealt with before is genuinely time-consuming, and mistakes in the permitting phase can delay a build by weeks. An unpermitted pool in Ware County also creates real legal and financial liability that surfaces when you sell the property. Having a builder who knows the local process and manages it completely removes that risk from the start.
From permit approval to a finished, water-filled pool, most residential gunite builds in this area take somewhere between three and six months. That range accounts for site conditions, design complexity, and the inspection schedule through Ware County. Simpler builds on straightforward lots move faster. Larger projects with spas, custom decking, or more complex equipment systems take longer.
One factor specific to this area worth planning around: properties near the Okefenokee Swamp corridor can have seasonally high water tables during the wet season, which can affect excavation timing. If you’re aiming to have your pool ready for the following summer, fall or early winter is generally the smartest time to start the process permit queues are shorter, crews have more availability, and you’re not racing against the spring wet season. Starting the conversation in September or October for a summer-ready pool is a reasonable target.
Both types can work in South Georgia’s climate but they’re not the same product, and the right choice depends on what you actually want. Fiberglass pools come in fixed factory shapes and sizes. What you see in the catalog is what you get. Gunite pools are built from scratch on your property, which means the shape, depth, features, and dimensions are entirely up to you. No factory limitations.
The other practical difference is longevity and maintenance. A well-built gunite pool needs resurfacing every 10 to 15 years. A properly engineered gunite shell with quality surface finishing holds up significantly longer than pools built with insufficient steel, rushed curing, or substandard materials. Given South Georgia’s seven-month swimming season and the long-term value of a pool in Ware County’s real estate market, the build quality you start with has a direct impact on what you’re dealing with 10 or 15 years down the road.
Yes. We offer pool rescue and restoration services in addition to new construction. If you’ve moved into a property in the Manor area with a neglected pool, inherited a green or non-functioning system, or had a previous contractor leave a build in rough shape, that’s a situation we’ve handled before. Restoration work can include resurfacing, equipment replacement, replumbing, electrical corrections, and water chemistry recovery depending on what the pool actually needs after a proper assessment.
This matters in a rural market like Ware County because there isn’t a deep bench of local pool service providers in this corridor. When something goes wrong with a pool out here, homeowners often find themselves calling companies that aren’t familiar with the area or waiting on service from a distance. Our ongoing maintenance capability weekly, monthly, and seasonal service combined with our restoration work means you have one point of contact for the life of the pool, not a different company for every problem that comes up.
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