The questions we actually get asked, answered the way we would answer them standing in your backyard. If something here is not covered, call us and ask. We will add it.
Our pool projects run from about $58,000 to a little over $100,000. The average contract we have written this year is $85,000.
Where you land inside that range comes down to the model you pick, how much decking you want, and what your particular yard asks of us. Everything below explains what moves that number.
Every San Juan model we sell is priced on our website, so you can see where each one starts before you call. We are one of the only pool builders in this area that publishes pricing at all. Our pool pricing guide breaks the whole thing down.
Every Able pool is built on the same package. No stripped-down version, no charging you back for the parts that make it work.
If your pool includes a built-in spa, you also get:
Honestly, very few. We wrap up potential costs on the front end, and about nine times out of ten you finish at the price you were quoted. We do not nickel and dime.
The one real exception is what is underground. We are on the coast with a high water table, and about half the pools we dig hit water. On most of those it is manageable and costs you nothing. On roughly one in ten, we have to bring in rock to stabilize the bottom of the hole. That is $1,000 for the first load and the dewatering setup, then $500 per additional load.
We ask you to keep a couple thousand in your budget as a cushion for that. Most people never spend it. It is written into our agreement in plain language.
Occasionally we find something nobody knew was there, like an old septic tank that has to come out. Sometimes we absorb it, sometimes we have to call you. Either way you will hear about it from us right away.
An automatic pool cover, at approximately $20,000. You push a button and the pool covers itself. It keeps the leaves out, holds the heat in, and it is sturdy enough to walk across.
We do not sell a lot of them, and we will not pretend the price is small. If you have the room in your budget, it is worth it. The one thing we will insist on is planning it from the start, because the skimmer must be installed to accommodate the cover vault.
The upgrade we recommend most often is different: a heat and chill pump at $8,000, which goes on about seven out of ten of our projects. More on that in the pricing guide.
Four feet of concrete around the pool is included. Most people want more, and decking is usually the biggest single add to a quote.
If your yard has meaningful slope, a larger deck can also mean a retaining wall. We catch that on the site visit and tell you before you sign.
The 1.65 horsepower variable speed pump we include handles one or two features easily. Stack three or more and you may need to size up. That is $400 to go to 1.85 horsepower, or $900 to go to 2.7.
One thing worth knowing: if you have a pool and spa combination and want the water features running while you use the spa, that would require a second pump.
Payments are tied to build milestones, not to the calendar:
That last step is why the final number can shift slightly. We let you adjust deck dimensions when the concrete contractor is out there forming it, and we bill the difference up or down.
We also do not charge change order fees. If you want an upgraded handrail mid-project, we price it and send an invoice. No penalty for changing your mind.
You get it back. If you put down a deposit and then cannot get a pool through no fault of your own, whether your HOA says no, you are over your allowable impervious surface, or the CAMA line cuts through your yard, we refund your deposit minus anything we already spent on permitting fees. In most of those cases we never got far enough to apply, so you get all of it back.
If you simply change your mind about wanting a pool, we issue a store credit.
We do not know of many pool builders who do it this way. We think you should not carry the risk for a rule nobody can control.
Yes. We work with two financing partners so we can fit a range of customers, including options that combine cash and financing on the same project.
Inquiring takes about a minute and uses a soft credit check, so there is no impact on your credit to find out your terms. No equity and no appraisal required, and no money down. Once you are conditionally approved you get your loan terms within 24 hours, and the full loan amount funds directly to your checking account.
You can fund up to 120 percent of your total project cost, which covers changes you decide to make partway through construction.
Lyon has been financing backyard projects since 1979. They are veteran owned and operated, with discounted fees for active and retired military. Their loans are unsecured, so there is no equity requirement, and long terms are available to keep the monthly payment manageable.
Lyon assigns you a live agent who stays with you from application through the final payment, rather than handing you off at every step.
Financing is provided by third parties, not by Able Pools and Spas. HFS Financial is not a lender or a broker, and an inquiry is not a loan application. Neither Able Pools and Spas nor HFS Financial endorses, warrants or guarantees the services or products of any lender or broker. All information is subject to change without notice. Not all applicants will qualify.
Because for this area it is the right answer more often than not, and because doing one thing well beats doing three things adequately.
A fiberglass shell is built in a factory-controlled environment and arrives in one piece. It is a lot of pool for the money, it is durable, and it is the lowest-maintenance of the three pool types. A concrete pool has to be refinished roughly every ten years, and that is a five-figure job. A fiberglass gel coat does not.
