Most pool companies will not put a number in front of you until they are standing in your backyard. We publish ours. Here is what a fiberglass pool actually costs in New Hanover, Pender and Brunswick counties, what is included, and what can move the price.
Every one of those numbers covers the pool, the full equipment package, four feet of concrete decking around the pool, permitting and installation on most sites. None of it is a teaser with the real cost hiding behind it.
Where you land inside that range comes down to three things: the model you choose, how much decking you want, and what your particular yard asks of us. The rest of this page walks through all three.
Every San Juan model we sell is priced on our website. You can look at the whole catalog and see where each one starts before you ever pick up the phone. We would rather you know early whether we are in your range, and if we are not the right builder for your yard, we will tell you that too.
Pricing on this page is current as of October 2026. Product and material costs change over time. Your written quote is the number that counts.
We do not sell a stripped-down version and then charge you back for the parts that make it work. Every Able pool is built on the same package, and here is why each piece is in there.
If your pool includes a built-in spa, you also get:
We build San Juan fiberglass pools exclusively. Their catalog runs about a hundred models, from small plunge pools up to 44 feet long, 16 feet wide and 8 feet deep.
Our steadiest sellers year after year, and the shape most people picture when they imagine a backyard pool. San Juan has built out a whole family around them.
The one we point people toward most often right now. For a lot of Wilmington backyards it is simply the most pool for the money.
Consistent top sellers, and the right call when you want a classic freeform shape with limited space. Both come in under 24 feet long.
Why 16 feet matters. 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, or a shape San Juan does not make, we are not your builder, and we will say so on the first call rather than waste your time.
Two identical pools in two different backyards can be thousands of dollars apart. Here is what causes that, in the order it comes up most often.
Four feet of concrete around the pool is included. Most people want more, and decking is usually the biggest single add to a quote.
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 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 water is not shedding onto your neighbor's property.
Some neighborhoods have tightened this hard. River Lights dropped its allowance from 6,000 square feet to 4,000, and a lot of homes there are at or already over the limit with just the house and the 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 tell you this on the first visit, not at the end.
The single most useful thing you can do before we visit: find your property survey. If you got one when you bought the house, dig it up. Only about a third of the homeowners we meet have one on hand, and the ones who do get real answers on the first visit instead of estimates. If you cannot find it, that is worth knowing early too.
We are on the coast and the water table is high. We hit water on about half the pools we dig. On most of those it is manageable and it costs you nothing extra.
On roughly one in ten, the hole needs rock brought in to stabilize the bottom before the shell can set. That runs $1,000 for the first load of rock and the labor to set up the dewatering pumps, and $500 for each additional load after that.
We ask you to keep a couple thousand dollars in your budget as a cushion for this. Most people never spend it. It is written into our agreement in plain language, and we would rather you hear it from us now than read it later.
There is no survey or test that reliably predicts this beforehand. If you have ever dug a fence post in your yard and hit water at three feet, tell us.
If your yard has meaningful slope, you may need a retaining wall. A typical wall runs around $8,000. We catch this on the site visit about 95 percent of the time. What drives it is the grade of your yard, where the pool sits in it, and how big you want the deck.
On occasion a site calls for a crane, 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 goes past what a 60-ton crane can manage, generally a three-story house on stilts, or a yard we have to lift across a long span. We identify this on the site visit, not after the pool is on the truck.
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.
Oak Island and North Topsail deserve their own paragraph. Both towns have tightened their approval process repeatedly, and they are still moving. Oak Island changed its entire process in the space of three months between one permit and one installation, and now requires 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 do not know what will be required by the time we break ground. What we will tell you is this: there will be extra cost, we are not marking it up, and we will walk you through every step of it. A number of pool builders have stopped doing pools in those towns altogether. We have not.
| Upgrade | Typical cost | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Heat and chill pump | $8,000 | An electric heater with cooling capabilities. Added to about seven out of ten of our projects. |
| Heat-only electric heater | $7,000 | Same as a heat and chill pump without the cooling capability. Only $1,000 less. |
| Two automated deck jets | About $1,200 | The most economical water feature we offer. |
| Bubbler on a tanning ledge | $1,200 | $1,900 for a color-changing LED-lit bubbler, which lights the whole tanning ledge. |
| Sheer descent waterfall wall | $5,000 to $8,000 | Depends on width and whether it is lit. |
| Pump upgrade to 1.85 hp | $400 | Only needed once you stack several water features. |
| Pump upgrade to 2.7 hp | $900 | For the largest feature loads, like a water slide. |
| Automatic cover | Approximately $20,000 | Push a button and the pool covers itself. Has to be planned from the start, because the skimmer must be installed to accommodate the cover vault. |
Pre-wire for electric heat, even if you are not buying a heater now. Adding one after the fact means rerunning your power feed, which turns an $8,000 job into about $9,500. This is the single most common thing our customers tell us they wish they had done.
