Hear from Our Customers
Dasher is a community where people put down roots. Median age in the mid-40s, most residents own their homes, and families have been on the same street long enough to know their neighbors by name. When you invest in a custom inground pool here, you’re not buying a seasonal novelty you’re adding something your household will use from late March through early November, nearly eight months out of the year. That’s not a summer luxury. That’s a backyard your family actually lives in.
The soil in Lowndes County sits on Georgia’s Coastal Plain, and it behaves differently than the red clay up north. Moisture shifts in this ground can stress a pool shell that wasn’t engineered with that in mind. A gunite pool built with the right rebar density and bond beam depth moves with the earth rather than fighting it and that engineering decision, made before a single shovel breaks ground, is what separates a pool that holds up for 30 years from one that starts showing cracks in five.
There’s also the question of who’s on your property. Dasher isn’t a place where homeowners take lightly to a revolving door of strangers in their backyard. When the same crew handles excavation, plumbing, electrical, and decking from start to finish, accountability doesn’t fall through the cracks between subcontractors. One team. One point of contact. One result we’re responsible for start to finish.
Deep Waters Pools is a family-owned company based out of Douglas, Georgia. Our founder spent more than three decades in concrete, plumbing, and custom pool construction before launching Deep Waters in 2014 which means the experience behind every project goes back to the early 1990s. That’s not a marketing line. It’s the reason problems get solved on the job site instead of billed back to you.
We build exclusively custom gunite pools. Not fiberglass. Not vinyl liner. One pool type, done at a level that comes from doing it for decades. That focus matters when you’re making a $60,000-plus decision on a home you’ve invested in.
For Dasher homeowners, that means working with a Southeast Georgia builder who knows what Lowndes County soil looks like, understands the permitting process at both the town and county level, and has built pools in this region’s climate not just read about it. We serve the Valdosta corridor regularly, and the Madison Highway communities are well within our wheelhouse. We’ve built in Dasher’s specific soil conditions and navigated its permitting requirements enough times to know exactly what to expect and how to move efficiently through the process.
It starts with a site evaluation before anything else. We look at your specific lot soil conditions, drainage, existing utilities, and how the pool design interacts with your yard’s layout. In Lowndes County, where Coastal Plain soils can shift with rainfall and where 50 inches of annual precipitation is the norm, that pre-excavation assessment shapes how the pool is engineered, not just where it sits.
Once the design is locked and the engineering is set, we handle every permit in our name building permits, electrical permits, and all required inspections. That includes the mandatory rebar cage inspection that Georgia building code requires before gunite can be applied. For Dasher specifically, that means navigating both Dasher City Hall (open weekday mornings only) and the Lowndes County Building Permits and Inspections Department when applicable. You don’t make a single call to a building department. That’s handled.
From excavation through gunite shell application, swimming pool plumbing, NEC Article 680-compliant electrical bonding, pool deck installation, and final equipment setup it’s the same crew the entire way through. No subcontractors handed your project off mid-build. When the pool is finished, a custom safety cover is included at no additional charge. The price on the contract is the price at the end. That’s not a policy it’s how every project runs.
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Every Deep Waters build covers the full scope: site evaluation, excavation, engineered rebar cage, gunite shell, all swimming pool plumbing, code-compliant electrical bonding and grounding per NEC Article 680, equipment installation, pool deck construction, and a custom safety cover. That last item matters in a family-oriented community like Dasher, where Georgia’s pool barrier requirements minimum 4-foot fencing with self-latching gates represent the floor, not the ceiling, of what responsible pool ownership looks like.
The gunite construction method itself is worth understanding if you’re comparing options. Fiberglass pools arrive as a fixed shell. Whatever shape and size the manufacturer offers is what you get, and if it doesn’t fit your yard or your vision, you compromise. Gunite is built on your property from scratch. Any shape, any depth, any configuration your lot allows and your family wants. For Dasher homeowners with specific yard layouts or a clear picture of what they want that flexibility is the difference between a pool you designed and a pool you settled for.
Homes near the Madison Highway corridor in Lowndes County vary in lot size and layout. Some sit on larger parcels with room for a freeform design and extended deck space. Others are tighter suburban lots where every foot of the design needs to be intentional. We build to your specific site, not a catalog template and the price you agree to upfront reflects the full scope of that build, not a starting point for change orders.
