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A gunite pool isn’t just a hole in the ground with water in it. It’s the only pool type that gets designed from scratch around your specific backyard your dimensions, your layout, your family’s needs. No pre-manufactured shell, no compromises on shape or depth. You get exactly what you drew up, built to last for decades.
In Meigs and Thomas County, that matters more than it might somewhere else. The sandy-clay soil that runs through this area isn’t forgiving to a pool that was engineered somewhere else and dropped in without accounting for local ground conditions. A properly built gunite shell with the right rebar framework, wall thickness, and drainage design for this specific soil doesn’t develop the stress fractures you hear about. The ones that crack are the ones that weren’t built for this ground to begin with.
And then there’s the season itself. Meigs runs hot from late March through October. That’s roughly seven months where a pool isn’t a luxury it’s the most useful thing on your property. Families who build here use their pools. A lot. That kind of consistent use over decades is exactly what a well-built gunite pool is made for.
Deep Waters Pools was founded in 2014, but the team behind it had already spent more than 30 years working in concrete, plumbing, and pool construction across South Georgia before the company ever opened its doors. That history isn’t a marketing line it’s the reason we know how Meigs’ ground behaves, how the permitting process works in this specific area, and what it actually takes to build a pool that holds up in this climate long-term.
We’re based in Douglas, GA, and we serve Meigs and the Thomas County area because we know it. We’ve pulled permits through the Meigs City Clerk’s office on East Depot Street and worked directly with the Thomas County Building Department. We know the two-step process that trips up builders who’ve never worked here before the Compliance Form requirement from the city before the county will issue your building permit.
What we don’t do is subcontract. Every phase of your build excavation, steel, gunite application, plumbing, electrical, finishing is handled by our own crew, under our direct supervision. One team, one standard, one point of accountability from the first shovel to the final inspection.
It starts with a design conversation. We learn how you use your backyard, what your family actually needs, and what your property allows. From there, we build a 3D rendering of your pool so you can see exactly what you’re getting before a single shovel breaks ground. No surprises, no “that’s not what I pictured” moments after the concrete is poured.
Once you’ve approved the design, we handle permitting. In Meigs, that means pulling the Compliance Form from the City Clerk first, then taking it to the Thomas County Building Department in Thomasville for the building and electrical permits. If your property sits in the northern part of Meigs near the Mitchell County line, we sort out which jurisdiction applies. You don’t have to figure that out we already know.
After permits are cleared, our crew handles excavation, rebar installation, gunite application, plumbing, electrical bonding and grounding, and surface finishing. Every inspection along the way is scheduled and managed by us. The realistic timeline for a quality gunite build in the Meigs area is three to six months. That’s the honest number. A pool started in fall is ready for your first South Georgia swim come spring.
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Every gunite pool we build is fully custom shape, depth, features, and equipment designed around your specific property and how your family actually uses a pool. We work on residential builds throughout Meigs and the Thomas County area, and we handle commercial gunite pool installation as well for clients who need something built to a higher-use standard.
Because we keep everything in-house, what you’re getting is a pool where every decision was made by the same team. The crew that pours your gunite shell is the same crew that ran your plumbing and will be there for your final walkthrough. We service Hayward, Pentair, Jandy, Sta-Rite, and Zodiac equipment so when your pool needs attention down the road, you’re not starting over with a stranger who doesn’t know how your system was built.
Thomas County has adopted the 2017 National Electrical Code with Georgia amendments. That means your pool’s electrical bonding and grounding covered under NEC Article 680 has to meet a specific standard, and we build to it on every job. For Meigs homeowners, that’s not a detail to gloss over. It’s a code requirement, and it’s a safety one. When we hand you a finished pool, it’s permitted, inspected, and built to the standard the county actually requires.
This is one of the most common concerns we hear from Meigs homeowners, and it’s worth addressing directly. Thomas County has a sandy-clay soil profile a mix of the coastal plain sands that dominate South Georgia and clay-bearing soils that shift with moisture levels. Some pool companies use this as an argument against gunite altogether. The truth is more specific than that: gunite pools crack when they’re not engineered for the local ground conditions. That’s a builder problem, not a material problem.
