Swimming Pool and Poolside Construction
We build the pool and everything around it: the shell, the deck, the coping, the planting, the lighting and the drainage, on one contract with one company answerable for all of it.
We also publish what it costs, which nobody else in this market does.
- water surface
- 32 sqm
- concrete pool
- 8 × 4 m
- depth
- 5–6 ft
For a 32 sqm concrete pool (8m x 4m, 5 to 6 feet) built to the specification below, in Cavite or Laguna. Pool only. The deck, planting and water features are quoted separately, and they usually cost more than the pool.
You can get the same size pool in this market for ₱890,000. We have the quotations.
What that price buys is a thinner shell, budget waterproofing and unnamed equipment, and the difference does not show on handover day. It shows in about year four.
If ₱890,000 is the budget, take it. We would rather tell you that now than build you a compromise and put our name on it.
What we build
Our contract, our specification, our supervision. Built by our own crews or by a pool contractor working under us, never handed off
Halamanan
Halamanan
Halamanan
Halamanan
Halamanan
Halamanan. If the pool is already built and it is only the planting you need, pool landscaping is here
You are the applicant, we do the work. We prepare the plans, get them signed and sealed, file on your behalf and follow it up
The pool is about a third of what you will spend
On a finished project, the deck, the planting and the water features come to roughly twice the cost of the pool itself. They are also the part you photograph.
Most pool contractors stop at the coping and leave you to find someone else for the rest. We are a landscape company that builds pools, so the surround is the part we are best at, and it gets designed with the pool rather than bolted on after.
What we build into every pool
These are not upgrades. They are the specification, and they are the reason our number is higher than the one you will be quoted elsewhere.
| System | What we build | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Shell | 200 mm walls and floor, as a starting point | No building code anywhere sets a pool shell thickness. Not the Philippine structural code, not the US pool standard, not ACI. It is an engineer's output. 200 mm is where we start before the calculation, not where we finish |
| Floor steel | Two layers, top and bottom | Above what code requires, deliberately. A single centred mat is code-compliant at this thickness and resists uplift poorly, because uplift bends the floor the other way |
| Wall steel | 12 mm verticals at 200 mm, both faces | Roughly three times the minimum reinforcement ratio the concrete code would accept. Crack control on a structure whose whole job is holding water |
| Waterproofing | Water-retaining system rated for pools, two coats, on a prepared substrate | Plain waterproofing cement powder costs about ₱15,000 less on a 32 sqm pool and cannot be repaired without draining the pool and stripping the finish off |
| Tile bed | Adhesive rated for permanent immersion | Glass and stone take all their bond from the adhesive, because the tile absorbs nothing. Voids behind a sheet become water pockets |
| Grout | Epoxy on glass and small-format stone | Cement grout shrinks as it cures and stays porous, which is why mosaic comes off in whole sheets rather than single chips |
| Natural stone | Back-sealed before laying, face-sealed before grouting | Efflorescence and grout staining, neither of which can be fixed after the fact |
| Equipment | Named brand, model and warranty on your quotation | So you can price it yourself, and so the warranty means something |
| Tile | Pool-rated as a minimum. Sukabumi, stone and mosaic as options | Ordinary floor tile is not rated for permanent immersion. The ₱850,000 pools in this market are finished in builder's-grade 30 x 30 at about ₱35 a piece |
| Hydrostatic relief and subsoil drainage | Relief valve at the lowest point, and drainage under and around the shell | The one that actually destroys pools here. See below |
| Structural design | By an engineer, sized to your ground rather than to a house rule | Lateral earth pressure, soil bearing, water table and depth are what set the real numbers. Nearly all of the Philippines is Seismic Zone 4, and past about 1.8 m deep the earthquake case has to be checked explicitly |
- Single centred mat. Code-compliant. Resists uplift poorly
- Waterproofing cement powder. About ₱15,000 cheaper. Not repairable in place
- Wall steel in one face. Meets the minimum reinforcement ratio
- Two layers of floor steel. Top and bottom, for the uplift case
- Water-retaining system, two coats. Coved at the junction, which is where it fails
- 12 mm wall steel, both faces. At 200 mm centres, tied to the floor mat
- Pool-rated adhesive and tile
Section through the wall and floor junction, drawn to relative scale. Reinforcement shown indicatively. No building code specifies a pool shell thickness, so both sections above are legal; the right-hand one is our starting point and the actual design for any pool comes from an engineer working to the ground it sits in.
