# Pool and paver work in Ave Maria > Pool remodeling in Ave Maria: the town's first equipment replacement wave, heat pump or propane heating on no-gas streets, and pavers matched to builder hardscape. - [Home](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/) - [Service areas](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/service-areas/) - Ave Maria Ave Maria, Florida # Pool and paver work in Ave Maria Ave Maria is the youngest housing stock we work in, and that shapes everything on this page. The pools out here do not need rescuing. What they need is the first round of real decisions: equipment the builder chose reaching the end of its life, and hardscape the builder laid waiting to be extended without looking extended. [Call 239-450-5933 →](tel:+1-239-450-5933) [Book a consultation](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/booking/) Owner on every job Diagnosed before it is quoted One contractor, start to finish Splash Pools LLC, Florida LLC L12000084569 Written by Clayton Waggoner, Owner · Updated August 2026 Why this area is different ## A town built in waves, and pools that age in waves Ave Maria welcomed its first residents in 2007, and it has been built ever since by a short list of production builders working street by street: Pulte, Del Webb, Lennar, CC Homes. That construction pattern is not just trivia. When one builder finishes forty houses on one street in one season, the pools behind those houses get the same pump, the same filter, and the same heater, installed within months of each other. Equipment that goes in together wears out together. The earliest streets in town are now watching exactly that: one neighbor's pump gets loud, and within a year or two half the street is making the same phone call. This is the town's first replacement wave, and it is arriving on schedule. There is a quiet opportunity inside that wave. The original equipment was selected off the builder's cost sheet, sized to a spreadsheet and priced to a margin. Nobody asked how your household would actually swim. Replacement is the first time the equipment gets chosen by the person who uses the pool, which means runtime, sizing, and fuel finally get decided on their merits. Done thoughtfully, the second generation of equipment is quieter, cheaper to run, and better matched to the pool than the first ever was. Fuel is the decision that surprises people. The town was built east of the natural gas distribution that coastal Naples takes for granted, and the existing housing stock has no gas service. The developer's own announcement of Gatherpoint, a new Pulte neighborhood, calls it the town's first natural gas community ([avemaria.com, 2026](https://www.avemaria.com/pulte-homes-launches-gatherpoint-at-ave-maria/news/)), which confirms what owners on every earlier street already know: their heater choice is a heat pump or propane, full stop. That is changing for new construction going forward, but if your house is already standing, the gas main is not coming to you, and every heater replacement is a fuel decision as much as an equipment decision. Hardscape follows a different logic here. In older Naples neighborhoods, paver work is usually repair. In Ave Maria it is almost always addition: a patio pushed out to fit the grill and the table, a walkway the builder never poured, a pool deck widened to match how the family actually lives outside. The craft problem is matching, and it is harder than it sounds. Paver color shifts between production runs, and the line the builder used may have been discontinued years ago. An extension that ignores this reads as a patch. An extension that plans for it reads as one project. One thing you will not find on this page is structural pool repair, because the shells out here are young and sound. A concrete shell built in the last fifteen years, on this ground, has decades ahead of it. We would rather tell you that plainly than invent a problem to solve. The work in Ave Maria is equipment and hardscape, and that is what the rest of this page is about. - Original builder pool packages reaching replacement age street by street - Heat pump or propane heating on streets built without gas service - Additive paver projects matched to product lines that may be discontinued ## Pump replacement, first of the wave The pump is usually the first piece of the builder package to announce itself, because it announces itself out loud. Bearings whine, seals seep, and a motor that ran quietly for a decade starts sounding like it works for a living. On the earliest streets in town this is happening now, often to the same model on the same street, because the builder bought them by the pallet. Treat the failure as an upgrade opportunity rather than a like-for-like swap. The single-speed pump the builder installed ran flat out whenever it ran, because that was the cheapest thing to put in. A variable speed replacement gets sized and programmed to your pool's actual runtime, moving water slowly for most of the day and using a fraction of the electricity doing it. Since [the builder's pump was chosen for a cost sheet, not your pool](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-pump-replacement-naples/), replacement day is the day the pump finally gets chosen for the pool it serves. We look at volume, plumbing, and how you actually use the water before we recommend anything. ## Heating a pool where the gas main never arrived On the existing streets of Ave Maria there is no natural gas line to connect a heater to, so the default that settles most of coastal Naples is simply off the table. That is not bad news. For the way most families here swim, regularly, through the season, keeping the water at a steady temperature, a heat pump is arguably the better machine anyway. It moves heat out of the air instead of burning fuel to make it, and Southwest Florida air carries