Swimming pool repair and renovation: find the cause, then fix it.
A pool that is losing water, staining, or costing a fortune to run is giving you a symptom. Resurfacing over it makes the pool look new for a season and leaves you exactly where you started, so we find out what is actually happening before anyone quotes a finish.
Book the free 48h visitPools here age faster than their owners expect, and for reasons that have nothing to do with how well they were built. Ground movement opens hairline cracks. Ultraviolet and heat cook seals and gaskets. Salt systems quietly corrode fittings and ladders. Ten years of hard water and chemistry etch a surface until it will no longer hold a finish. Each of those needs a different repair, and telling them apart is the job.
So the first visit is a diagnosis. Where the water is going: the structure, a return line, the balance tank, or simply evaporation nobody has measured. What the plant room is doing: pump sizing against the real turnover, filter condition, the state of the pipework and the electrical protection around it. What the finish is telling you, and whether the substrate behind it is sound enough to take a new one.
Only then does the work get specified. That might be structural repair and a new waterproofing system, re-tiling or resurfacing, new coping laid to a corrected fall, LED lighting and controls replacing dead fittings, or a plant room rebuilt around equipment that suits the pool. It is also the moment to change what you did not like in the first place: the skimmer pool that always looked ordinary can become an overflow, and the level at which the water sits can be fixed properly rather than lived with.
What we look for before quoting anything
Whether the loss is structural or mechanical, because the two cost very different amounts and only one of them is fixed by a new surface. Whether the pool holds level with the pump off, which separates a leak in the circulation from a leak in the shell. What the last few utility bills say, because a pump that is oversized for the pool has been charging you rent for years.
And whether the pool is worth renovating at all. Occasionally it is not: a shell that has moved badly, or a pool in a position that never worked, is money better spent on rebuilding it where it should have been. We would rather say so at the survey than halfway through.
Renovating a pool while you are not there
Renovation is disruptive and most owners would rather not watch it. Since the people we work for are usually at the office or abroad, the site reports back instead: photographs each day, and the design decisions (tile, coping, waterline, lighting at night) shown in Montera Preview at full scale before any of it is ordered.
Tile colour in particular is a decision nobody should make from a sample in a showroom. Under water, in sunlight, against your paving, it reads completely differently, which is exactly what Preview is for.
Questions we get asked
How do you find a leak?
By elimination, starting with whether the pool holds level with the pump off (that separates a leak in the circulation from one in the shell) then pressure-testing lines and checking the balance tank and structure. Measured evaporation is ruled out first, because in a Dubai summer it is a real number and it is often the whole answer.
Can you convert a skimmer pool into an overflow?
Often, yes: it depends on the surrounding levels, the deck and whether there is room for a balance tank. It is the right moment to ask, because the deck is coming up anyway during a renovation.
Why is my pool costing so much to run?
Usually a pump that is oversized for the water volume, running longer than the turnover needs, sometimes with a filter well past its life. A plant room survey answers it, and the fix normally pays for itself.
Does the whole pool have to be emptied?
For structural work, re-tiling or resurfacing, yes. For plant room and equipment work, often not. We say which at the survey rather than after the water is gone.
How long does a renovation take?
It depends entirely on what the diagnosis finds: an equipment overhaul is a different job from structural repair and a full re-tile. You get a programme with the quotation, and daily photographs once we are on site so you can see it moving.
Do you renovate pools you did not build?
Most of the ones we renovate, we did not build. It makes no difference to the survey; what matters is the condition of the shell, the lines and the plant room.
Where we build
Arabian Ranches · The Meadows · Jumeirah Islands · Palm Jumeirah · across Abu Dhabi · all communities
What it costs
Real rates from our own priced jobs, and what actually moves the number: the Dubai cost guide, and swimming pool costs.
When you compare quotes, compare what they include, not just the number. The cheapest price on a page is usually the one that leaves out the ground, the prep or the parts you never see, and that is where a job fails.
Related services
Montera Preview
See your garden and pool in 3D and VR, and walk it, before a single block is laid.
Learn more →Pools & Water Features
Overflow, infinity and family pools, engineered properly, plant rooms included.
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Villa gardens designed and built as one: hardscape, planting, irrigation and lighting for the climate.
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