Elite Pools

The Elite pools team are wonderful to work with. They are with you every step of the way. There was never a concern that my dream pool wouldn't turn out to exceed my expectations.

The idea of putting a pool in our yard was an overwhelming proposition to say the least. Mike, the owner, and his team from Elite Pools put us at ease and made it a positive, enjoyable, and even exciting experience. Their vision for the project was spot on. Their partnership, responsiveness, and proactive approach to informing us of the path forward made us feel at ease throughout the length of the project. Mike was at our house often throughout the process to ensure everything ran smoothly. We would highly recommend Elite Pools to anyone considering a new pool, or even maintenance on an existing pool. Thank you Elite Pools for a job well done!

Elite pools was an excellent pool contractor. The scope of the project was well defined prior to start and the company even provided feedback on where they envisioned us wanting to expand the project after beginning (which we eventually did expand to include most of their suggestions).

Elite installed our in-ground salt water pool about 9 years ago and they did an amazing job. We worked directly with Mark and he stepped us through the entire process and helped us create the best free-form design for our space and our budget. Unfortunately, over the years, we didn't maintain the seals around the coping and water made its way under the coping stones and behind the tile causing accent tiles to pop and stones to loosen. We needed to have the coping stones reset and decided to change our accent tiles. Dustin provided a ton of tile options and did a great job managing the effort. It looks like a brand new pool.

Elite pools were fantastic in building our in ground pool in Elkton MD. The owner took a personal interest in the pool, found a spouting crab fountain for us, and the pool is of the highest caliber and gorgeous. We are in year 3 now and the quality of construction and parts has held up admirably. Highly recommended.

Amazing. Building a pool is a significant and scary endeavor, reading online and BBB reviews for pool companies seems to be an endless list of sketchy companies that miss deadlines, race to milestone payment points and then don't come back for weeks or just have horrible quality. Mike and his team at Heritage Elite exceeded our expectations at every step of our project. From the extensive work to design our pool, having our pool properly zoned with our spetic system, gaining all necessary building permits to meeting the construction schedule at every point in the project Heritage Elite was a pleasure to work with. If you are considering a pool or hardscape project I would highly recommend calling the team at Heritage Elite. We are finishing our 3rd season with the pool and transforming our backyard was the best decision we ever made and I thank Mike for making it a reality.

In fairness to Elite, they were picking up in the middle of a project. But they were paid accordingly. It required very detailed management on my part to stay on top of them to get the job done. My primary contact left the company during the build but oddly continued on as my POC. Once he left I had to go to the owners to get anything done. While they did eventually come through it was not without significant effort. I do believe they can do a good job, and my build was somewhat complex with the odd variables, but I struggle to give them an A or a B. A score like that would imply that I would use them again, and I'm not certain that I would.

This has been an absolutely wonderful experience. The salesman Jay Schreider was careful not to over-promise and made sure we met with the owner to clarify the details of our project. The owner, Mike Shaffrey, spent many hours with us discussing and planning the intricacies of the build before we were even under contract. We negotiated a very fair contract and have no regrets. Mike has been involved in the oversight through the entire job and always available by phone or email whenever we had questions. Mike's years of experience was invaluable when he was able to help us design a way to put 10 lbs pf stuff in a 5 lb bag. However, the one who Mike has relied upon to really pull it together on a daily basis has been Dustin. Dustin couldn't be more agreeable and attentive! He has never failed to address an issue or question in a timely manner. The professionalism and patience displayed by all has been almost shocking. A+

It was a joy to work with Elite for the install of a custom in ground pool.  They were clear on the steps of the process and allowed us to tailor the design throughout the process.
They assigned a project manager and he was our primary POC for the duration.  Occasionally Mike the owner would check in.
They complete the entire pool within expectations.

