Albuquerque Pool Pros: Gunite Construction, Remodeling, Heating & Year-Round Service
Pools engineered for 5,300 feet — hard freezes, hard water, and 300 days of sun. Residential and commercial work across the metro, free design and estimates.
- Licensed & Insured
- 15+ Years in the High Desert
- Free 3D Design Visit
- Se Habla Español
Our Pool Services in Albuquerque, NM
New Pool Construction
New pool construction in Albuquerque is a soils problem before it is a design problem, because somewhere under most lots in this metro sits caliche — a cemented calcium carbonate hardpan that ranges from a nuisance to something that stops a standard excavator cold. What we build on top of it is gunite: a tied rebar cage, concrete shot pneumatically in one placement, and a seven-day water cure.
Fiberglass Pool Installation
Fiberglass pool installation runs three to five weeks in Albuquerque instead of the three months a gunite build takes, and in a market where excavation is the expensive part it is often the cheaper answer too. The shell is molded at a factory, trucked in, craned into a prepared hole, plumbed, backfilled with washed gravel, and decked.
Pool Remodeling & Renovation
Pool remodeling in Albuquerque usually means one specific pool: something built between 1975 and 1995 with a deep diving well nobody uses, a narrow shallow end, cracked cool-deck, one yellow light, and a screaming single-speed pump. Structurally most of those shells are fine — what is finished is everything attached to them, and that is exactly what a remodel replaces.
Pool Resurfacing & Replastering
Pool resurfacing and replastering comes due faster in Albuquerque than the manufacturer's brochure suggests, thanks to a combination unusual to this market: extreme high-altitude UV, hard fill water heavy in calcium, and a daily temperature swing that cycles the surface. White plaster that might give fifteen years on the coast frequently goes chalky, rough, and mottled here around year eight or ten.
Waterline Tile & Coping
Waterline tile and coping replacement is the maintenance problem that is genuinely worse in Albuquerque than almost anywhere else. Fill water here is hard, evaporation concentrates it further, and the result is a chalky white calcium band along the tile line that thickens every single season.
Pool Decks & Hardscape
Pool decks and hardscape get used nine months a year in Albuquerque even though the swim season is barely three, which is why we design decking as a room rather than a walkway. Two conditions govern material choice here: how painful an unshaded surface gets at 5,300 feet in July, and how it survives dozens of freeze-thaw cycles each winter.
Spa & Hot Tub Installation
Spa and hot tub installation is arguably the more valuable half of the project in a market with an eleven-week unheated swim season. A pool in Albuquerque is a summer amenity; a spa is a February amenity, and sitting in 102-degree water under a clear high-desert sky at 20 degrees is one of the genuinely great things about living here.
Water Features & Fountains
Pool water features — sheer descents, bubblers, laminar jets, scuppers, and boulder waterfalls — do something in the high desert they do not do elsewhere, because the sound of moving water in a dry landscape is disproportionately pleasant. We build the whole range, from a single bubbler on a tanning ledge to a waterfall in local basalt and granite that looks like it came with the lot.
LED Pool Lighting
LED pool lighting is the cheapest upgrade with the biggest effect on how much an Albuquerque pool actually gets used, because our evenings stay cool and clear and the pool is often at its best after nine at night. A color-changing LED draws a small fraction of the wattage of the 300 or 500 watt bulb it replaces, lasts many times longer, and adds a dozen colors controlled from the same app as the pump.
Pool Automation & Controls
Pool automation is worth more in Albuquerque than in warm-climate markets, and the reason is freeze protection. A control system watches air temperature and starts the pump before anything in the plumbing can freeze, automatically, at three in the morning, without anybody having to remember.
Pool Heaters & Heat Pumps
Pool heater installation is the single most consequential decision an Albuquerque pool owner makes, because it decides whether you own a three-month pool or a six-month one. Unheated, our season runs mid-June to early September; with the right heater and a cover, most of our customers swim from late April into October.
Variable-Speed Pumps & Filtration
Variable-speed pumps and filtration are the largest electrical load most Albuquerque homes add without thinking about it, and federal efficiency rules have now effectively retired the single-speed pool pump. Power draw scales roughly with the cube of pump speed, so a variable-speed unit at 1,200 RPM for twelve hours moves the same water as a single-speed at 3,450 RPM for four while drawing a fraction of the energy.
Saltwater Chlorination Systems
Saltwater chlorination is a chlorine pool with a different delivery mechanism: a cell in the return line electrolyzes dissolved salt and produces chlorine continuously. You keep salt around 3,200 parts per million — roughly a tenth of seawater, below the taste threshold — which is why salt pools feel softer on skin and gentler on eyes than a pool dosed from jugs.