The 1.65 horsepower variable speed pump included with your pool handles one or two water features without any trouble. Stack three or more and you may need to size up.
One exception worth knowing: if you have a pool and spa combination and you want the water features running while you use the spa, that would require a second pump.
Waterline tile and spray deck, commonly known as Cool Deck, can both be added later, so we do not lean on them during the initial purchase. Anything that needs pre-plumbing or pre-wiring has to be decided before we build, and those are the ones we make sure you have thought through.
| Amount | Milestone | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | At signing | We order your pool and start the permitting process. |
| 20% | Permit issued | We buy your equipment and get you on the schedule. |
| 60% | Pool delivered | Your shell and every component are on site and in your possession. |
| 10% | Concrete formed | Paid before the pour, adjusted for the final square footage. |
That last step is why the final number can move slightly. We let you adjust your deck dimensions when the concrete contractor is out there forming it, and we bill the difference up or down from the original agreement.
If you decide mid-project that you want an upgraded handrail or another feature, we price it and send an invoice. We do not charge a fee for changing your mind.
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 impervious limit, or the CAMA line cuts through your yard, we refund your deposit, minus anything we have already spent on permitting. In most of those cases we never got far enough to apply for a permit, so you get all of it back. If you simply change your mind, we issue a store credit.
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 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.
A standard project takes four to six weeks from the first dig to your first swim. The longer variable is the wait to start, which depends on our current backlog. As of late September 2026, we are beginning construction in mid-November.
We narrow the catalog from about a hundred models down to a handful based on three answers: rectangular or freeform, tanning ledge or not, and how deep. We send you the model list and what is included before we come out.
We lay the pool out in your yard, talk through where the equipment goes, check access, and flag anything that could affect the price. You usually have a quote within 24 hours, often the same day.
Agreements are sent through DocuSign. Once you sign, we order your pool and start the permit process.
Excavation, setting the shell, plumbing, equipment, electrical and concrete. Four to six weeks for a standard project. More subcontractors means a longer project completion time.
About two hours walking you through your equipment, your water and your automation, so the pool is yours to run with confidence.
The most common delay is not on our end. It is waiting on homeowner selections, and it is waiting on HOA approval.
Start your HOA paperwork immediately. Some boards meet weekly, some meet monthly, and some meet less often than that. In several neighborhoods here, HOA approval takes longer than county permitting. Do not expect to get it right on the first submission. Turn something in early so you have time to fix it. We help you through it, but we cannot attend the meeting for you.
Projects also stretch when a product selection has a long lead time, or when access is tight enough that we are hauling dirt out one bucket at a time with a walk-behind skid steer.
We do not build storm delays into a schedule, because nobody can forecast them. If we get a flash flood, it typically costs us about a day per affected pool, and we shift the schedule to catch up.
Once your water is balanced and you stay on top of it. The people who ignore it for a few months are the ones who come into the store and spend a hundred dollars at once getting it back in range.
Chemicals plus the energy to run everything. Heaters and water features add to that when you run them.
Their current rebate for a variable speed pump, which is standard on every pool we build. On another utility, ask us and we will help you find out what they offer.
A fiberglass pool with a salt system is about as low-maintenance as a pool gets. Low maintenance and no maintenance are two different things, but your variable speed pump uses a fraction of the energy a single-speed pump does, and the gel coat surface does not need the resurfacing a concrete pool does every decade or so.
We service the equipment we install, during the warranty period and after it expires.
Never drain your pool. You live at the beach, the water table is high, and an empty fiberglass pool is a boat. It can pop out of the ground. If you need to lower your water level for any reason, call us first. Draining it yourself voids your warranty.
When your pool is finished we walk you through everything: your warranty packet and manuals, how every component of your equipment works, how to manually vacuum, how to empty the pump basket, how to backwash the filter, and how to run your automation from your phone. It takes about two hours, and by the time we leave the pool is yours to run with confidence.
We would rather tell you now than waste your time. You are probably better off with someone else if:
The single most valuable thing you can hand us. It tells us where your setbacks are and how much impervious surface you have left, which means real answers on the first visit instead of estimates.
Rectangular or freeform, tanning ledge or not, and how deep. Those three answers narrow a hundred models down to about eight.
If you have an HOA, bring their setbacks and any impervious surface limit. Some HOAs are stricter than the county.
Tell us your shape, your depth and whether you want a tanning ledge, and we will narrow the catalog before we ever set foot in your yard.
Or call us at (910) 251-0038
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