Pre-Cast Pools

A pre-cast concrete plunge pool is a monolithic reinforced-concrete pool built in a factory, delivered to your yard on a flatbed, and set in place by crane in a single day. No 16-week gunite build, no months of trades in your backyard. We install Soake Pools across the DFW metroplex as a Soake Pools Preferred Partner, and this page is the full guide: what precast is, why it fits North Texas specifically, what it costs, and how the pool becomes the anchor of a complete backyard.

What "pre-cast" actually means

The shell is cast in one continuous pour in an NPCA-certified plant, cured under controlled indoor conditions, waterproofed, and hand-tiled by Soake's in-house artisans before it ever leaves the factory. Compare that to gunite, where concrete is sprayed over rebar in your excavated yard and cured against whatever weather Texas serves up that month. Same material family, opposite build process: one is custom construction happening in your backyard, the other is a finished product arriving in it.

Tile is the interior finish custom gunite-pool owners pay $20,000-$30,000 extra for, because it is the longest-lived interior surface in the pool industry: it does not blister like fiberglass gel-coat and does not need the 10-15 year resurfacing cycle of plaster and pebble finishes. The system bonding the tile to the shell carries a 25-year Laticrete warranty, alongside a 5-year structural warranty on the shell and a 3-year Fluidra/Jandy warranty on the equipment set.

Set flush with grade, a precast pool reads like a custom build. The difference is what your backyard went through to get there. Photo: Soake Pools.

Why pre-cast fits North Texas

The clay. Parker, Tarrant, and Ellis County backyards sit on expansive clay that shrinks and swells 2-4 inches between a wet spring and an August drought. Gunite shells are cast against that soil and take the movement directly; the classic DFW gunite failure is a structural crack from differential movement. A precast shell arrives rigid and monolithic and sits on an engineered compacted base that isolates it from the clay. The base absorbs the movement; the shell stays level on top of it.

The timeline. Your pool is built at the factory over 4-8 weeks while your backyard is still a backyard. On-site work is measured in days: excavation and base prep, one crane day, then hookup, backfill, and start-up. A gunite build puts your yard through 8-16 weeks of active construction with excavation equipment, rebar crews, spray rigs, and plaster trades on a weather-dependent schedule.

The footprint. Modern DFW lots keep getting smaller while builders keep pushing square footage. A 13'×7' plunge pool fits yards where a 30-foot gunite pool never could, and it leaves room for the lawn, the putting green, or the outdoor kitchen instead of consuming the whole yard. It also heats to hot-tub temperatures in the cooler months, so one water body covers the July cool-off and the January soak.

Twelve-month water: cool plunge all summer, hot tub all winter, one set of equipment. Photo: Soake Pools.

From contract to swimming: the honest timeline

• Weeks 0-1: yard assessment. We walk the site, check crane access and reach, verify utilities, and scope the surround. Fixed-price proposal follows.
• Weeks 1-8: factory build. Soake casts, cures, waterproofs, and hand-tiles your pool in New Hampshire (estimated 4-8 week lead time). Your yard is untouched. Permits and HOA approvals run in parallel.
• Install week: site work. Excavation, engineered base, plumbing rough-in, electrical conduit (typically a 50-amp run to the automation panel).
• Crane day. The pool arrives finished on a flatbed and is set in place in hours. You see your completed pool before the crane leaves.
• Following days: hookup and fill. Plumbing, electrical, backfill, equipment start-up, water chemistry, owner walkthrough. Swim.

Five models, published pricing

• Full Plunge — 7'×13', 3,200 gallons. The flagship. From $33,500 with equipment.
• Pool with a View — the same 7'×13' footprint with a multi-step tiled bench included. From $34,000 with equipment.
• Medium Plunge — 6'×10', 2,100 gallons. From $31,000 with equipment.
• Square Plunge — 7'×7', 1,000 gallons, surround bench seating. From $32,500 with equipment.
• Cold Plunge — 4'×4', 450 gallons, chiller included. From $25,000.

