Gunite is the pool we build when the design comes first and nothing is allowed to compromise it. Because the concrete is sprayed and shaped in your yard, nothing about the pool is decided by what fits on a truck, which covers the shape, the depth, the size and whether a crane could ever have reached your backyard. What you pay for that freedom is time on your property.
What gunite lets you build
Any shape you can draw
The outline of a gunite pool is drawn rather than picked from a range. A freeform pool can follow the line of your hillside, or work around a mature oak or a rock outcrop. A lap lane can sit at an angle that no mold comes in. All of those are normal requests here rather than special ones.
Any depth you want, and more than a single depth in the same pool
A shallow ledge at one end and real swimming depth at the other, in the same pool, is straightforward in gunite and impossible in a molded shell. So is a beach entry that walks in from the patio with no step at all, which people tend to remember longer than anything else about a pool.
A spa built into the pool
A spa that forms part of the pool structure and spills into the water is one build and one set of equipment rather than two. Of everything gunite can do, a built in spa is the most common reason people choose it once they have seen both options side by side.
A vanishing edge over a view
An edge where the water runs over and disappears only works where the ground falls away behind it, which is exactly what a great deal of property in this region does. A vanishing edge needs a catch basin below and its own pump, so it is a real cost rather than a detail, but on the right property it is the design that uses your land instead of fighting it.
Rock and water features
Boulder waterfalls, grottos, spillways and swim jets are built into the structure rather than bolted onto it afterward. Anything structural is designed in before the spray day.
Size
No ceiling applies other than the one your yard, your budget and your permit put on it.
What a gunite pool build involves
The site visit
Before anything is priced, we come out and measure your yard. We check how much your land slopes where the pool would go, how deep the rock is, where water runs in a heavy rain, how wide and how steep your driveway is, and how far it is to your electrical panel. We also work out where a mixer and a pump truck can stand on the day the concrete goes on. Those measurements decide the design and most of the price.
Design
Design is the step that gunite has and the delivered pools do not, and it is the part we do together with you. The outline, the depth profile, the steps, the ledges, the spa, the edge detail and the interior finish are all drawn rather than chosen from a range. Designing properly takes longer at the front of the project, and it is the whole reason you would pick gunite in the first place.
Permits
The application goes to the county along with the pool engineering drawings. We handle the permitting from application through final inspection, so you do not file anything and you do not chase an inspector.
The dig
The hole is cut to the drawn shape rather than to a rectangle, and that includes the deep end, the steps and the ledges. On a sloped lot the dig is also where the ground gets reshaped and where whatever needs holding back gets held.
Steel
A cage of reinforcing bar is tied inside the hole, across the floor and up the walls, and held off the ground so that the concrete gets underneath it rather than sitting on top of it. The steel cage is the structure of the pool, and the concrete that follows is what encases it.
Plumbing before concrete
Return lines, skimmers, main drains, the lines for any water features and the conduit for the lights all go in before the concrete does, because after the spray day every one of them is permanently inside the wall. Anything you want plumbed into this pool is decided now.
Spray day
Concrete is fired through a hose at high pressure onto the steel and worked by hand as it lands, across the floor, the walls, the steps and the ledges. Spray day is one continuous operation and it is the day the pool stops being a hole and becomes a shape. The finished surface is cut and shaped by hand, which is why the skill on the nozzle and the trowel shows up in the result.
Curing
The concrete has to cure in your yard. The shell is kept wet through the first stretch, and it takes about a month to harden. Nothing about that can be hurried, because it is chemistry rather than scheduling, and it is the single biggest reason a gunite build is measured in months.
Tile, coping and the patio
As the concrete cures, the work moves outward to the waterline tile, the coping around the top of the pool, and the patio and decking. Drainage is built here as well, which covers where roof water and hillside runoff go, and where they go instead of across the pool area.
Interior finish
Once the concrete has cured, the inside gets its finish in plaster, a quartz or pebble aggregate, or tile. The interior finish is the surface you actually touch and the one that eventually wears out, so the trade between the options is worth understanding before you pick.
Filling, startup and handover
We fill the pool, balance the water, and start up and set the equipment. A new plaster or aggregate finish needs particular care in its first weeks, with brushing and water chemistry watched more closely than it will ever be watched again, and we show you exactly what that involves.