heat most of the year. The catch is sizing, and this is where builder logic fails a second time. A heat pump sized to a brochure struggles on the cool January week you most want it. A heat pump sized to your pool's volume, your screen enclosure, and the months you actually swim just works, quietly, at a running cost that will not make you dread the electric bill. Undersizing to save money up front is the classic mistake, because the machine then runs constantly and still falls short exactly when the water is coldest. We treat [the electric answer on streets the gas mains never reached](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/heat-pump-pool-heater-naples/) as a sizing exercise first and an equipment choice second. Owners in [Golden Gate Estates](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-golden-gate-estates/) face the same fuel decision for the same reason, and the reasoning that serves them serves Ave Maria unchanged: match the machine to the swimming, not the swimming to the machine. ## The propane alternative Propane is the other honest answer, and for a specific kind of household it is the right one. If the pool sits unheated most of the time and you want it warm for a holiday week or visiting grandchildren, a propane heater raises temperature fast in a way a heat pump is not built to do. The trade is an onsite tank, scheduled deliveries, and a higher cost per degree, which is why we treat it as the exception rather than the default out here. The practical questions are about supply as much as the heater itself: where the tank sits, how the supply run reaches the equipment pad, and whether a delivery truck can get to it. We walk through [propane sizing when fast recovery matters](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/gas-pool-heater-installation-naples/) honestly, including the cases where the honest advice is a heat pump instead. ## Automation, added while the pad is already open Ave Maria is a working town. The pool gets used on weekday evenings and weekends, which means it should be ready at those hours without anyone standing at the equipment pad flipping valves at lunchtime. Automation does that: schedules for the pump, temperature setpoints for the heater, and a phone app that tells you something faulted before you find out on Saturday morning. The reason to think about it now, mid replacement wave, is cost of opportunity. When the pump or heater is being replaced anyway, the pad is open, the wiring is exposed, and adding control costs meaningfully less than coming back to retrofit it around finished equipment later. New equipment is also worth protecting: [schedules and monitoring on equipment worth protecting](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-automation-installation-naples/) is the difference between hearing about a problem from the app on day one and discovering it from a green pool in week three. ## Extending the builder patio without the seam This is the request Ave Maria makes more than any other: the builder patio was fine for closing day, and now the household has outgrown it. The pavers to extend it still exist, sort of. The product line may still be sold, but the batch behind your house was manufactured years ago, and a new order will not be the same shade even when the label matches. Butting new stock against old and hoping is how you get an extension that permanently looks like an afterthought. There are two honest ways through. The first is relocation: lift original pavers from a low-visibility area, use them to complete the prominent one, and lay the new batch where nobody studies it. The second is intent: introduce a border course or a banding change exactly at the transition, so the eye reads a design decision instead of a supply problem. Both are planning moves made before the first paver is ordered, which is why we design [patios and walkways matched so they read as one project](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/paver-patio-walkway-naples/) rather than quoting square footage over the phone. Bring us a spare paver from the garage if the builder left any behind. A physical sample in daylight settles more matching questions than any product code does. ## Filters, on the same clock as the pumps The filter came from the same cost sheet as the pump, went in the same week, and is aging on the same schedule. It just fails more quietly: pressure creeps, flow drops, and the pool gets a little harder to keep clear each season. When the pump on an original pad is being replaced, the filter deserves an honest inspection at the same visit, because [builder-grade filters reaching the same birthday as the pumps](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-filter-repair-naples/) is not a coincidence, it is the same purchase order. Sometimes the answer is new internals, sometimes a properly sized replacement, and doing it while the pad is already apart saves a second disruption. Service area ## Ave Maria and the neighborhoods around it The marker on Ave Maria is open. Click any other marker for what breaks pools there, because it is genuinely not the same everywhere in Collier County. + − ↺ Where we work Naples and Collier County, plus Marco Island, Bonita Springs and Estero. What fails is different in each, and that is what decides the work. - [Port Royal](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-port-royal/) waterfront, architectural review, deck must match the house - [Old Naples](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-old-naples/) pools built in the seventies and eighties, due for everything at once; original skimmers - [Aqualane Shores](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-aqualane-shores/) canal homes, deck movement near the seawall separates coping - [Park Shore](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-park-shore/) Gulf