Pool & spa construction · Sable Bay & the coast · Since 1994
Water, built like architecture.
Marlowe designs and builds gunite pools, vinyl pools and spas the slow, engineered way — a soils report before a shape, hydraulics before tile, and a build schedule published to the day at the office gate. Forty-one backyard pools last season; nobody waited on a surprise.
What we do
What Marlowe builds
Gunite pools
A shotcrete shell, steel-reinforced and cured a full 28 days before plaster goes anywhere near it — the cure is the difference between a pool that cracks at a joint and one that outlives the mortgage. Freeform or geometric, infinity edge where the lot allows it.
Vinyl liner pools
Panel walls, a precision-measured liner and a faster, kinder budget. Modern liners hold their pattern fifteen years and more, and we keep your measurements on file so a replacement liner is a two-week order — never a re-survey.
Spas & cold plunges
Standalone or spilling into the pool, gas or heat-pump, salt or chlorine. Forty jets is a showroom number; we size the therapy seating and the jet count to the people who will actually sit in it, and plumb for the day you want it hotter.
Water features & finishes
Scuppers, bubblers, sheer descents and beach entries; glass-tile waterlines and wet-edge pebble. A feature is decided at design, because water in motion has to be plumbed for — it cannot be stapled on later.
How Marlowe builds
The schedule is part of the design
Every Marlowe contract carries a dated sequence — dig day through first fill — and the current week is always on the job board at the office gate. Gunite cures 28 days; we say so in week one, not week nine, and the pool fills exactly when the schedule said it would.
The published schedule
If we miss your fill date by more than ten working days and the delay is ours, the contract credits $150 for each day past it. It has paid out twice in thirty years — which is exactly why we publish the schedule at all.
2025 — 2026, the coast
Recent pools
Six pools from last season, photographed the week the hose came off — hydraulics balanced, salt systems live, nothing styled. Most owners will happily let you walk the deck before you hire us to pour yours.
The coast says
Backyards, after the fill
The schedule said fill on the fourteenth of June and the hose ran on the thirteenth. The gunite cured a full month, the tile course is dead level, and the salt system means the water feels like a resort instead of a chemistry set.
We were warned about pool builders and their surprises. Instead: soils report, dig, shell, 28-day cure, tile, fill — and every Monday the crew chief emailed exactly where we were. The only surprise has been the scupper at night.
They talked us out of the bigger pool and into a vinyl plunge with a spillover spa, and it is the best construction decision we have made here. Liner measured once, installed once, and the kids have not exited it since May.
Fair questions
Before you dig
The five every backyard conversation reaches. The yard line below answers seven to six, coast-wide.
Gunite or vinyl?
Gunite is shape-any and century-scale, and it costs like it. Vinyl is faster, gentler on the budget, and better than its reputation — we build both and say which fits your lot, your soil and your five-year plan out loud at the design table.
Why 28 days before plaster?
Shotcrete gains most of its strength in the first week and the rest over a month; plastering a green shell is how finishes craze and warranties void. The cure is non-negotiable, even when the weather is perfect and everyone is impatient.
Salt or chlorine?
A salt system generates its own chlorine at swimmer-grade levels — softer water, fewer jugs, one cell to service every few seasons. We plumb for it either way, so the choice can be made at equipment set, not at gunite.
How long, honestly?
Ten to fourteen weeks, dig to fill, for most builds. The dated sequence is in the contract before you sign it, and the fill-date guarantee is the paragraph right underneath.
What will it do to the power bill?
A variable-speed pump and a heat-pump water heater, sized to your gallons and your season, are modelled at design against your actual tariff — the running cost is a line in the quote, not a discovery in July.
Design visits on site within the week, coast-wide · (555) 012-8853 · build@marlowepoolco.example
Start with the site visit
We come to the lot with the soils file and the tile library, walk the yard with you, and sketch while we talk. A scaled concept and a fixed quote follow inside ten days. build@marlowepoolco.example