The one we will not do
A premium finish over a thin shell and budget waterproofing. It costs around ₱145,000 less to build and looks identical the day you get the keys.
It diverges in about year four, at the waterproofing, which is the one system that cannot be repaired without draining the pool and stripping the finish off. We would be charging you for the part you can see and buying the cheap version of the part that fails.
The failure nobody quotes for: an empty pool floating out of the ground
Uplift on a 32 sqm pool from one metre of water table
What the shell itself weighs, roughly
Factor of safety geotechnical practice wants, pool empty, against where the arithmetic lands
Groundwater pushes up on a pool floor at roughly 10 kilopascals per metre of water table above it. On a 32 sqm pool, one metre of water table is about 32 tonnes of uplift, against a shell that weighs somewhere around 30 to 35 tonnes.
Full of water, the pool is fine. Empty, in wet ground, it can lift. Geotechnical practice wants a factor of safety of 2 against that, with the pool assumed empty, and the arithmetic above lands closer to 1. This is a rainfall problem, and we have a lot of rainfall.
It is prevented cheaply: a hydrostatic relief valve at the lowest point, a gravel blanket under the floor, and a perimeter drain. It is not preventable afterwards.
Ask whoever is quoting you whether any of that is in the price, and ask them what happens if you drain the pool in August.
How a pool project runs
- 01 Site visit and measure.
Access, soil, drainage and where the sun lands. Access decides whether a backhoe can reach the dig, and that is a real cost line.
- 02 Design and scope.
Dimensions, depth profile, finish, equipment and the surround drawn together. Depth gets fixed here, in writing, because it changes the price by ₱55,000 on the same footprint and it never shows in the size people quote back at each other.
- 03 Quotation.
Itemised, with the exclusions listed, and the tile and waterproofing named by product.
- 04 Permits and village clearance.
The building permit is applied for in your name, because the application is notarised and has to be signed by the property owner. Everything else is ours: we prepare the plans, have them signed and sealed by the licensed professionals the code requires, file on your behalf under a simple authorisation letter, and follow the application up at the building office. You supply the title or tax declaration, the current real property tax receipt and the lot plan. In a subdivision the homeowners association approval is a separate process from the city permit and usually has to come first, along with the construction bond.
- 05 Excavation and shell.
2 to 3 weeks.
- 06 Tile, coping, equipment and commissioning.
- 07 Deck, planting and lighting.
- 08 Handover.
Warranty documents, equipment manuals, commissioning readings, and a maintenance schedule written for the finish you chose. Natural stone needs different chemistry from tile, and getting that wrong damages it.
Typical timeline: 6 to 10 weeks for a standard skimmer pool, 10 to 14 for infinity or overflow. Add 2 to 3 weeks in villages that restrict work to daytime hours.
You see it before it gets buried
The shell is the majority of what a pool costs and you cannot inspect any of it once the pool is full. Thin steel and a skipped waterproofing coat look exactly like the proper version on handover day. This is how you know which one you got.
Three hold points, photographed and signed off before the next stage starts:
- Hold 1After reinforcement
- Hold 2After waterproofing
- Hold 3Before tiling
Warranty
The shell, the waterproofing system and the tile bond. If it leaks through the structure, that is ours
Pump, filter, panel and lights, covering installation as well as the unit. Manufacturer terms run alongside and some are longer
Workmanship. Plant establishment is separate and we will tell you which is which before handover
What voids it
Published, because a warranty with unstated exclusions is not a warranty.
- Draining the pool without asking us first. This is the one that catches people. An empty shell in wet ground can be pushed up by groundwater and it will not go back. Call us before you drain it, at any point in the ten years, and the call is free.
- Water chemistry held outside the range we hand over. Aggressive water etches plaster and eats grout, and neither is a construction defect. We give you the numbers and the schedule at handover.
- Acid washing a natural stone finish. Standard practice on tile, damaging on Sukabumi and most stone. Your pool service needs to know which pool they are working on.
- Alterations, repairs or additions by others to the shell, the waterproofing or the plumbing.
- Ground movement, seismic events, flooding and impact damage. Ordinary settlement is ours. An earthquake is not.
Ten years is the longer end of what this market offers, and we can say it because of what is in the specification above. A 150 mm shell with waterproofing cement behind the tile carries more risk at year eight than a 200 mm shell with a water-retaining system, whatever number either of us prints.
