About PoolSavr

What we are trying to fix

Pool work is expensive, infrequent and almost entirely opaque. Most people remodel a pool once or twice in their life, have no reference point for what anything should cost, and discover the price only after arranging several site visits. Quotes then arrive varying by a factor of two, with no explanation of why.

That opacity is not anyone's fault in particular. Pool pricing genuinely depends on surfaces, materials, shell condition and access — things a generic online average cannot know. But "it depends" has become an excuse for telling homeowners nothing at all, and it does not have to be.

How our estimates are calculated

We price the surfaces your project actually touches rather than applying an average to a "pool size". Interior finishes are priced per square foot of the shell — floor plus walls. Waterline tile and coping are priced per linear foot of perimeter. Deck work is priced per square foot of deck. Every resurfacing job also carries a drain, chip-out, refill and chemical start-up cost that does not scale down with pool size.

Those rates are PoolSavr's published national planning assumptions, adjusted by a coarse metro-level multiplier for labor and permitting overhead. We apply the adjustment at metro level because that is defensible; we do not pretend to know what a specific neighborhood costs.

As real projects and contractor feedback accumulate, these assumptions get replaced by what we actually observe — median cost by project type, real ranges by metro, and the gap between our preliminary estimate and the proposal a homeowner ultimately received. That last number is the one we care most about, because it measures whether we are useful.

What our estimates cannot do

The honest limitation is that nobody can inspect a pool shell while it holds water. Until the pool is drained and the old finish comes off, these are unknown to us, to you, and to the contractor:

• The true condition of the shell beneath the existing finish
• How deep the cracks run, and whether rebar is exposed
• Whether there are hollow spots behind an apparently sound surface
• The condition of plumbing penetrations and the equipment pad
• Whether the deck sub-base has failed under an intact-looking slab
• What your jurisdiction will require in permits and inspections
• Whether a crew can get equipment into your yard at all

This is why we publish a range with a confidence level and an explicit list of what still needs verifying, rather than a single confident-looking number. A calculator that gives you one precise figure for a pool it has never seen is not being more accurate. It is being less honest.

How we make money

Pool professionals pay us for qualified project leads — homeowners who have defined a real project and explicitly asked to be contacted. Homeowners never pay PoolSavr anything, and contractors are not permitted to pass a PoolSavr fee through to your quote.

Two consequences worth stating plainly. First, we have a commercial interest in you requesting a contractor review, which is why the estimate is shown in full before we ask for anything and why stopping there is a perfectly normal outcome. Second, because a contractor pays per project rather than per click, sending them badly-defined work costs us the relationship. Our incentive is to send fewer, better projects.

What we are not

PoolSavr is an estimating and matching platform. We do not perform pool work ourselves — licensed local professionals do. We do not employ crews, we do not hold contractor licenses, and we do not warranty anyone's workmanship. We are also not a directory: we do not publish pages for cities we cannot serve, and we do not list companies we have not verified.