Shore Boulevard salt air hits the tile line first; seasonal vacancy - [The Moorings](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-the-moorings/) direct salt air exposure, waterline tile failure - [Coquina Sands](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-coquina-sands/) seventies and eighties pools; decks poured over uncompacted fill - [Royal Harbor](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-royal-harbor/) canal homes, high water table hides leaks; coping separation - [Grey Oaks](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-grey-oaks/) gated architectural review on anything visible from the street; spa additions - [Quail West](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-quail-west/) natural stone decking matched to the house; spa additions - [Pelican Bay](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-pelican-bay/) empty April to November; automation and heat pumps for year-round swimmers - [Lely Resort](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-lely-resort/) natural gas supply; builder decks aging out; year-round pump runtime - [Fiddler's Creek](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-fiddlers-creek/) natural gas heater sizing; builder-era paver decks losing their base - [The Vineyards](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-the-vineyards/) year-round swimming, heat pumps and variable speed payback - [Naples Park](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-naples-park/) mature landscaping into pool plumbing; original skimmers; storm-loaded filters - [Pine Ridge Estates](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-pine-ridge/) mature landscaping finds underground pool plumbing - [Vanderbilt Beach](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-vanderbilt-beach/) equipment pads corrode fast; storm season loads filters - [Golden Gate Estates](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-golden-gate-estates/) well water iron staining on marcite; propane rather than natural gas - [Isles of Capri](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-isles-of-capri/) canal water table hides leaks; heavy equipment-pad corrosion - [Marco Island](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-marco-island/) barrier island salt air corrodes heaters from the inside out - [Bonita Springs](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-bonita-springs/) pool decks and patios on Southwest Florida soil - [Estero](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-estero/) deck and patio base engineered for local soil - [Ave Maria](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-ave-maria/) newer east-county builds, patios and walkways matched to existing hardscape 4 neighborhoods with a published customer review Click any marker · positions are approximate ## What that usually means in Ave Maria In the order the causes above tend to drive the work, not in the order of what costs most. - [Pool pump replacement in Naples, programmed not just installed](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-pump-replacement-naples/) A variable speed pump left running one fixed speed is an expensive single speed pump. The saving is in the programming, and the programming is the part that gets skipped. - [Pool heat pumps, which genuinely work in this climate](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/heat-pump-pool-heater-naples/) Heat pumps have a mixed reputation nationally and a good one here, for one reason: they move warmth out of the air, and Naples air stays warm enough to keep giving it up through most of the winter. - [Gas pool heater installation, sized to the whole run](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/gas-pool-heater-installation-naples/) The most common reason a brand new heater never quite gets the pool warm is not the heater. It is the gas line feeding it, and it was undersized before the unit ever arrived. - [Pool automation, for a house that sits empty half the year](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-automation-installation-naples/) Plenty of Park Shore and Pelican Bay sits empty from April to November. Automation is what turns that from a risk into a non-event: the pump, the heater, the lights and the spa run on schedules you can see and change from a phone, and a fault gets noticed the day it happens rather than the day you fly back. - [Paver patio and walkway installation in Naples, pitched the right way](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/paver-patio-walkway-naples/) Every patio sheds every storm onto something. The two things it must never shed onto are your house slab and your pool. Most patio and walkway problems in Naples start with where the water was sent. - [Pool filter repair, when it is not a chemistry problem](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-filter-repair-naples/) Debris blowing back into the pool while the pressure climbs is not a water chemistry problem. It is a torn element, and no amount of balancing will fix it. This page is the triage: how to tell chemistry from circulation from media, and what Naples does to every interval printed on a filter box. ## What to expect when we work in Ave Maria Ave Maria's sub-communities run design review for changes visible from outside the home, and hardscape usually qualifies. The specifics vary by neighborhood association, so before anything is ordered we help you put together what an approval typically wants: the layout, the material, and the color, on paper. Submitting once, correctly, is faster than arguing twice. We schedule east-county work in dedicated visits rather than squeezing it between coastal jobs, so when we commit to a day in Ave Maria, the day is yours. It also means we would rather group a street's worth of similar work than make four half-planned trips, which, given how