Concrete cancer is not a product defect, and it is not your builder's fault.

It is a chemical reaction inside the concrete itself, and it begins before the mix ever reaches your backyard. The technical name is alkali-silica reaction, or ASR. It can start the day a pool is built, it stays completely invisible for about three years, and by the time you can see it the pool cannot be repaired. Only replaced.

Full disclosure, and it is the first thing said in the episode: River Pools manufactures fiberglass pools. This is not an argument for fiberglass, and you will not hear one. Almost every pool project involves concrete somewhere, whether that is the shell, the patio, the footings, or the deck, which makes this worth understanding no matter what you are planning to build.

C. Terry Brannon, P.E., is an engineer with 50 years in engineering and 40 of those in aquatics. He writes and teaches the concrete curriculum for GENESIS, the industry's leading design and construction education program, and he sits on the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance's ASR Task Force. He has spent his career designing structures out of concrete, which is exactly why he is the right person to explain how concrete fails. He does not work for River Pools and he is not selling anything.

In this conversation, Terry walks through what homeowners actually need to know:

• The three conditions ASR requires, reactive aggregate, moisture, and a pH of 13, and why removing any one of them stops the reaction completely
• Why it starts at the concrete plant rather than with your builder, and what a builder can still do to specify and verify the mix
• What fly ash was quietly doing for decades, and what changed when coal plants stopped producing it
• Why almost every documented case traces back to one concrete placement method
• The three-year fuse, and what cracking in the first weeks of a new pool actually means
• How to tell an ASR deposit from ordinary pool scale using nothing but your thumb
• What confirmation testing costs, why the fast version of the test is no better than a coin flip, and when paying for it is not worth it
• The certificate to ask your builder for before anyone breaks ground, and why a one-year warranty will not cover this

Along the way, Terry describes a pool outside Waco that he followed over several years. The first visit turned up four or five cracks that looked suspicious. A year later there were closer to forty, and the pool was losing six inches of water a day.

None of this is a reason to avoid a concrete pool. It is rare, it is geographically concentrated, and it is entirely preventable. That is the honest headline here: preventable, not fixable. The homeowner who asks two or three specific questions before signing a contract is already ahead of the problem.

Start planning your backyard at https://www.riverpoolsandspas.com, where you'll find self-guided decision tools, a cost estimator, and hundreds of articles built to help you dot the i's and cross the t's before you break ground.

The Pool Guides Podcast – by River Pools Catch the Wave.

The hidden costs of a pool project are not really hidden. They are missed.

They get missed because there is a gap between what a homeowner knows, buying maybe one pool in their lifetime, and what a builder knows after a thousand of them. Nobody is hiding anything. The questions just never come up, and then they come up at the worst possible moment.

Becky Martinez is the Director of Intelligence at River Pools Virginia. She started there in high school running water tests, and 20 years later she has had her hands on the planning, permitting, and logistics of more than 1,000 inground pool installations. She has watched these surprises land on homeowners more times than she can count, which makes her a very good guide for this one.

In this conversation, Becky walks through seven categories of cost that homeowners most often miss:

• Site restoration after the crews leave, and where your builder's scope of work actually stops
• The plat, and why the document that defines your property lines and setbacks is the most important piece of paper in the project
• Excavated dirt, which comes out of the ground at nearly twice the volume of the pool itself and has to go somewhere
• Drainage, patio, and landscaping, which together can account for half the total project budget
• Public and private utilities, including what a locate service will and will not mark
• Safety barriers, where fencing, covers, and door alarms are code requirements rather than upgrades
• Retaining walls and the permit stack, which on a complicated site can run to six permits or more

Along the way, Becky tells the story of a homeowner whose county did not require a plat, who assumed the fence line was the property line, and who ended up with a good portion of a finished patio on the neighbor's land. That one worked out. It very easily might not have.

None of this is a reason to skip the pool. It is a reason to ask better questions before you sign, and to get every answer line itemed in the contract. Becky's closing advice is worth the listen on its own: do not fixate on the pool, and do not put the project off a year to avoid the work of planning it, because the planning is the part that saves you money.

Start planning your backyard at https://www.riverpoolsandspas.com, where you'll find self-guided decision tools, a cost estimator, and hundreds of articles built to help you dot the i's and cross the t's before you break ground.

The Pool Guides Podcast – by River Pools
Catch the Wave.

Everybody asks what a pool costs to build. Almost nobody asks what it costs to own. This episode fixes that.

Cristian sits down with Tyler Hermon of Pools of Fun in Indianapolis, who has spent 18 years in the industry assisting with pool sales, five retail stores, and a full maintenance division. That combination is rare, and it is exactly why he can walk you through the real ten-year picture on fiberglass, vinyl liner, and concrete pools without flinching.

You will hear where the money actually goes: the liner replacement that tends to show up around year ten, the concrete resurface that costs roughly double, and the pumps, heaters, and salt cells you will swap whether you planned for them or not. Tyler is honest about insurance too, including why a diving board or slide can quietly cost you coverage, and how an automatic cover pays you back on chemicals, heat, and peace of mind.

Then comes the part you cannot put on a spreadsheet. In roughly a thousand pools sold, Tyler cannot name one family who said it was not worth it. As he puts it, the maintenance people fear and the maintenance they actually deal with are rarely the same thing.

A few things that come up along the way:
• Which pool type is cheapest to own over a decade, and why
• The difference between paying up front and paying later
• What really drives insurance and property tax changes on a pool
• When doing your own maintenance saves money, and when it just costs you a Saturday
• Why "we will wait until the kids are older" is the regret Tyler hears most

If you are weighing a pool and trying to picture life ten years in, this is the conversation to have first.

Planning your own backyard? Head to riverpoolsandspas.com for a pricing estimator, decision-making tools, and hundreds of articles built to help you decide with confidence.