Tell us about your yard.

Plan on 3 to 6 months from signed contract to your first swim, with roughly 8 to 16 weeks of active construction once we break ground. The wildcard is almost always permits and HOA approval, which can take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months depending on the city and your community. We publish the schedule up front and start the permit and HOA work early so the paperwork is not what holds you up.

Your builder does, and Apex coordinates it. Construction is performed by a licensed, bonded and insured Arizona contractor, who pulls every permit under their ROC license and schedules the city inspections at each stage: the pre-gunite inspection before the shell is shot, and the final inspection at the end. Apex manages the whole process so you never have to call the city or stand in line at a permit counter. You will receive your builder's ROC license number on your written contract and can verify it anytime at the Arizona Registrar of Contractors (roc.az.gov).

If your neighborhood has an HOA, we prepare the full submittal package (the site plan, elevations, and any materials the board asks for) and manage the review for you. In master-planned communities around Gilbert, Queen Creek, and San Tan Valley, HOA approval usually takes about 2 to 4 weeks. We start that submittal as early as possible because it runs in parallel with engineering, so it rarely adds to the total timeline if we begin on day one.

Caliche is a hard, cemented layer of desert soil, a calcium carbonate that has bonded the dirt into something close to concrete. It is a documented Sonoran Desert soil, common across the Valley and especially the East Valley, and when an excavator hits a thick seam it can slow dig day from a couple of days to the better part of a week. We assess the likelihood at the design visit and price it honestly up front, so a hard dig does not become a surprise change order later.

It can. From roughly July through September, monsoon storms can shut down a dig day or a shotcrete day for safety, and a flooded excavation has to be pumped out before we continue. The National Weather Service marks Arizona's monsoon season as June 15 through September 30. We build weather days into the published schedule so a normal monsoon season does not blow up your timeline, and if a storm costs us a day, you see it reflected honestly rather than hidden.

A pool that sits in full Arizona sun can climb into the 90s by August, which stops feeling refreshing. The main fix is a chiller or a reversible heat pump that pulls heat back out of the water, and the same unit can warm the pool in winter. Design choices help too: shade over part of the water, and knowing that darker interior finishes run a few degrees warmer. On a smaller spool, the jets keep water circulating, which also helps it shed heat overnight.

Yes, if you start in time. Because the full timeline runs 3 to 6 months, contracting in early fall through winter puts you on track to swim by spring or early summer. Summer is our busiest stretch, so the earlier you lock in a design and get into the permit queue, the better your odds of hitting a specific deadline. We publish the schedule so you can hold us to the date we give you.