Yes and it’s more layered than most people expect. Dasher is an incorporated town in Lowndes County, which means permitting can involve both Dasher City Hall and the Lowndes County Building Permits and Inspections Department, depending on where your property sits. Dasher City Hall is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to noon only, which makes navigating the process on your own genuinely inconvenient if you’re working a full-time job.
Beyond the building permit, Georgia code requires a mandatory rebar cage inspection before any gunite can be applied meaning construction cannot move forward until that inspection is scheduled, completed, and passed. If your home runs on a private septic system, environmental health approval of the pool’s placement may also be required before the permit is issued. We handle every permit and inspection in our name, so none of that falls on you.
From signed contract to a pool you’re swimming in, the realistic timeline is typically four to six months when you account for design, permitting, and construction. Permit review in Lowndes County can run two to eight weeks depending on workload and whether any additional approvals are needed. Once permits are in hand, the physical construction excavation through final equipment setup generally takes six to eight weeks for a standard custom gunite build.
The practical implication for Dasher homeowners: if you want to be swimming by Memorial Day weekend, you need to be in contract by January or February at the latest. South Georgia’s construction season runs year-round thanks to mild winters, which is an advantage over markets further north but permitting timelines don’t compress just because the weather cooperates. Starting the conversation early is the single best thing you can do to protect your timeline.
Lowndes County sits on the Georgia Coastal Plain, where soils can include moisture-sensitive layers that shift and settle differently than the red clay found in North Georgia. That movement, over time, puts stress on a pool shell and how that shell was engineered before the concrete was ever applied determines whether it holds up or starts showing problems in year five or six.
Gunite pools are built with a steel rebar cage that’s engineered to the specific site, then encased in pneumatically applied concrete that bonds directly to the ground. The result is a monolithic shell that’s designed to flex slightly with soil movement rather than crack under it. Fiberglass shells, by contrast, are manufactured off-site and installed as a single rigid unit they can be a fine option in stable soil conditions, but they offer no site-specific engineering. For the Coastal Plain conditions common in the Dasher and Valdosta area, a properly engineered gunite shell is the more durable long-term investment.
For a custom gunite pool in the Lowndes County market, most homeowners are looking at a range between $60,000 and $90,000 for a complete build shell, plumbing, electrical, decking, equipment, and safety cover included. The final number depends on pool size, shape complexity, deck square footage, and any additional features like a spa, tanning ledge, or water features.
What that range should always include and what you should confirm before signing anything is the full scope: permits, inspections, all plumbing, NEC-compliant electrical bonding, and the deck. A quote that looks lower often gets there by leaving those items out and adding them back as change orders once construction is underway. With median home values in Dasher around $185,700, a pool in this price range is a meaningful investment relative to your home which makes the “no surprise costs” piece of the equation more important, not less. We build everything into the original quote. The number you sign is the number you pay.
Dasher’s position near the Florida state line gives Lowndes County one of the longer residential swimming seasons in Georgia. Most homeowners in this area are comfortably in the water from late March through early November that’s roughly seven and a half to eight months of usable pool time in a typical year. Summer temperatures regularly hit the low-to-mid 90s, and even October stays warm enough that evening swims are still on the table.
That extended season changes how you should think about the investment. A pool in Dasher isn’t a two-month summer amenity it’s a backyard feature your household uses for the better part of the year. The return on that investment, both in quality of life and in home value, looks very different when the pool is in use eight months a year versus four. Building it right with materials and engineering that hold up to that level of sustained use is what makes the math work over 20 or 30 years.
In most Georgia markets, yes and Lowndes County has specific characteristics that make a pool a stronger value-add than average. Moody Air Force Base brings a steady rotation of military households into the Valdosta area, many of whom buy homes and prioritize outdoor living amenities. When a military family PCSs out and the next family moves in, a well-built pool is an asset that sustains demand not a liability to negotiate around. We cite approximately 7% property value appreciation upon pool completion based on Georgia real estate data, and that figure holds up in markets where outdoor living is a year-round reality rather than a seasonal one.
The caveat is condition and quality. A pool that was rushed, built with subcontractors who didn’t coordinate, or finished without proper electrical bonding and code compliance becomes a red flag at inspection not a selling point. Buyers in the Dasher area, like buyers anywhere, will ask for the permit history and inspection records. A pool that was built with permits pulled in our name, inspected at every required stage, and finished to a standard that holds up over time is the version that adds value. That’s the only version we build.
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