Hear from Our Customers
A pool in Upton isn’t a seasonal novelty. When South Georgia temperatures push into the 90s from May through September and the humidity makes every afternoon feel like standing in a sauna, your backyard becomes either the best place on your property or just another patch of grass you’re not using. A well-built pool changes that equation for good.
Most of the homes in this area were built between 1970 and 1999, and many sit on larger rural lots with private septic systems. That combination matters more than most people realize when it comes to pool construction. The pool has to be sited correctly relative to your septic tank and drain field, and the build has to account for Coffee County’s clay-heavy subsoil, which expands and contracts with moisture in ways that can stress a poorly designed structure over time. Get those details right, and you have a pool that holds up for 30 years. Miss them, and you’re dealing with problems inside of five.
Concrete pools are also built to your property not to a factory mold. Custom shape, custom depth, custom design. If your lot gives you room to build something genuinely tailored to how your family uses it, there’s no reason to settle for a pre-formed shell that was designed for a suburban backyard half the size of yours.
We’re based in Douglas the Coffee County seat, a few miles from Upton and have been building concrete inground pools across this region for years. But the experience behind our company goes back much further than the business itself. Our founder spent over three decades in concrete construction, plumbing, and custom pool building before we ever took our first job. That’s not a résumé line it shows up in how every project is designed, permitted, and built.
We started because too many families right here in Upton and across Coffee County were getting burned by contractors who took deposits, missed timelines, and moved on. Deep Waters was built as the direct answer to that problem. Licensed, insured, and accountable to the same community we work in every day. When something needs to be addressed, you’re not calling a regional office three hours away you’re calling someone who lives and works in the same county you do.
It starts with a conversation about your property, your goals, and your budget. For Upton homeowners on rural lots with septic systems, that early conversation includes a real discussion about placement where the pool can go relative to your drain field, how the drainage will work given Coffee County’s soil and rainfall patterns, and what the site plan needs to show to satisfy the county building department. No guesswork, no surprises later.
Once the design is finalized, we handle the permit application through Coffee County’s building and development office. Since Upton is unincorporated, there’s no city building department in the picture it all runs through the county, and navigating that process is something we’ve done many times. You don’t have to figure out the paperwork. That’s handled.
After permit approval, the build runs 8 to 12 weeks. That’s a real window, not a vague estimate given to get you to sign. Excavation, structural work, plumbing, equipment installation, finishing all of it moves on a schedule you’ll know upfront. When the job is done, you get a full walkthrough of your pool’s systems so you know exactly how to operate and maintain it. The site is cleaned up completely. The pool is ready to use. That’s the standard on every project.
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Every pool we build is a custom concrete inground pool no fiberglass shells, no vinyl liners. Concrete is permanent, structurally sound for 30 or more years when built correctly, and fully customizable to your property. For Upton homeowners with rural lots and room to design something that actually fits the way your family lives, that flexibility is the whole point.
Every project includes a custom safety cover and full compliance with Georgia’s residential pool safety barrier requirements proper fencing, self-closing gates, the works. That’s not an add-on. It’s standard. Coffee County’s unincorporated properties are also subject to specific county inspection stages throughout the build, and we manage all of that from start to finish. If your property has a septic system, the site plan accounts for the required setback distances before a single shovel hits the ground.
Beyond new construction, we also handle pool renovation work. Given that much of Upton’s housing stock dates back to the 1970s through 1990s, there’s a real market here for homeowners who have an older pool that needs resurfacing, retiling, or equipment upgrades. Whether you’re starting from scratch or bringing an aging pool back to life, the process is the same: honest assessment, clear scope, and work that holds up long after the crew leaves.
Yes and it’s not optional. Any new inground pool construction in unincorporated Coffee County requires a building permit through the county’s building and development office. Because Upton doesn’t have its own city government, there’s no city building department involved. Everything goes through the county, which means the permit application, site plan, and inspections all follow Coffee County’s specific process rather than a city’s.
