Hear from Our Customers
In Dixie, summer doesn’t politely knock and leave. It moves in from April and stays through October seven months of heat that makes a pool less of a luxury and more of a practical decision. When the temperature is pushing into the 90s and the humidity makes outdoor work genuinely miserable, having water on your property changes how your family uses that land entirely.
The difference between a gunite pool and a fiberglass shell matters more on a rural Brooks County property than it does anywhere else. Fiberglass pools arrive in fixed factory shapes and get dropped wherever they fit. If your lot has mature trees, irregular grade, or a footprint that doesn’t match a catalog shape and most Dixie-area properties do a pre-formed shell is a compromise from day one. Gunite is built from scratch, in your ground, to whatever shape and size actually works for your land.
There’s also the long-term reality of the soil here. The Lower Coastal Plain profile sandy upper layers over clay-bearing subsoil means the ground moves with moisture and dry spells. A properly engineered gunite shell handles that. A vinyl liner or fiberglass shell, over time, often doesn’t. If you’re investing in a permanent feature on land you plan to keep, it makes sense to build it the way that lasts.
We were founded in 2014, but our builder spent more than thirty years working in concrete, plumbing, and custom pool construction before we ever opened. That’s not a marketing angle it’s just the timeline. By the time we took on our first project in Dixie and the surrounding Brooks County area, the experience was already there.
We’re based in Douglas, Georgia, and we serve rural South Georgia communities including Dixie and the surrounding corridor along U.S. 84. That matters because we’re not a metro-Atlanta builder who added your county to a service map. We operate in the same wiregrass region you live in the same soil conditions, the same county-level permitting processes, the same practical realities of building on large rural lots.
Every pool we build is handled in-house. No subcontractors. The crew that breaks ground is the same crew that finishes the deck. That’s not common in this industry, and in a small community like Dixie where word travels fast, it’s the kind of thing that either holds up or it doesn’t.
It starts before anyone touches your yard. We conduct a pre-excavation site evaluation that looks at your specific soil conditions, drainage patterns, and any setback requirements that apply to your property. For rural Dixie-area homes on septic systems which is most of them that evaluation accounts for tank and drain field locations before the pool placement is finalized. This step prevents the kind of expensive surprises that show up mid-project when a builder skips it.
Once the site is evaluated, we pull every permit required by Brooks County Development Services in Quitman building, electrical, plumbing under our name, not yours. You don’t have to call the county office on South Highland Road or figure out the inspection schedule. That’s handled. After permits are in place, excavation begins, followed by the rebar cage installation and the required county inspection before any gunite is applied. Georgia building code requires that inspection, and it’s a step that confirms the structural foundation of your pool is right before it’s locked in concrete.
From there, gunite is applied, the shell cures, plumbing is set, equipment is installed, and the pool deck goes in all by the same crew, under one contract. The typical timeline from excavation to a swim-ready pool runs six to eight weeks of active construction. If you’re thinking about a pool for next summer, starting the conversation in fall or winter gives you the best shot at a completed pool before the South Georgia heat arrives.
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When we build a pool in Dixie, the scope isn’t broken into pieces that get handed off or billed separately. Site evaluation, excavation, rebar, gunite shell, all plumbing, NEC Article 680-compliant electrical bonding and grounding, equipment installation, pool deck installation, and a custom safety cover that’s one contract. The number you agree to is the project you get.
The custom safety cover is worth calling out specifically. Every pool we build includes one as a standard part of the build not an upgrade, not an add-on. For a rural property in Brooks County where your pool isn’t surrounded by neighborhood foot traffic and visibility, a properly fitted cover is the most practical safety measure you can have. It’s already in the contract before you sign.
The electrical work follows NEC Article 680, which governs bonding and grounding for all pool installations. This matters at resale and it matters for safety and it’s not something every builder in South Georgia treats as non-negotiable. Georgia also requires a rebar cage inspection before gunite is applied, and that inspection is coordinated through Brooks County’s development office as part of our permitting process. Everything that needs to be done to build a legal, safe, code-compliant pool in Dixie is included. Nothing is left to figure out later.
Yes and because Dixie is an unincorporated community, your permitting authority is Brooks County Development Services, not a city government. That office is located in Quitman at 610 South Highland Road, and they handle building permits, electrical permits, plumbing permits, and all required inspections for pool construction in your area.
