Our story · Since 1973
Half a century of hand-built pools.
A family company that helped bring marbelite to South Africa — and still builds every pool by hand, to the site it lives on.
Pictured
Rock lagoon, Blair Atholl
Residential · gunite lined in natural rock
Peter Curtis was selling cement in 1973 when he decided to do his own thing.
He built pools. Sprayed-concrete shells — gunite — finished in marbelite, the smooth, durable interior surface he was instrumental in bringing to the South African market. The company he started that year is the one you are reading about.
1973
Founded in Johannesburg by Peter Curtis, then a sales rep for Whites Portland cement.
Marbelite
The interior finish Curtis Pools helped introduce to South African pools — still the finish on every pool we build.
Russ Curtis
Peter’s son leads the company today. He ran Watermaid, the salt-chlorinator business, for more than fourteen years before taking over.
The craft
Gunite, then marbelite. In that order, every time.
Gunite is concrete sprayed under pressure onto a steel-reinforced shell. Curtis Pools was spraying it long before most South African pools were built this way — the photograph is the crew stabilising a mountain cutting at Waterval Boven in 1982. It lets us build any shape the site asks for — a rectangle, a lazy river, an infinity edge — as one continuous structure.
Marbelite goes on afterwards: a hand-trowelled interior finish, pigmented to the colour you choose, that gives the water its depth. The two together are why a pool by Curtis Pools is built to last generations.
See the workHow a project runs
Four stages, one team
01
Consult
We come to site, listen, and talk through what the space and the budget can do.
02
Design
Shape, depth, finish, decking, lighting — drawn for your site, not picked from a catalogue.
03
Build
Excavation, steel, gunite shell, plumbing and plant — our own crews, photographed at every stage.
04
Finish
Marbelite, tiling, mosaics, pavers and decking. Then we fill it.
Built for
The names on our client list
Crawford
Curro
Trinity
Hamiltons College
Emperors Palace
Wild Coast Sun
Investec
Joburg Zoo
Recognition
Judged by the industry, more than twenty times.
NSPI awards over the years — the industry’s own judges — including Gauteng Pool of the Year in 2012, 2014 and 2016.
See the awardsQuestions people ask
Who founded Curtis Pools?
Peter Curtis, in 1973. He was a sales representative for Whites Portland cement before deciding to build pools himself, and was instrumental in bringing marbelite to the South African pool market.
Who runs Curtis Pools now?
Russ Curtis, Peter's son. He ran Watermaid, a salt-chlorinator business, for more than fourteen years before taking over the pool company.
Is Curtis Pools still a family business?
Yes. It has been in the same family since 1973, passing from Peter Curtis to his son Russ.
What does Curtis Pools do differently?
Every pool is a hand-built gunite shell finished in marbelite — a sprayed-concrete pool rather than a fibreglass one — drawn for the site it sits on rather than chosen from a range, and one team carries the project from the first sketch through construction to the finish.
Start a project
Tell us about the water you have in mind.
A school, a resort, a garden. We’ll come to site, listen, and draw it.