Ask anyone quoting you a warranty how long they have been trading and to show you a pool they finished five years ago. A warranty costs nothing to write and is worth what the company is worth when you need it.
Where we work
Core area: Cavite, Laguna, Batangas and Rizal. Our crews are based in Santa Rosa, Laguna, so this is where we work most weeks and where mobilisation is already in the price.
Wider Luzon and the Visayas by arrangement. We have worked as far north as Pangasinan and we have people in Cebu. Outside the core area, mobilisation and accommodation are quoted as their own line rather than buried in the rate, so you can see what the distance costs.
We would rather tell you a job is too far than take it and run it badly from three provinces away. Ask, and we will say.
Who we are
Halamanan is a landscape design, construction and materials company based in Santa Rosa, Laguna, working across CALABARZON and beyond, operating since 2022 with over 100 projects delivered. We are a registered business, we issue official receipts, and we are PhilGEPS registered. 0917 105 5106.
Pools came out of the landscape work rather than the other way round. We were already building the decks, the coping, the water features and the planting around other people's pools, and we got tired of inheriting a shell we had no say in.
- 100+
- Projects delivered
- 2022
- Operating since
- PhilGEPS
- Registered
Who is answerable when it leaks. We are.
The contract is with us, the specification is ours, the hold-point photographs are taken by us, and the warranty above is ours rather than a subcontractor's. Where a specialist crew does part of the work they do it under our contract and our supervision, and you never have to work out whose problem something is.
Why our number is higher
The gap buys five things, and an informal operator structurally cannot offer any of them.
- A registered company that issues an official receipt
- A written scope with the exclusions listed, so the price at the end matches the price at the start
- A warranty in writing, split between structure and equipment
- Named equipment brands rather than "imported pump"
- A shell built to a specification you can read before it is poured, and photograph before it is covered
We collected 20 contractor quotations in Cavite and Laguna in September 2026 and published what they said, including the ones cheaper than us. The cost guide is here, with the method set out in full. We would rather you arrive at our quotation already knowing what the market charges.
Common questions
How much does a pool cost?
Ours start at ₱1,200,000 for 32 sqm. The market runs from about ₱18,500 to ₱47,500 per square metre of water surface depending on size and finish, and the cost guide has the rates by size with the quotations behind them.
Do I need a building permit, and who files it?
Yes. A built-in pool is a structure, so it needs a building permit like any other construction.
You are the applicant, we do the filing. Under the National Building Code the application is notarised and signed by the property owner, so it goes in your name and cannot go in ours. What sits behind it is our job: plans prepared and then signed and sealed by the licensed professionals the code requires, the ancillary permits (structural, sanitary and plumbing, electrical) submitted together with the main application rather than separately, and the follow-up at the building office.
From you we need the title or tax declaration, the current real property tax receipt and the lot plan. If you are in a subdivision, the homeowners association approval is separate from the city permit, usually has to come first, and normally comes with a construction bond and restricted work hours. We handle that coordination too.
Requirements and fees vary between local government units, so treat this as the general shape rather than a checklist for your specific city or municipality.
How long does it take?
6 to 10 weeks for a standard pool, 10 to 14 for infinity or overflow, and 2 to 3 weeks longer in villages with restricted work hours.
Can you do just the deck and landscaping?
Yes, including around a pool somebody else built. That is pool landscaping, and it is a separate service with its own page. This page is for building the pool itself, or the pool and the whole area together. There is no minimum job size.
Do you do pool repairs?
Yes. Leaks, cracks, retiling, resurfacing, coping and equipment replacement, as one-off work rather than a maintenance contract. Pool repair is here.
Can I supply my own Sukabumi and have you deduct it?
You can, and it usually costs you more. A contractor quoting 30 x 30 ceramic who agrees to a straight material deduction has agreed to lay about 2.5 times the pieces for the same money, because Sukabumi comes in 10 x 10 and 20 x 20. We would rather buy the stone for you at trade and show you the invoice.
Tell us what you are thinking about
Send the lot size, roughly where the pool would go, and what you want the finished area to feel like. We will come back with a scope and a number, in writing, with the exclusions listed.
Or email [email protected]. Viber and WhatsApp on the same number.
Halamanan · Santa Rosa, Laguna · Monday to Saturday, 8am to 6pm
Prices on this page are ours and are current at September 2026. Market figures come from 20 contractor quotations collected in Cavite and Laguna in September 2026, published in full with the method in the cost guide.