The Foothills Pool Company is a custom fiberglass pool builder serving Sawmills — Granite Falls, Hudson and Lenoir are all within our regular run. Every Sawmills build is installed by one crew — shell, concrete pool deck and hardscape — and starts with a free on-site quote.
Sawmills covers about six and a half square miles of southern Caldwell County, bordered by Hudson to the north, Granite Falls to the east and Lake Rhodhiss — the Catawba River impoundment Duke Energy dammed in 1925 — along the south. The town incorporated in 1988 and took its name from the mills that once fed the local furniture plants; with roughly five thousand residents it is the second-largest municipality in the county. That lakeside-to-upland spread is what makes the ground here worth reading before anyone digs.
The parcels down toward the lake are the ones that need thought. With Lake Rhodhiss holding a full pond near 995 feet, low-lying ground on the town’s southern edge can carry a higher water table and softer material at depth, which for a buoyant fiberglass shell means hydrostatic relief and careful bedding rather than an optimistic backfill. Lots up on the firmer ground toward Hudson drain well and are among the more straightforward builds anywhere in Caldwell County. Which of the two you have is usually obvious from a walk across the yard after a wet week, and that is exactly when we like to look at a site.
Sawmills lots also tend to be generous, and that changes what people ask for. When there is room for the pool, a real deck and a fire pit, the sensible move is to design all of it at once — one excavation, one pour, one trenching pass — rather than adding hardscape a year later and cutting into a finished deck to run conduit.
The typical Sawmills build is a full package: fiberglass pool, a wide concrete pool deck and hardscape — a fire pit or a seating wall — designed and installed in one run. The second is a lakeside build where drainage and hydrostatic relief drive the layout more than aesthetics do.
Sitting between Granite Falls and Lenoir with US 321 close at hand, Sawmills rarely presents the crane-staging problem that older in-town streets elsewhere do. Delivery access is usually good and the lift path is usually obvious, and Hickory is only a few miles down US 321 so the crew is not fighting a long haul either. That means the design conversation is about what you actually want rather than what will physically fit, which is a much better conversation to be having.
Whether you are on a parcel down toward Lake Rhodhiss, up on the firmer ground toward Hudson, or over on the Granite Falls side of town, we will come and measure your Sawmills project and give you an honest written quote at no cost. Talk to a Hickory pool installation contractor who will separate the pool price from the deck price on paper.
Sawmills runs from Lake Rhodhiss up to firm upland ground, so bedding and hydrostatic relief get designed in on the low lots rather than assumed away.
We install the shell and pour the concrete pool deck ourselves instead of handing the hardscape to a second contractor.
Pool, deck, coping and equipment priced as separate lines, so you can see exactly what you are paying for.
An authorized installer for Imagine Pools and Thursday Pools, not a reseller working through a middleman.
Personal loans through HFS Financial, Viking Capital and Lyon Financial — no home equity required. See the options.
We walk the actual yard before quoting. No obligation, and no charge anywhere in our four counties.
Fiberglass models from Imagine Pools and Thursday Pools — plunge pools, family pools, tanning ledges and integrated spas. Browse the designs or see completed installations.
The Foothills Pool Company builds across Catawba, Caldwell, Alexander and Burke counties from a base in Hickory. See the full service area.
No high-pressure pitch. No sales-call queue. Just a real conversation about your backyard vision with the team that will actually build it.