California Above Ground Pools

Hello and thanks for visiting my website. California Above Ground Pools is an swimming pool and liner installation company specializing in quality installations and repairs. We are based in Southern California near Los Angeles in the Riverside area. Whether you just need information for your DIY pool installation / pool liner change or looking for a pro do the work, we can help. We offer advise, install recommendations and answer questions for anyone searching for reliable hands on knowledge about building or repairing above ground pools. Please take a few moment and click through the site, you may find some helpful information and tips here. If you have a question, send me an email and I’ll try to help.

Our History

I got my first pool job in San Bernardino back in the 1980’s as pool installers for a small pool store called Mr. Pool. Within a few years I was kept busy working for that company and myself probably installing about 300 above ground pools each year across So Cal, and that included replacing above ground pool liners too. That may sound like an exaggeration to most people in other areas of this country, but much of California has a very mild winter climate and you can actually stay quite busy throughout the year doing pool work. During the 1990’s and after the new millennium a lot of the work we did was through Doughboy pool dealers and Leslie’s pool stores.

A lot has changed since those old days, good and bad. First the bad – gone are the larger than life swimming pool superstores. Being able to walk into mega-mart sized showrooms and leave with any above ground pool your heart desires. Even the smaller sized chain stores like Leslie’s pool no longer carry above ground pools. They simply take up valuable floor space and are an order only item now if at all. Another reason for the decline of in-stock pools and liners is pricing. It’s become very difficult for brick and mortar retail pool stores to compete with online dealer price-points.

The good – The internet has arrived and the advantages of modern internet shopping are numerous. The selection of goods has grown beyond belief and no longer are you limited to the products that are within driving distance. The lack of pricey road front real estate and other retail expenses allows the online dealers to offer giant savings over the local corner pool stores. Today California residents can purchase the same quality above ground pool for roughly half the money it would have cost 20 years ago from Rec Warehouse.

This same sweeping change in technology that changed how people shop has also changed how pools get installed. Back in the day the pool retailers had in house installers. Today nearly all of the pools and installation jobs come by way of the internet, meaning most of our customers find us online and most of the pools we install are purchased online too.

Sharing Our Experiences 

Our above ground pool experience comes specifically from working in sunny Southern Cali. Our work here has allowed us to see the effects the California environment has on swimming pools over time. The opinions expressed on these pages are based on 3 decades of working in this area and come from serving thousands of customers by building or repairing above ground pools and replacing liners in SoCal. And now we want to share our findings with the people seeking honest first hand information. Our goal is for this website to bring you more than just a price sheet, or parroting some blog post, it needs to offer something based in real world experiences. I hope you find the information on these pages helpful in your swimming pool project. We will continue to help by frequently adding to the FAQ and pool blog sections.

Our roots run deep in California and below are cities we worked in regularly. We’ve had a lot of fun, learned quite a bit and worked on some very interesting projects here. If you have an experience you wish to share or pool installation questions please send us an email, we’d love to here from you.

DIY Above Ground Pool & Liner Installations

Going to do it yourself? We can help. Believe it or not, the majority of swimming pool installations are still done by the home owner. It has always been that way and it shows no sign of changing. Because not everyone can spend the extra money on having a professional pool installer do the work for them. We have added guidance to help make your DIY swimming pool project a successful one. We have a lot of specific advise for the DIY crowd. There are pages and pages of information on the site that cover many areas of both pool installations and pool liner changes.

Recent additions include a list of popular swimming pool installation accessories with detailed descriptions of what the do. We have included images of each as well as our take on how important they are for a Calfornia above ground pool installation. In addition to that we have added professional guidance for shopping for an above ground pool. This information is short, to the point and covers what to buy, where to buy it and why it’s good. There is also a new FAQ page as well as a blog going live so our customers and fellow pool geeks can share experiences and trade important information from around LA and Southern California.

Most of these upgrades to our site have come along through necessity, as we can no longer keep up with the amount of phone calls we receive. A large portion of calls are for advise on what to buy, where to shop or basic how to questions. This increase in phone calls are due to the growing popularity of above ground pools as well as a spiking increase in population, especially in the greater Los Angeles region.

We still make and receive some phone calls daily but operating bobcats and other machinery make spending much time on calls nearly impossible. We tend to get to the phone at the end of the day. Please take a look around our site for the answers you need. If you can’t find them please drop us an email and we get your questions answered.

Thanks again and Happy Swimming!