Frequently Asked Questions

Most of our custom gunite projects in Southeast Michigan land in the $80,000–$200,000 range once you include excavation, structural gunite, plaster, coping, decking, and mechanical equipment. Add a spillover spa, automation, lighting packages, water features, or a paver patio and you'll move higher. Signature freeform gunite escapes with full outdoor-living build-outs run into the mid-six figures. One-piece fiberglass installations come in lower than gunite of comparable size. We give you a real number after a free in-home consultation, not a generic web price.

Yes. We're set up with HFS Financial, a national pool-lending specialist, so qualified homeowners can finance the entire project (pool, deck, equipment, even landscaping) on terms that typically beat what a HELOC offers for the same amount. You can pre-qualify in a few minutes from our financing page without affecting your credit score, and we'll fold the payment into your design conversation so you know exactly what your monthly looks like before you sign anything.

A one-piece fiberglass pool is generally faster to install and lower upfront than a comparable-size gunite pool, but you give up custom shape, depth, and tile/coping flexibility. We sell and install both, and during your consultation we'll be honest about which one actually fits your yard, your usage, and your budget — we don't push gunite when fiberglass is the right call, and vice versa.

Plan on 8–12 weeks from the day we break ground to the day you swim, weather and inspections cooperating. Excavation and steel/plumbing rough-in is roughly week 1–2. Gunite shoot and cure is week 3–4. Tile, coping, and decking run weeks 4–7. Plaster, equipment startup, water-fill and balance close it out. Michigan weather, township inspection windows, and any custom feature lead times (spa shells, automation panels, specialty stone) are the variables that move that schedule.

Sign a contract by late fall or early winter and you're on the spring schedule. Our build calendar for the upcoming season fills up between November and February. If you wait until spring to start designing, you're realistically looking at swimming the following summer — not the same year. The earlier you start, the better the slot we can give you.

Yes. Permitting is part of what you're paying us for. We pull pool, electrical, fence, and any required mechanical permits with your township or city, schedule the inspections, and meet the inspector on site. Oakland County townships (Wixom, Commerce, West Bloomfield, Bloomfield, Birmingham, Troy, etc.) each have their own quirks — we know the desks.

Yes. Michigan residential code requires a barrier (fence, wall, or approved enclosure) at least 4 feet tall around any in-ground pool, with self-closing/self-latching gates. Most local townships add their own setback and gate-hardware specifics. We design around your existing fence where possible and walk you through what your specific township requires before we dig.

Gunite is a dry-mix shotcrete: cement and sand pneumatically sprayed over a steel rebar grid, hardening into a monolithic concrete shell that's then plastered. It lets us build any shape, any depth, with any feature integrated (spa, sun shelf, beach entry, vanishing edge), and it lasts decades when it's done right. We own our own gunite rigs and crews — that level of control over the most important step in the build is the reason we've stayed gunite-first since 1958.

Gunite gives you the longest service life and full custom design freedom, with a higher upfront cost and the longest install. Fiberglass is fast, lower-maintenance, and a good fit for standard shapes — but you're stuck with the manufacturer's molds. Vinyl-liner is the lowest entry price and you'll typically replace the liner every 7–10 years. In Michigan's freeze-thaw climate, all three work when they're installed correctly; what kills pools here is shortcuts on excavation, steel, and winterization, not the material.

No — and this is one of the biggest things that sets us apart. We own our own gunite rigs and construction equipment, and our crews are Anderson Brothers employees, not day-labor sub crews shared between five other builders. That means consistent quality, accountability, and a schedule we actually control.

Every Anderson Brothers pool comes with a full warranty as part of the Backyard Escape program — we stand behind the structure and the workmanship, and the equipment we install (heaters, pumps, automation) is covered under the manufacturer's warranty, which we register on your behalf and service in-house if anything goes wrong. We'll walk through the exact terms in writing before you sign.

Not anymore. Automatic cleaners, salt chlorine generators, automatic covers, and digital controls have taken most of the daily work out of pool ownership. Our customers typically spend 10–20 minutes a week on chemistry checks and a quick visual once-over — and we offer full-service maintenance contracts if you'd rather not touch it at all.