The trade-off is design flexibility. You are choosing from a catalog rather than drawing on a napkin. For most backyards that catalog has something that fits. For some it does not, and we will tell you.
Up to 44 feet long, 16 feet wide and 8 feet deep. Sixteen feet is a hard ceiling on width because that is the widest shell that can legally travel down the highway.
If you want something larger than that, you need a concrete builder. Same if you want a shape San Juan does not make, because we cannot modify the molds.
Fiberglass is a one-piece shell, the quickest to install, and the lowest maintenance over the life of the pool. Limited to the shapes and sizes in the catalog.
Vinyl liner gets you a bigger pool for less money up front. But the liner has to be replaced periodically, and around here the ground is unstable enough that we think you are flirting with disaster. We do not build them.
Concrete or gunite gives you unlimited design freedom, which matters if you have a tight or unusual space, or you want something specific we cannot get. It costs significantly more, and it needs refinishing about every decade.
We would rather say this out loud than waste your time. You are probably better off elsewhere if:
No, and we would rather you not go in believing that. They are extremely durable, which is the honest headline, but durable and indestructible are not the same word.
The shell carries a 25-year structural warranty and the gel coat carries a 10-year warranty. If a spider crack shows up, San Juan has technicians who travel the country and will touch it up within that window.
What the gel coat warranty does not cover is staining, and staining is almost always a water chemistry issue rather than a pool issue. Keep your chemistry where it belongs and discoloration is minimal.
This is the biggest change in our market over the last two or three years, and it catches almost everyone off guard.
Most towns, counties and HOAs cap how much of your lot can be covered in surfaces that water cannot pass through. Concrete counts against that cap. So does your driveway, your foundation and your patio. The pool itself does not, because that is not rainwater shedding onto your neighbor's property.
Some neighborhoods have tightened this considerably. River Lights dropped its allowance from 6,000 square feet to 4,000, and many homes there are at or over the limit with just the house and driveway.
If you are close to your cap, your options are to apply for a small variance, cut the deck back, or use composite decking instead of concrete. We raise this on the first visit rather than at the end.
Because it is the difference between a real answer and a guess.
A survey tells us where your setbacks are and how much impervious surface you have already used, which is what determines whether your deck plan is even possible. Without it we are estimating.
Only about a third of the homeowners we visit have one on hand. If you got one when you bought your house, dig it up before we come out. If you cannot find it, that is useful to know early too, because sometimes it means going and getting one.
We will still come out without it. Some pool builders in this area will not even schedule a site visit unless you submit a survey first. We do not work that way. We would just rather show up with good information than guesses.
We assist with it, but we cannot control it, and nine times out of ten the HOA does not want to talk to us anyway. We give you everything you need to put in front of the board. Getting it in front of them is on you.
Start immediately. Some boards meet weekly, some monthly, and some less often than that. In several neighborhoods here, HOA approval takes longer than county permitting. Do not assume you will get it right on the first submission. Turn something in early so you have time to fix it and resubmit.
Also worth knowing: an HOA can be stricter than the county. The county may issue your permit and the HOA can still say no, and some HOAs enforce different setbacks than the county does.
If your property is located within a designated Area of Environmental Concern (AEC), such as certain oceanfront, inlet, or waterfront areas, additional permitting and construction requirements may apply. Depending on the location and project, these may include engineered plans, elevation certificates, specialized pool anchoring systems, additional surveys, and other site-specific requirements. CAMA regulations, along with applicable local building and floodplain requirements, are designed to protect coastal resources and improve construction safety. These additional requirements can increase both the cost and timeline of your pool installation.
Yes. A number of pool builders have stopped. We have not.
Both towns have tightened their approval process repeatedly, and it is still moving. Oak Island changed its entire process in the space of three months between one permit and one installation. They now require topographical and as-built surveys, a stormwater retention system, and tree worksheets that did not exist a year ago.
We will not quote you a number for those towns, because we genuinely do not know what will be required by the time we break ground. What we will tell you is that there will be extra cost, that we are not marking it up, and that we will help you through every step of it. We are on the same team on that paperwork.
A standard project takes four to six weeks from the first dig to your first swim. The longer part is the wait to start, which depends on our backlog. As of late September 2026, we are beginning construction in mid-November.
More subcontractors means a longer project completion time. An elevated spillover spa, for example, uses a specialist we wait for on purpose, because his work is flawless and we would rather it be right than fast.
