Pool remodeling in Fort Myers

The City of Fort Myers makes its drinking water by reverse osmosis. Its 2023 Annual Water Quality Report describes raw water drawn from the Lower Hawthorn portion of the Floridan Aquifer, which is brackish, pushed through reverse osmosis membranes and then disinfected with chlorine. The city's utility FAQ puts the result at approximately 30 ppm hardness, or 1.8 grains per gallon.

That is very soft water, and for drinking it is a selling point. For a cement-based pool finish it is a problem to plan around. The National Plasterers Council recommends fill water above 200 ppm calcium hardness, and warns that soft water in contact with a new finish can leach calcium hydroxide from its upper surface and weaken the cement binder there. Water that starts at roughly 30 ppm total hardness has a long way to climb before it reaches that target.

For comparison, the Naples area averages about 67 mg/L, a figure we documented utility by utility in what Collier County tap water does to new pool plaster. City of Fort Myers water starts at less than half of that. The chemistry is the same story told more sharply: the softer the fill, the more deliberately calcium has to be added while the pool fills and through the first weeks, or the water takes it from the finish instead.

None of this means a city pool cannot hold a beautiful interior. It means the start-up plan is written for the water that actually comes out of the hose here, not for a regional average and certainly not for the scale-fighting advice written for hard-water states.

Inside city limits, the City of Fort Myers "Do I Need Permits" table lists in-ground pool bottom refinishing as requiring a permit for commercial properties but not for residential ones. A new in-ground pool or spa needs a permit in either case, and the table draws its line around new construction and commercial work rather than a homeowner refinishing an existing residential interior.

In unincorporated Lee County the wording is broader. The county's Pool Guide states that a Residential Pool permit is required for construction or renovation of all in-ground pools. Whether a particular resurfacing counts as renovation under that guide depends on the scope, so we confirm it with the county for the job in front of us rather than assume it.

That difference is exactly why we do not borrow answers across county lines. Our post on whether pool resurfacing needs a permit in Collier County is accurate for Collier and not a guide to Lee, and a remodel that adds or moves anything structural, plumbing or electrical is a different conversation in every jurisdiction.

Then there is no single answer, because Lee County Utilities does not make its water one way. Its water quality report describes five treatment plants: Corkscrew lime softens groundwater, Green Meadows uses reverse osmosis and ion exchange, North Lee County uses reverse osmosis, Olga filters water taken from the Caloosahatchee River, and Pinewoods blends nanofiltration with reverse osmosis. Some of those supplies are blended before they reach a house.

The county's report also records its disinfectant residual as chlorine and chloramines together, not free chlorine alone. That matters at start-up, because combined chlorine arriving from the hose reads differently on a test kit than the free chlorine a pool is managed on.

We are deliberately not printing a hardness figure for county water. The report we worked from does not state one per plant, and a number borrowed from a ZIP code estimate would be precise-looking and wrong. So on a county address we test the fill water itself before a new finish goes in, and set the start-up chemistry against what it actually measures.

The same things we check anywhere, plus the two that are specific to this city. Jurisdiction and fill water come first, because they change the plan. Then the shell: a crack gets sorted into structural or cosmetic before a finish goes over it, and our guide to telling the two apart explains what we are looking at.

Then the waterline and coping, which take the hardest exposure on any pool. Waterline tile that has let go in a few places usually tells you about the bond behind it rather than the tile itself.

And water loss. A pool that drops faster than weather explains gets a leak detection before anything is resurfaced, because a new finish over an active leak hides the evidence and fixes nothing. Only after all of that do we talk about scope, and the scope is written down before any work starts.