Inground gunite pool construction in Greenville, NC is the option people choose when the catalog does not have their pool in it. A gunite shell is built on site: a steel reinforcing cage shaped to your design, then concrete sprayed through a hose at high pressure to form a monolithic structure. Because it is built rather than delivered, it can be any outline, any depth, with tanning ledges, benches, swim-outs, spillover spas, beach entries and raised walls that no molded shell will give you.
It is also the shell we most often recommend on difficult Pitt County lots — not because it is fancier, but because it can be engineered around the groundwater instead of fighting it.
Why gunite handles our groundwater well
The recurring problem in this county is hydrostatic uplift. Our soils are Coastal Plain sediment, mostly sand and sandy loam, and across broad flats and shallow depressions the seasonal high water table sits at or near the surface. When an empty pool sits in saturated ground, the water underneath pushes up harder than the shell weighs. The pool floats, cracks and is finished.
A gunite shell has two advantages there. First, it is heavy — a lot of concrete and steel in one piece, which is dead weight working for you. Second, and more important, it can be detailed for the condition. A properly built shell here gets a hydrostatic relief valve set into the floor at the deepest point, usually over a gravel pocket. If groundwater ever gets high enough to threaten the shell, the valve opens and lets water into the pool instead of lifting it. That valve is a five-dollar part that saves a six-figure structure, and it is the first thing we look for when we inspect an older pool that has failed.
Never drain a gunite pool in this county without a reason and a plan. Homeowners empty pools to clean them, a summer storm parks over Greenville for three days, and the shell lifts out of the ground while it is empty. If a pool has to be drained, it gets drained with a dewatering pump running in a well point beside it, and it gets refilled promptly.
The steel matters more than the concrete
People think of gunite as concrete work. It is really reinforced concrete work, and the rebar schedule is what determines whether the shell lasts. Bar size, spacing, lap length at the splices, and the amount of cover between the steel and the water side all get specified. Under our conditions we care especially about cover, because our groundwater is acidic — Pitt County soils are described in the county survey as generally acidic with low natural fertility, and that carries into the water moving through them. Thin cover over rebar in acidic wet sand is how you get rust staining bleeding through plaster ten years in.
The steel cage is also part of the electrical system. Article 680 of the electrical code requires an equipotential bonding grid, and the shell steel is a component of it, tied to the deck reinforcement, the ladder anchors, the handrails and the equipment pad with a solid copper conductor. Done right it is invisible. Done wrong or skipped, you have a pool that can put a voltage difference across a swimmer. This is inspected. It should be.
Excavation in sand is a different job
Digging here is easy and holding the hole open is hard. Sandy loam cuts fast, which is why an excavation that would take two days in Piedmont clay can be roughed in during a single morning off Portertown Road. But sand does not stand up. Vertical cuts slough, especially after rain, and a wall that collapses into a formed floor costs days.
So the sequencing is tight. Dig, shape, set steel and plumb, and get the shell shot before the weather turns. On a wet lot we run well points around the excavation and pump the water table down below the floor elevation for the duration. Where a neighboring structure or a property line is close, the cut gets benched or shored rather than cut vertical. None of this shows up in the finished pool, which is exactly why some bids leave it out and then charge for it later.
Shell to finish: what the schedule really looks like
After the gunite is shot, the shell cures. It gets watered down repeatedly for the first several days — concrete gains strength through hydration, not drying, and in a Greenville July an unwatered shell loses moisture to the heat far too fast. Then tile and coping, then the deck, then the interior finish, then the fill and start-up.
Interior finish is a decision worth thinking about. Standard white plaster is the least expensive and the shortest-lived. Pigmented and aggregate finishes — exposed pebble and polished quartz products — cost more up front and hold up considerably better against the chemistry swings that come with our long swim season. From April through October a Pitt County pool runs warm, which drives chlorine demand up and makes water chemistry harder to hold steady. A tougher finish forgives more.
Where gunite earns its keep locally
Three situations come up over and over around here. The first is the established neighborhood with mature trees and no equipment access — Lynndale, Forest Hills, parts of College View, the older streets on the Skinnerville and Greenville Heights side. A one-piece fiberglass shell has to reach the back yard on a truck and then get craned in. Gunite arrives through a hose and can be built where a shell can never be delivered.