Usually not what people expect. In order:
We deal with it, and it is routine. We set up pumps to dewater the hole and keep working. About half of our digs hit water and most of them cost you nothing extra.
The cost comes in on the roughly one in ten where the bottom of the hole has to be stabilized with rock before the shell can set. That is $1,000 for the first load plus the pump setup, then $500 for each additional load. We have had digs take five loads.
There is no test that reliably predicts this beforehand. If you have dug a fence post and hit water at three feet, tell us. That is useful.
An empty fiberglass pool is essentially a boat. Full of water and properly installed, it is not going anywhere. Empty, with a high water table underneath it and six inches of rain in two hours, it can shift or lift.
That is our problem during construction, not yours, and we have gotten faster at prepping pools and getting pumps in place to prevent it.
It becomes your problem in exactly one scenario: if you drain your pool. Do not drain your pool. If you need to lower the water level for any reason, call us first.
On occasion, and the standard crane is already included in your price. It handles about three quarters of the lifts we do.
You only pay extra when the reach or the height exceeds what a 60-ton crane can manage, generally a three-story house on stilts, or a long span we have to clear. We identify this during the site visit, not after the pool is on the truck.
One thing worth raising early: if getting to your backyard means crossing a neighbor's property or an HOA common area, ask for that permission before you need it. We have had a homeowner get told no and end up paying for a crane lift over the house that could have been avoided.
It is the handoff. About two hours where we go through your warranty packet and manuals, explain every component of your equipment, show you how to manually vacuum, how to empty the pump basket, how to backwash the filter, and how to run your automation from your phone.
By the time we leave, the pool is yours to run with confidence.
Chemicals run about $40 to $50 a month once your water is balanced and you stay on top of it. All in, including the energy to run everything, budget about $100 a month.
That assumes you actually pay attention to your water. The people who ignore it for a few months are the ones who come into the store and spend over a hundred dollars at once getting it back in range.
Heaters and water features add to that when you run them. A fiberglass pool with a salt system is about as low-maintenance as a pool gets, but low maintenance and no maintenance are two different things.
Less than you would think. Every pool we build includes a variable speed pump, and at 50 percent it consumes a fraction of what a single-speed pump does.
Duke Energy currently offers a $900 rebate for having one. That is money back in your pocket for equipment that was already standard on your pool. If you are served by another utility, ask us and we will help you find out what they offer.
The labor coverage is the part worth noticing. A lot of equipment warranties cover the part and leave you paying someone to install it. Ours does not, for three years.
After that we still service what we installed. We just charge for it.
We do, on the pools we install. That is warranty work inside the coverage window and billed service after it.
Having a local company that sold you the equipment and will come back out for it matters more than people realize when they are shopping. It is worth asking any pool builder you are talking to what happens in year four.
No. Call us first.
You live at the beach with a high water table. An empty fiberglass pool can pop out of the ground, and draining it yourself voids your warranty. If you need the water level lowered for any reason, that is a phone call, not a weekend project.
Yes, and this is the single most common misconception we hear.
Salt is sodium chloride. Run electricity through it and the chloride becomes chlorine. So a saltwater pool generates its own chlorine instead of you hauling jugs home from the store. It is the same sanitizer, produced a different way.
The payoff is control. You can hold your chlorine between 1 and 4 parts per million, which is roughly a tenth of the salinity of the ocean. You cannot smell it or taste it, and it does not dry out your skin the way a traditional chlorine pool can.
No, and this is the other half of the misconception above.
More salt does not mean more chlorine. If your chlorine is low, you turn up the generator. Adding salt does not help, and you can add so much that the system stops working entirely.
If you are not sure where your levels are, bring us a water sample. Testing is free for the life of your pool, and we would rather sort it out in five minutes at the counter than have you chasing it for a month.
Less than the alternatives, which is one of the main reasons we build them. The gel coat surface does not need the resurfacing a concrete pool does roughly every ten years, and paired with a salt system the day-to-day is about as light as pool ownership gets.
What it still needs is attention. Check your water, empty the pump basket, backwash the filter. Stay ahead of your chemistry and the pool mostly takes care of itself. Let it go for a few months and you will spend a Saturday and a hundred dollars getting it back.
A robot cleaner is the upgrade nobody regrets. We have never had a customer tell us they wished they had skipped it.
Ask us. If it is a good question, it probably belongs on this page, and somebody else is wondering the same thing.
Or call us at (910) 251-0038
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