Pool Leak Detection & Repair
Pool leak detection is harder in Albuquerque than almost anywhere for one specific reason: evaporation here is enormous, and low humidity, constant sun, and afternoon wind can pull a quarter to a half inch a day off an uncovered pool in June. Plenty of homeowners spend a whole summer convinced they have a leak when what they actually have is a climate.
Pool Equipment Repair
Pool equipment repair is the call when something on the pad is making a sound it did not make last week, the heater lights and immediately shuts down, or the pool went from clear to green over a long weekend. We diagnose and repair everything on a residential or commercial equipment pad, and the truck carries the parts that fail most often so a large share of calls finish in a single visit.
Weekly Pool Cleaning & Maintenance
Weekly pool cleaning and maintenance in Albuquerque is seasonal work with two very different modes, and a service that bills it like a year-round warm-climate route is charging you for the wrong thing. From April through October the pool is open and needs real weekly attention; from November through March it is closed, and what it needs is competent winterization.
Pool Winterization & Freeze Protection
Pool winterization and freeze protection is the service that most distinguishes an Albuquerque pool from a Phoenix or Houston one, and it is the one people skip until the year they do not. Water expands about nine percent when it freezes, and a single overnight low in the teens will split a pump housing, crack a filter tank, rupture a heater header, or break a skimmer throat.
Commercial Pool Construction & Service
Commercial pool construction and service across Bernalillo, Sandoval, and Valencia counties is regulated public-health work that happens to resemble a backyard amenity, and the distinction becomes very clear the day an inspector arrives with a clipboard. We build, renovate, and maintain pools for hotels, apartment and condo communities, student housing, HOAs, health clubs, and municipal facilities.
Pool Safety Fences & Covers
Pool safety fences and covers earn their keep twice in Albuquerque. The safety case is not negotiable — drowning is the leading cause of accidental death for young children, and layered protection is what prevents it — and the second case is water and heat, because an uncovered pool in this climate loses a remarkable volume to evaporation every summer.
Albuquerque Pool Pros is a licensed and insured pool contractor with over 15 years of experience designing, building, and servicing swimming pools for residential and commercial properties in Albuquerque, NM.
We handle new gunite and shotcrete pool construction, fiberglass pool installation, inground pool remodeling, pool resurfacing and replastering, waterline tile and coping, pool decks and hardscape, spa and hot tub installation, water features, LED pool lighting, pool automation, gas heaters and heat pumps, variable-speed pumps and filtration, saltwater chlorination, leak detection, equipment repair, weekly pool cleaning, safety fencing and covers, commercial pool contracts, and full winterization.
Interiors go in as PebbleTec and pebble aggregate, polished quartz, or white plaster, with travertine, flagstone, and cantilevered concrete coping.
High desert pools need different engineering than pools anywhere else, and that is most of what we do.
At 5,312 feet the UV is brutal on plaster and deck coatings, the humidity is low enough that an uncovered pool can lose a startling amount of water to evaporation every summer week, the fill water is hard enough to scale a salt cell and crust a tile line, and the winter brings hard freezes that will split a pump housing overnight if the pad was not built for it.
We are licensed through the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department's Construction Industries Division, insured and bonded, members of the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance, and every build, remodel, and resurfacing job carries a written workmanship warranty. Se habla español.
What Albuquerque Customers Say
They hit caliche about three feet down and told us the same day what it would cost instead of springing it on us later. Pool was done on schedule and the pebble finish still looks new.
Talked us into a heat pump and a cover on top of the remodel. We now swim from April to October instead of July. Should have done it a decade ago.
Our filter tank cracked in a freeze the winter before we found them. They winterize us properly now and walked me through how to check it myself. No problems since.
The tile line was solid white calcium and two other companies just said replace it. These guys bead blasted it and saved us a fortune. Straight answers every time.
Why Albuquerque Chooses Albuquerque Pool Pros
- ✓Over 15 years building pools at 5,300 feet — caliche, hard water and hard freezes
- ✓Residential and commercial, from backyard gunite pools to hotel and HOA amenities
- ✓In-house crews from excavation through start-up, not rotating subcontractors
- ✓Heating and cover packages that turn an 11-week season into a six-month one
- ✓Licensed, insured and bonded, with a written workmanship warranty
- ✓Se habla español
About Albuquerque Pool Pros in Albuquerque, NM
Albuquerque Pool Pros has spent over 15 years building and maintaining swimming pools across the metro — from the horse properties in Corrales and the old adobe lots along Rio Grande Boulevard to the hillside builds in the Northeast Heights and the newer subdivisions spreading across the Rio Rancho mesa.
We started small, doing replasters and equipment swaps, and grew by doing the unglamorous parts properly. We still run our own crews rather than handing your backyard to a rotating cast of subcontractors.
Building a pool at 5,312 feet is a specialty, not a variation. The sun at this altitude fades and chalks surfaces that would last twice as long at sea level. The air is dry enough that evaporation, not splash-out, is the main way your pool loses water. Excavation runs into caliche hardpan that stops a rented mini-excavator cold.