The process involves multiple permit types and a sequenced inspection schedule including a mandatory rebar cage inspection before gunite can be applied, which is a Georgia statewide requirement. If you’ve never navigated the county permitting process before, it can feel slow and unclear. We pull every permit under our company name and manage the full process from submission through final inspection. You don’t have to figure out what to file or when that’s part of what we handle on every build.
Gunite is the right choice for Dixie and Brooks County properties, and the soil profile here is a big reason why. The Lower Coastal Plain geology in this part of South Georgia features sandy upper layers over clay-bearing subsoil a combination that shifts with moisture levels and dry spells. Sandy soil can move under structural loads. Clay expands when wet and contracts when dry. Over time, that movement puts stress on a pool shell.
A gunite pool concrete applied over a steel rebar cage is engineered to handle that ground movement in a way that fiberglass and vinyl liner pools aren’t. Fiberglass shells can shift or pop under hydrostatic pressure from saturated soil. Vinyl liners are vulnerable to puncture and need full replacement every 10 to 15 years. Gunite, properly built and cured, gets structurally stronger over time and doesn’t have the same vulnerability to the conditions you’ll find on a typical Dixie-area property.
The usable swimming season in this part of South Georgia runs from roughly April through October about seven months. That’s one of the longer swimming seasons in the country, driven by the humid subtropical climate and Dixie’s proximity to the Florida state line. Tallahassee is about 43 miles south, which puts this area in one of the warmest climate zones in Georgia. Pool temperatures stay comfortable well into fall, and in warmer years, you can push that window even further.
For comparison, pool owners in the Mid-Atlantic or Midwest might get 10 to 12 weeks of comfortable swimming. In Dixie, you’re looking at more than twice that. When you factor in a seven-month season, the investment case for a permanent inground pool changes significantly you’re not paying for a summer amenity, you’re paying for something your family uses for more than half the year, every year, for decades. We also note that a well-built pool adds approximately 7% to residential property values in Georgia, which matters for landowners who think about their property as a long-term asset.
Yes, but the septic system has to be accounted for before placement is finalized. Georgia pool construction requirements include specific setback rules from septic tanks and drain fields, and those setbacks affect where on your property the pool can be located. On a typical Dixie-area property which often runs one to ten or more acres there’s usually enough room to site a pool correctly, but the evaluation has to happen before excavation begins, not after.
This is one of the reasons we conduct a pre-excavation site evaluation on every project. We identify the location of your septic system, confirm the required setbacks, and factor that into the pool placement plan before any ground is broken. Skipping that step is how projects end up with costly mid-construction changes or, worse, a pool that creates problems with the septic system down the road. For rural unincorporated properties in Brooks County, this is a standard part of the planning process not an edge case.
The active construction phase from excavation to a swim-ready pool typically runs six to eight weeks. That’s the time it takes to excavate, set the rebar cage, pass the required county inspection, apply and cure the gunite shell, install plumbing and equipment, and finish the pool deck. Gunite takes approximately 28 days to reach full structural strength, so the curing period is built into that timeline.
The total project timeline, including design, site evaluation, and permitting through Brooks County Development Services, usually runs three to six months from the first conversation to the first swim. The permitting process through the county office in Quitman adds time before construction begins, which is why starting the process in fall or winter is the smartest move for homeowners who want a pool ready before South Georgia’s summer heat sets in. We manage the permitting timeline in-house, so there’s no period where the project is stalled waiting on paperwork you have to chase down yourself.
Specialization is a choice, not a limitation. We build custom inground gunite pools exclusively because it’s the construction method that produces the most durable, most customizable, and longest-lasting result and building one thing exceptionally well is a different business model than building several things adequately.
For homeowners in Dixie and across Brooks County, that specialization shows up in practical ways. Gunite pools are built from scratch in your ground, which means the shape, depth, and footprint are determined by your property and your needs not by what arrived on a delivery truck. On large rural lots where the landscape is irregular, where mature trees define the yard, or where the available footprint doesn’t match a catalog shape, that flexibility is the difference between a pool that genuinely fits your property and one that was forced into it. We’ve been building exclusively gunite pools in rural South Georgia since 2014, backed by more than thirty years of hands-on experience in concrete and pool construction before that. That’s a narrow focus, and it’s intentional.
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