Every model ships with the full Jandy equipment package as standard: variable-speed pump, cartridge filter, salt chlorine generator, app-controlled automation, LED color-changing light, insulation package, and a tiled bench with step. Gas heaters, heat pumps, waterfalls, jets, multi-step benches, and four ASTM-rated safety cover options are the add-ons.

Waterfalls, jets, and cover options bolt onto the standard package. The stone surround is where your hardscape budget goes to work. Photo: Soake Pools.

Design: 50+ tiles and the finish around the pool

Interior tile comes from Soake's premium catalog at no extra charge, with 50+ choices across seven collections running white and ivory through greys to black, plus designer and fully custom mosaic tiers above that. Water color follows tile choice: ivory tiles read Caribbean, dark tiles read like a deep natural spring. The exposed outer walls of a raised install get finished in stone, slate, brick, or tile to match the house, which is hardscape work we do in-house.

Sloped and rocky lots: flush, raised, or fully above ground

Soake pools carry a stamped structural design for installation at any level: flush with grade, partially raised, or fully above ground. On the tiered and rocky lots common through Parker County and west Fort Worth, a partially raised pool with a stone skirt sits where a gunite build would need serious retaining work before the dig even started.

A terraced lot that would have needed $20,000 of retaining wall before a gunite crew could start. The precast pool works with the slope instead of fighting it. Photo: Soake Pools.

Fully above ground with a stone skirt and deck. No excavation at all. Photo: Soake Pools.

The pool is half the project: turf and outdoor living around it

Here is what most pool builders get wrong: they build the pool and leave, and the surround becomes your problem. The surround is the part people actually live on. It is also the part we have built for years.

• Artificial turf flush to the coping — no mud tracked into the pool, no irrigation spraying the water, no mower flinging clippings into it. Turf stays green through the summer the pool gets used most, and drainage-first base prep keeps the pool edge dry and stable.
• Pavers and decking — travertine, concrete pavers, or wood-look tile, set with the pool's coping as the design datum instead of retrofitted around it.
• Putting green + pool — the two best-behaved neighbors in backyard design: both drain fast, neither needs mowing, and together they turn a quarter-acre lot into a resort.
• Lighting, pergolas, fire features — scoped in the same design pass so conduit and gas lines go in during pool excavation, not as a second dig.

One contract, one schedule, one crew. The pool excavation, the turf base, and the hardscape prep all sequence together, which is faster and cheaper than three contractors discovering each other's work.

Pool, turf-strip pavers, fire pit, lawn: one coordinated project. This is the configuration we design toward. Photo: Soake Pools.

What it costs

The pool itself runs $25,000-$34,000 with equipment, depending on model. Freight, crane, excavation, plumbing, and electrical come on top of that, and they swing more on your site than on your model: crane reach and access drive most of the spread. We scope the real number on a free site walk and put it in a fixed-price proposal. For the full line-item breakdown, model-by-model pricing, and the gunite and fiberglass comparison numbers, see the dedicated precast concrete pool cost guide.

Warranty coverage runs through the stack: a 5-year structural warranty on the shell, a 3-year Fluidra/Jandy warranty on the equipment set, and a 25-year Laticrete warranty on the system bonding the tile to the pool. That last one is the number worth noticing: it covers the exact failure mode (surface separating from shell) that forces the 10-15 year resurfacing cycle on plaster pools and the re-gel-coat on fiberglass.

The ROI metric that matters. Photo: Soake Pools.

Start with a yard assessment

Every precast install starts with the same question: can a crane reach your backyard, and from where? That answer sets the price more than anything else you choose. We check it in one free visit: crane position and reach, side-yard access, utility lines, slope, drainage, and where the equipment pad hides. You get a fixed-price proposal for the pool and, if you want it, the whole backyard around it.

Request a free yard assessment or call 817-803-1445. Bring us your lot and your honest swim habits; we will tell you which model fits and what the all-in number looks like.