Pools today are safer than they have ever been when you layer the right protections: a code-compliant fence, a self-latching gate, an automatic safety cover, alarms, and adult supervision. We design with safety in mind and we'll talk through every option during your consultation — covers in particular are the single biggest improvement most homeowners can add.

It varies with your heater type, how warm you run the water, your pump runtime, and Michigan's wind and weather, but most of our customers spend less per usable day than they do running a boat or RV. Adding automation, a variable-speed pump, a salt system, and an automatic cover dramatically lowers ongoing operating cost — we'll talk through the trade-offs at design time.

Yes. Salt chlorine generators are one of our most popular options. The water is gentler on skin, eyes, and swimsuits, and you eliminate the daily chlorine routine. They work with both gunite and fiberglass and we install them on new builds and as a remodel upgrade.

Absolutely. A big share of our remodel work is on pools other companies built. We replaster, retile, recoat coping, replace stairs, add lighting (including fiberoptic perimeter and color LED), drop in a spillover spa, add waterfalls and laminar jets, and reconfigure shapes. Gunite, fiberglass, vinyl-liner — we work on all three.

Standard white plaster typically lasts 8–12 years in Michigan before it's time to refinish, depending on water chemistry, usage, and how aggressive your fill water is. Premium aggregate finishes (pebble, quartz) can stretch noticeably longer. If your plaster is staining, etching, or feeling rough, ask us about a replaster — it makes a 30-year-old pool look new.

Yes. Leak detection is one of our specialties — we use pressure testing, dye testing, and electronic acoustic equipment to find the leak (skimmer, return line, light niche, plaster crack, equipment pad) before we dig anything up. Most leaks turn out to be repairable without major demolition.

Yes. We have full-service maintenance options — weekly cleaning, chemistry, equipment monitoring — as well as one-off service calls for repairs, equipment swaps, and acid-wash cleanings. If you're going on vacation and just want it watched, we can do that too.

Closing a Michigan pool the right way is what protects your equipment from a brutal freeze-thaw winter. Our closing service drops the water below skimmer and return lines, blows out and plugs every line, winterizes filter/heater/pump, balances the chemistry for a long sit, and installs a safety cover. Skipping any of these steps is how plumbing splits and equipment cracks.

Openings typically run April through Memorial Day, closings run mid-September through October. Service contract customers get scheduled first, and the calendar fills fast — call early.

Yes — a lot of our most interesting projects are on lots other builders walked away from. Hillside builds, tight setbacks, septic-field workarounds, lots with mature trees we need to protect, walkout basements where the pool grade ties into the lower level — we've engineered solutions for all of it. The only honest answer to "can you build here" comes after we walk the property.

Spillover spas, sun shelves, beach entries, vanishing edges, automatic covers, custom decking (brushed concrete, stamped concrete, brick, slate, travertine), rock and sheer-descent waterfalls, laminar jets, color-changing LED and fiberoptic perimeter lighting, pool/spa automation with smartphone control, salt chlorine generators — pretty much anything you've seen and a lot of things you haven't.

Yes. We design pools as part of a whole backyard, not in isolation. We coordinate with your landscape designer or recommend trusted partners we've worked with for years, so the pool, decking, planting, fire feature, and shade structures actually look like one project instead of three.

We're based in Wixom and we build, remodel, and service pools throughout Oakland County, Wayne County, Livingston County, and into Macomb County. Common cities include Wixom, Commerce Township, Walled Lake, Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, Rochester, Troy, Northville, Novi, Plymouth, West Bloomfield, Farmington Hills, and Brighton. If you're not sure whether your address is in our zone, call us — usually the answer is yes.

Anderson Brothers Pools was established in 1958. We've been a family-owned, Southeast Michigan business the entire time, building, remodeling, and servicing pools for multiple generations of homeowners — sometimes literally building a pool for the grandchild of an original customer.

Call us at (248) 380-7665 or fill out the contact form. We'll set up a free in-home consultation: we walk your yard with you, talk through what you actually want (and what you don't), measure, and follow up with a real design proposal and a real number. No high-pressure sales appointment — we'd rather build the right pool for the right reasons.