Custom pool builder in Austin, Texas.

Inside the city limits the pool permit is issued by the City of Austin Development Services Department through the Austin Build + Connect portal, with tree review alongside it. Protected trees are 19 inches and over; heritage trees are 24 inches and over for oaks, pecans, elms, walnuts and bald cypress, and the critical root zone, a foot per inch of trunk, is where the pool cannot go. SF zoning allows 45 percent impervious cover. In Barton Creek and the southwest the Save Our Springs ordinance cuts that to 20 percent of net site area in the contributing zone and 15 percent on the recharge zone. Lost Creek voted itself out of the city in 2024.

The Balcones Escarpment roughly follows MoPac and splits Austin's ground in two. West of it, Barton Creek, Lost Creek and the Amarra Drive estates sit on Edwards and Glen Rose limestone: hard rock, karst voids and a water-quality review on half- to three-quarter-acre greenbelt lots. Northwest Hills and Cat Mountain sit on the Mount Bonnell fault itself, quarter- to half-acre ridgeline lots with 180-degree views. East of the escarpment, Travis Heights and Bouldin sit on Austin Chalk under about 30 inches of silty clay. Amarra is 2010s contemporary estates; Cat Mountain is 1970s to 2000s custom homes; Travis Heights is 1920s to 1940s bungalows under dense live oak.

Three submarkets, three pools. Barton Creek and Northwest Hills ridge lots want a vanishing or negative edge toward downtown, with the shell on piers where a heritage oak's root zone or the canyon edge leaves nowhere else. Lost Creek and Cat Mountain, with 1980s and 1970s housing, are renovation and replacement work on first-generation pools. In 78704 the lot is small, flat and already near 45 percent cover, so the pool is compact and often raised.