Pool builder in
Austin.
Custom gunite pools across Austin — from Westlake hillsides to flat East Side lots. Designed in your backyard, built by the same crew from dig to swim, with every City of Austin permit pulled by us.
Built for Austin backyards.
Austin is really two cities to a pool builder, and the line between them is the Balcones Escarpment. West of it — Westlake, Barton Creek, Great Hills, the Lake Travis side — you are building into limestone on a slope, and the pool is as much a retaining and drainage problem as a design one. East of it the ground turns to blackland clay that moves with the seasons and has to be engineered for. We build on both sides, and we quote them differently because they are genuinely different jobs.
Donna and Ben have been building gunite pools for over thirty years, first in California and now across Central Texas. In Austin that matters most at the permit counter and on tight lots, where the difference between a smooth build and a six-month one is knowing what the city is going to ask for before you submit.
What we plan for here.
City of Austin permitting
Austin is the slowest jurisdiction we work in, and the reasons are specific: impervious cover limits, heritage tree protection for anything 19 inches or more in diameter, and extra review inside the Barton Springs Zone. We design to those constraints from the first sketch rather than redrawing after a rejection, and we pull the building and electrical permits ourselves.
Hillside builds west of MoPac
Westlake, Barton Creek, Great Hills and Steiner Ranch lots often fall away from the house fast enough that the pool needs engineered retaining and a real drainage plan before anyone talks about shape. That slope is also the opportunity — it is what makes a negative edge read the way people hope it will.
Getting equipment into the yard
Plenty of central Austin lots — Tarrytown, Travis Heights, Hyde Park, Mueller — have no side-yard access wide enough for a machine. We work those with conveyors, smaller equipment, and gunite pumped over the house. It costs more and we say so in the quote instead of finding out on dig day.
Every service, in Austin.
Gunite pools near Austin.
We also build throughout Pflugerville, Round Rock, Cedar Park, and Lago Vista, and across Travis County and Central Texas.
Longer than anywhere else we build — plan on several weeks for City of Austin review, more if your lot is near impervious cover limits or has protected trees. We submit a package designed to those rules the first time, which is the only reliable way to keep it short. You never deal with the building department.
Most of our gunite pools run $85k–$145k with standard plaster; premium finishes, water features, and larger footprints push toward $180k–$220k. Hillside lots that need engineered retaining, and central lots that need pumped gunite, add cost we itemize up front. You get a written quote after one site visit.
Yes — that is a good share of what we build. Steep sites need structural retaining, drainage that actually moves water off the slope, and sometimes a crane or pump for the gunite. All of it goes in the written quote before we start.
Rarely, but it changes the design. Austin protects trees 19 inches and up, with stricter rules on heritage species, and the critical root zone shapes where the shell and the equipment pad can go. We locate trees on the first visit and design around them rather than applying to remove them.
Building in Austin?
Let's talk pools.
One site visit. One written quote. No pressure.