A properly designed gunite shell accounts for how Meigs’ soil behaves the rebar framework, wall thickness, and drainage design are all calibrated for this specific ground. When those decisions are made correctly upfront, you end up with a shell that handles soil movement without developing stress fractures. We’ve been working in South Georgia’s soil for over 30 years. We don’t design a generic pool and hope it holds. We design for the ground it’s going into.
The honest answer is three to six months from permit approval to a pool you can swim in. That’s the realistic range for a quality gunite build in the Meigs area when you account for permitting, excavation, curing time, inspections, and finishing work. A lot of builders will quote you eight to twelve weeks. Some can hit that on a simple build with perfect weather and no permit delays but it’s not the number to plan your summer around.
In Meigs specifically, the permitting process has an extra step. You need a Compliance Form from the Meigs City Clerk before the Thomas County Building Department will issue the building permit. That’s not a major delay if your builder knows it’s coming, but it’s the kind of thing that adds weeks when a contractor is learning the process on your job. We’ve done this before. We build the permit timeline into the schedule from day one, so you’re not waiting on paperwork that should have been filed weeks earlier.
Gunite and shotcrete are both concrete application methods used in pool construction, and the terms get used interchangeably often enough that it creates real confusion. The core difference is in how the concrete is mixed. With gunite, dry concrete mix and water are combined at the nozzle as it’s applied. With shotcrete, the concrete is pre-mixed before it reaches the nozzle. Both produce a structurally sound pool shell when applied correctly by an experienced crew.
In practice, the method matters less than the skill of the team applying it and the engineering decisions that went into the design. A poorly applied shotcrete shell and a poorly applied gunite shell will both fail. A well-applied version of either, built on the right rebar framework for the local soil, will last for decades. What you should be asking any builder isn’t which method they use it’s whether their own crew is doing the application or whether they’re subcontracting it to someone else. That’s where the quality gap actually lives.
For a custom residential gunite pool in the Meigs and Thomas County area, you’re generally looking at a range of $75,000 to $150,000 depending on size, shape, features, and equipment. That’s a wide range, and the honest reason it’s wide is that gunite pools are genuinely custom a straightforward rectangular pool with standard equipment sits at a different price point than a freeform design with a spa, tanning ledge, and premium finishes.
On top of the build cost, plan for annual maintenance in the range of $2,700 to $4,000 per year, and a resurfacing cycle every ten to fifteen years on a well-built pool. Meigs homeowners also benefit from Thomas County’s relatively low property tax rates the median for mortgaged homes runs around $738 per year which means the property value a pool adds doesn’t come with a proportionate tax penalty the way it might in a higher-tax county. When you factor the full picture, a gunite pool in Meigs is a long-term investment that holds its value well in this market.
A professionally built gunite pool typically adds around 7% to a home’s appraised value. In a market like Meigs, where home prices are more modest than suburban metro areas, that percentage may translate to a smaller absolute number than it would in Thomasville or a larger city. But the value argument in Meigs isn’t just about the appraisal it’s about what your property offers compared to others on the market when you’re ready to sell.
Buyers who are looking in Meigs and Thomas County and find a well-maintained gunite pool on a property are looking at something that’s genuinely rare. Most homes in the area don’t have one. That scarcity creates real differentiation at resale, particularly for buyers relocating from larger cities who are accustomed to pools as a standard feature. And for the years you live there before selling, the return on a seven-month swimming season in South Georgia’s heat is something you feel every single day from late March through October.
Yes and in Meigs, that matters more than it might in a straightforward single-county build. Because Meigs city limits extend across both Thomas and Mitchell counties, the permitting process here has a specific sequence that not every builder is familiar with. If your property is within Meigs city limits, you need a Compliance Form from the Meigs City Clerk on East Depot Street before the Thomas County Building Department will issue your building permit. If your property falls in the northern portion of Meigs near the Mitchell County boundary, the applicable jurisdiction may differ and that’s something we sort out before we start, not after.
We handle the full permit process on every build: the city compliance step, the Thomas County building and electrical permits, and every required inspection at each phase of construction. Thomas County requires contractors to be licensed by the State of Georgia and registered with the county we meet both requirements. You don’t manage any of this. We do. The only thing you’re responsible for is deciding what kind of pool you want.
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