this town's equipment ages, comes up more often than you would think. One more thing worth saying plainly: on the earliest streets, the builder warranty era is over. For years the answer to any pool problem was a phone call to the builder, and that reflex outlives the coverage. If your home has passed out of its warranty period, the equipment is yours now, and the decisions about it finally are too. We think that is good news, and this page is the case for why. ASK CLAYTON · AVE MARIA ## Questions from Ave Maria These are specific to this area. The general ones are answered on the service pages. [Call 239-450-5933](tel:+1-239-450-5933) Splash Pools Clayton replies himself - Our pump and heater are both original and both getting loud. Should we replace them together? Often yes, and not just for convenience. They were installed together, they are failing together, and one visit with the pad open costs less disruption than two a year apart. More importantly, pump, heater, and filter work as a system, so sizing them together at replacement produces a better matched pad than swapping pieces one emergency at a time. - We have no gas line. What are our real heating options? Two: a heat pump or propane. The existing streets of Ave Maria were built without natural gas service, so the coastal default does not apply. A heat pump suits regular swimming and holding a steady temperature efficiently. Propane suits occasional use where fast warm-up matters and you accept tank and delivery logistics. Which one is right follows from how your household swims, not from a catalog. - Can new pavers really match what the builder installed years ago? Closely, almost never perfectly, and pretending otherwise is how extensions go wrong. Shade drifts between manufacturing batches even within one product line, and your original line may be discontinued. The reliable approaches are relocating original pavers into the visible areas with new stock where it is least noticed, or making the transition deliberate with a border, so it reads as design. - Will a patio extension stay level with the original deck? It will if the base underneath matches, and that is the whole game. A new section compacted to a lighter specification than the builder's settles relative to the old one, and the step appears right at the joint where everyone walks. We open the existing edge to verify what is actually under the original before building the new section to meet or exceed it. - Do we need approval before changing our deck or patio? For work visible from outside the home, your sub-community's design review process usually applies, and each neighborhood association sets its own particulars. Plan for a submittal showing layout, materials, and colors before installation begins. We prepare that documentation as part of the project so the approval happens once, cleanly, before any material is ordered. - Is the pool shell itself likely to need work soon? No, and we will say that as plainly as we can. Ave Maria's pools are young by Naples standards, and a sound concrete shell of this age has decades of service ahead. The genuine needs here are equipment reaching the end of its first life and hardscape being extended. Anyone diagnosing structural problems in a fifteen-year-old shell out here should be asked to show their evidence. - What decides the cost of replacing the original equipment? The main drivers are which pieces are being replaced and whether they are resized rather than matched, the fuel path chosen for heating, whether automation is added while the pad is open, and the condition of the plumbing and electrical serving the pad. Scope decided by your actual swimming pattern, not the builder's original spreadsheet, is what the quote prices. Tap a question Our pump and heater are both original and bo… We have no gas line. What are our real heati… Can new pavers really match what the builder… Will a patio extension stay level with the o… Do we need approval before changing our deck… Is the pool shell itself likely to need work… What decides the cost of replacing the origi… [Or just call 239-450-5933](tel:+1-239-450-5933) ## What is the same everywhere we work The neighborhood changes what fails. It does not change how we work, and pretending otherwise would be the first dishonest thing on this page. - No price before someone has looked at the pool. - No schedule before we know what the shell needs. - The cause gets diagnosed before the repair gets quoted. - Ask for our license number and check it yourself at the [DBPR licensee search](https://www.myfloridalicense.com/wl11.asp?mode=0&SID=). Ask the other quotes for theirs too. ## Nearby, and similar These share the same underlying conditions as Ave Maria, which is why the work tends to look alike. - [Marco Island](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-marco-island/) barrier island salt air corrodes heaters from the inside out - [Bonita Springs](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-bonita-springs/) pool decks and patios on Southwest Florida soil - [Estero](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-remodeling-estero/) deck and patio base engineered for local soil [Every area we cover](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/service-areas/) Talk to Clayton ## Tell us what the pool in Ave Maria is doing. A sentence or two is enough. You get a call back from the person who does the work, not a dispatcher. Website Name Phone Email optional What does the pool need? Full remodel or renovation Resurfacing / interior finish Waterline tile or coping Spa remodel or addition Repair, not sure which kind Losing water / leak Crack in the shell or deck Pool plumbing Heater Pump or filter Automation / controls Equipment pad rebuild Pool deck / pavers Paver sealing Not sure yet What is it doing? Send to Clayton [Call 239-450-5933](tel:+1-239-450-5933)