The fill water carries enough calcium to crust a tile line in a season. And every November the pool has to be shut down properly or the first hard freeze finds whatever you forgot.
We design for every one of those conditions — pebble and quartz interiors that resist etching, deck materials that survive freeze-thaw cycling, plumbing buried below the frost line, pads laid out so winterization takes an hour rather than an afternoon.
Whether you want a new gunite pool with a raised spa and a Sandia view, a 1980s diving pool turned into something your family will actually use, or just somebody reliable to keep the water clear from April to October, we handle it end to end.
Licensed through the New Mexico Construction Industries Division, insured and bonded, members of the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance, and every construction, remodel, and resurfacing project is backed by a written workmanship warranty. Se habla español, and the estimate is free.
How It Works
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1. Site visit and 3D design
We walk the lot, find the caliche layer, check setbacks and the utility easements, and note where the Sandias throw afternoon shade. Then we design the pool in 3D and hand you a line-by-line quote — finish grade, tile allowance, deck square footage, equipment model numbers.
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2. Permits and excavation
City of Albuquerque or Bernalillo County permits, utility locates, layout sprayed on the ground, then the dig. Caliche and cobble slow an excavator down, and we price that honestly instead of hitting you with a change order in week two.
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3. Steel, gunite, tile and finish
Rebar cage, pressure-tested plumbing buried below the frost line, gunite shell, seven-day water cure, then tile, coping, decking, equipment, and interior finish. Freeze protection is designed into the pad from the start, not bolted on in November.
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4. Start-up, training and handoff
We fill, brush daily through the plaster cure, balance the chemistry against Albuquerque's hard fill water, and teach you the pump schedule, the heater, and the winterization routine. Then we hand you the warranty packet.
Commercial Pool Construction & Service in the Albuquerque Metro
We build, renovate, and maintain commercial pools for hotels, apartment and condo communities, HOAs, health clubs, and municipal facilities across Bernalillo, Sandoval, and Valencia counties. Every project is documented to New Mexico Environment Department public pool and spa requirements — turnover rate, main drain covers certified to the Virginia Graeme Baker Act, depth markings, barrier and gate hardware, and the daily chemical logs an inspector will ask to see.
- ✓Hotels, resorts and short-term rental properties
- ✓Apartment, condo and student housing communities
- ✓HOAs, health clubs and municipal aquatic facilities
- ✓Built to New Mexico public pool and spa requirements
- ✓Seasonal opening, closing and winterization contracts
- ✓ADA-compliant lifts, handrails and zero-entry access
Service Areas
Albuquerque Pool Pros serves Albuquerque, NM and surrounding communities including:
Recent Projects Across the Albuquerque metro and the Rio Grande valley
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does an inground pool cost in Albuquerque?
Most gunite pools we build in the Albuquerque metro run from the high $50,000s into the $90,000s. Costs here run above the national average for two honest reasons: excavation through caliche and cobble is slow, and almost every pool that gets used more than three months a year needs a heater and a cover, which are real line items rather than upsells. Fiberglass shells come in lower. You get a firm itemized quote after the free design visit.
How long is the swim season in Albuquerque?
Unheated, roughly mid-June through early September — call it eleven or twelve weeks. With a heat pump or gas heater and a cover, most of our customers swim from late April into October, which is more than double the season for a fraction of the cost of the pool. This is the single biggest difference between a pool that gets used and a pool that gets resented.
Do pools have to be winterized in New Mexico?
Yes, and this is where we see the most expensive avoidable damage in the metro. Albuquerque gets real hard freezes, and a pump, filter, heater, or salt cell with water sitting in it will crack. We blow out and plug the lines, drain the equipment, lower the water below the skimmer or fit skimmer guards, and set freeze protection where the system stays running. A cracked filter tank costs more than five years of winterization.
How does Albuquerque's hard water affect a pool?
It scales. High calcium hardness in the fill water leaves a white crust on the tile line, coats the inside of a salt cell until it stops producing, and etches plaster when the balance swings the other way. We manage it with careful saturation-index balancing, aggregate interior finishes instead of white plaster, periodic cell cleaning, and occasional partial drain-and-refills. It is manageable, but only if somebody is actually testing calcium hardness and not just chlorine.
Is a solar cover worth it here?
It is the highest-return item you can buy for a pool in this climate. Low humidity and constant sun make evaporation the dominant heat and water loss, and a cover cuts both dramatically while adding several degrees of free heat. It also cuts the amount of water you replace, which matters in a metro that thinks seriously about the Rio Grande.
Do you service pools you did not build?
Most of our service work is on other people's pools, including plenty of 1970s and 1980s builds in the North Valley and the Northeast Heights. We take over weekly maintenance, chase leaks, rebuild equipment pads, replaster, remodel, and winterize regardless of who built the shell.