The site plan has to show property boundaries, the proposed pool location, and setback distances from structures, property lines, and critically for rural properties your septic tank and drain field. Georgia law also requires safety barriers around all residential pools, so fencing and gate compliance is part of the permit package. We handle all of this as part of every project. You won’t be chasing paperwork or trying to figure out which office to call.
It’s one of the most important factors in the entire build, and it’s something a lot of out-of-area contractors underestimate. Coffee County sits in the South Georgia coastal plain, where the soil profile typically includes sandy surface layers over clay-heavy subsoil. The sand can shift during and after excavation. The clay expands when it’s wet and contracts when it dries out and with 45 to 55 inches of annual rainfall in this region, moisture variation is a constant.
A pool that isn’t designed with those soil dynamics in mind can develop structural stress over time cracking, shifting, or settling in ways that become expensive problems. We’ve been building concrete pools in this specific soil type for decades. The design and engineering of every pool accounts for what’s actually under the ground on your property, not what’s typical for a generic South Georgia site. That local knowledge is what separates a 30-year pool from a 10-year headache.
From permit approval, the build runs 8 to 12 weeks. That’s the honest window, and it’s what we commit to before you sign anything. The timeline covers excavation, structural work, plumbing, equipment installation, and finishing all sequenced to move efficiently without cutting corners.
The part that affects your overall schedule most is the permit approval process, which runs through Coffee County’s building and development office and can take several weeks depending on the county’s current workload. That’s why starting early matters. Upton homeowners who begin the process in January or February can realistically have a finished pool ready by late spring before the South Georgia summer heat peaks in June and July. If you wait until summer to start, you’re likely looking at a fall completion. The build window itself is fixed; the permit timeline is the variable worth planning around.
Yes, but placement matters and it has to be done correctly. Rural properties in unincorporated Coffee County which covers most of Upton are predominantly on private septic systems rather than municipal sewer. Georgia’s rules require specific setback distances between a pool and your septic tank and drain field, and those distances are enforced through the county health department as part of the permitting process.
What this means practically is that the pool can’t go just anywhere on your property. The site plan has to account for where your septic system is located and ensure the pool is sited at the required distance. This is something we address in the very first conversation about your project before any design work begins. Getting it right upfront is the difference between a smooth permit approval and a costly redesign halfway through the process. For rural Coffee County properties, this isn’t an edge case it’s a standard part of every project.
For a custom concrete inground pool in the Coffee County area, most homeowners are looking at a range somewhere between $60,000 and $90,000 depending on size, shape, depth, and what’s included in the finish tile, coping, equipment, patio work, and so on. That’s a real investment, and it’s worth being honest about what drives the cost up or down.
Concrete pools cost more upfront than fiberglass or vinyl liner options, but they’re also built to last 30 or more years without the liner replacements or structural limitations that come with the alternatives. On a per-year basis over the life of the pool, the math tends to favor concrete for homeowners who are planning to stay in their home long-term which describes most of the owner-occupied households in Upton. The more important number isn’t the upfront price; it’s what you’d spend fixing a pool that was built wrong. That’s the cost we’re built to help you avoid.
Georgia requires pool builders to hold a valid General Contractor’s License issued through the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, or a recognized industry credential such as the Certified Builder Professional designation from the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance. You can verify a contractor’s license status directly through the Georgia Secretary of State’s online licensing portal it’s a public database and takes about two minutes to check.
For Upton homeowners specifically, the other thing worth verifying is whether the contractor has actually worked in Coffee County before not just whether they’re licensed in Georgia. A license is the baseline. Local experience with Coffee County’s permit process, soil conditions, and septic setback requirements is what determines whether the project goes smoothly or turns into a drawn-out problem. We’re licensed, insured, and have been working in this county long enough to know exactly what the local process requires. Both of those things matter, and both are worth asking about before you sign anything with any contractor.
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