The second is the irregular lot. New building along the Firetower Road corridor and out toward Winterville often leaves back yards that are wide and shallow or pinched by an easement. A shape you draw fits. A shape from a mold does not.
The third is anyone who wants a spa integrated with the pool. A raised spa spilling into the main body, sharing the plumbing and a heater, is straightforward in gunite and awkward in anything else. More on that on the spa and hot tub page.
What North Carolina requires
Who is allowed to build it
North Carolina General Statute 87-1 requires a general contractor license from the North Carolina Licensing Board for General Contractors for any construction project costing $40,000 or more. The threshold moved up from $30,000 on October 1, 2023. A gunite pool almost always clears it.
The relevant classification is S (Swimming Pools), which covers pool construction, service and repair, the excavation and grading, gunite and concrete shells, decks and walkways, tile and coping, and the pumps, filters and chemical feeders. It stops short of direct sanitary sewer and potable water connections, and it stops short of electrical connections and the grounding and bonding of metal surfaces. Those go to the plumbing and electrical trades. The Building classification and the Public Utilities classification also carry pool work.
Verify status with the Board yourself before you sign. Agreements above the threshold with an unlicensed party can be unenforceable, which is your problem as well as theirs.
What gets inspected
A barrier at least 48 inches tall with self-closing and self-latching gates. Suction outlet covers meeting the federal Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act standard. The equipotential bonding grid under Article 680. Setbacks per local zoning, plus septic drainfield and repair-area clearances if you are not on city sewer.
Related pages
Compare against fiberglass and vinyl liner before you commit. If you already know the shape you want, start at custom pool design. The deck and the equipment are separate decisions with real cost consequences. We also handle renovation of existing gunite pools, which in Greenville usually means replaster, new tile and a plumbing overhaul on a shell from the eighties or nineties.
Other services
Towns we serve
Questions people ask before they build
How long does a gunite pool take to build in Greenville?
Eight to fourteen weeks from excavation to swimming, on a normal lot with normal weather. Permitting runs ahead of that. The shell itself goes up quickly, but curing, tile and coping, deck, interior finish and start-up each take their turn, and several stops require an inspection before the next trade can start. Sustained rain is the usual reason a schedule slips here, and it slips at the excavation stage more than anywhere else.
Is gunite the same thing as shotcrete?
They are close cousins and the terms get used loosely. Both spray concrete through a hose at high velocity. In gunite the dry material and the water meet at the nozzle. In shotcrete the concrete arrives already mixed and is pumped wet. Both build sound pool shells. What matters far more than which one you use is the steel underneath, the thickness achieved, and whether the shell was cured properly instead of left to dry out in the sun.
Will a concrete pool crack in this soil?
Properly reinforced shells rarely crack from soil movement here, because our problem is not the shrink and swell that cracks pools in clay regions. Our problem is uplift from groundwater. A shell cracks locally when it gets lifted, when it was shot thin, or when the steel was short on cover and rusted. Address those three and a gunite shell in Pitt County is a very long-lived structure.
Can I put a gunite pool close to the Tar River?
Sometimes, and the flood map decides. Property inside a mapped floodplain carries additional requirements and, on some parcels, real restrictions on what can be built. Groundwater is also higher and closer to the surface near the river and the creeks feeding it. It is not automatically a no, but it is always a survey-and-check-first situation rather than a design-first situation.
What interior finish should I choose?
White plaster is the cheapest and typically needs replacing soonest. Pigmented plaster looks deeper and hides a little more. Exposed aggregate finishes, the pebble and polished quartz products, cost noticeably more and last considerably longer. With an April to October swim season and warm water driving chemistry swings, the tougher finishes are usually worth the difference here.
Do I need to drain and clean my pool every year?
No, and you should not. Draining an inground pool in Pitt County is the single riskiest thing an owner can do to it, because of the water table. Normal maintenance is done with the pool full. If a drain is genuinely necessary for a repair or a replaster, it gets done with dewatering equipment running and it gets refilled as soon as the work allows.
Can you add a spa or a tanning ledge later?
A tanning ledge is very difficult to add to a finished shell and easy to include at the start. A spa can sometimes be added later as a separate structure with its own plumbing, but it costs far more than it would have during the original build and it rarely looks as integrated. Decide on both at the design stage.