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When we initially began working with Elite, John was our salesman. We met with him and signed the contract in February. We agreed that we wanted the work to be done in March or early April as we would be having a party for my daughter in mid May. After signing the contract, we needed to pick the coping and tile. I met him at a showroom but didn't like the selection that was there. It took about a month or so before I got to meet him at the showroom and that was only after multiple phone calls. After not finding something I liked at the showroom, it was nearly impossible to get any additional samples or options. March came and went and so did half of April. I finally was able to get some additional options and chose the tile and coping. John said the work was going to begin the third week of April. The day came and no one showed. John called and said that it would be pushed off a few days. The next scheduled start date came and went without any work beginning. Coincidentally, I had been looking for an used automatic pool cleaner. The person who I bought the pool cleaner from just happened to be having very similar work done (tile and coping) by Elite Pools, except he was dealing with Mike, the owner. He gave me Mike's number. I called Mike, who was at a work site but stopped what he was doing to listen to my concerns and hear my story. I can't begin to explain how different of an experience it was from that moment forward. Mike came to my home that Saturday to meet with my husband and I. The work began the following Tuesday (just 4 days before my daughter's party). His crews worked for 15 straight hours replacing the tile and coping and acid washing the pool. The next day he paid to have a tanker of water put in the pool. Mike takes accountability and responsibility, regardless of who "signed the job". He is professional, responsive and exacting in every detail. You can tell he cares more about doing things right by the customer than making as much money as he can. He is the original owner of the company and has seen the business grow but he still sees the importance of every customer. I have had experience with the pool business for several years before owning my own pool. I can honestly say it is really difficult to find good people who are reliable to service or repair pools because typically the demand for work is greater than those who can supply the work. Hands down, I would call Mike and Elite Pools before anyone else. I would recommend him without reservation, even considering our initial experience with one of his employees (John) was not positive.

Elite Pools is one of the few pool contractors with a license in the District of Columbia. Elite Pools installed an in-ground concrete pool, rectangular, 36'x18', with diving board. They also installed concrete decking. It was a good experience, particularly from the point of view of costs, some of which were presented a la carte. I would recommend them to others.

Price B: All four quotes we got before committing to a pool company were approximately the same when accounting for different features they promised. Based on the quality of the end product we felt the price was worth a B.
Quality C: Construction seems pretty sturdy. The pool itself looks fantastic and complements our back yard. We like the free form we created and the benches in the pool. Our complaints in this category are:
and middot; The side skimmer doesn’t actually do any skimming. It’s a return pipe and the skimmer doesn’t catch anything, not sure why it was designed like this but it doesn’t suck anything in the basket.
and middot; Our pool lights are flakey, they don’t stay in sync with each other all the time and we have to sometimes “trick” the system to get it to sync with it. (We have two lights and if we select “red” one side will turn red the other will be green.)
and middot; There are some “stains” in the plaster that won’t come out even though the pool company stated on several occasions that
once the chlorine production was stable the stains would clear up.
and middot; For the entire 2012 swimming season the pool would turn green weekly because their chlorine salt water system wasn’t working
properly. Complained to them several times during the season but the problem wasn’t resolved until September when they replaced a defective part.
Responsiveness F: Terrible, terrible, terrible! Often they would not respond for several days.
Punctuality F: Was promised the pool would be finished around Memorial Day but water wasn’t in the pool until late June. Phases
weren’t completed on time and most were pushed back at least once. The salesman/workers were often late for appointments.
Professionalism D: Didn’t feel like an appreciated customer, felt like just another pool to them.
The Elite salesman had a great pitch in the beginning and we really felt like he was in it to make the customer happy. He described things we weren't thinking of in a pool like and quot;flow of peopleand quot; and and quot;destinationsand quot; and water features for ambient noise. We were given
time to make selections for the coping and tile and were promised things like visiting other sites and a 3D drawing of our pool. Neither of which were delivered. Over the course of the construction it felt like there was one problem after another. The topography
of our backyard was challenging due to a large slope and we felt we were rushed at several points to make decisions that later had to be reversed. As a result, the pool turned out to be deeper in the shallow end than originally intended and took significantly longer to complete.
Overall C- / C:
Timeline:
and middot; 2 Mar – Sign Contract
and middot; 27 Mar – Pool layout
and middot; 13 Apr – Excavation
and middot; 2 May – Steel Rebar
and middot; 16 May – Shoot Shell
and middot; 29 May – Electrician
and middot; 24 Jun – Plaster / Fill pool
and middot; July – Sept Pool turns green almost weekly while pouring in algaecide and attempting to stabilize chlorine production
and middot; Sept – Repair the chlorine system
and middot; 18 Oct 12 – closed pool
and middot; 8 May 13- opened pool
2013 Season update:
We haven’t had a problem with chemicals since they fixed the system. We have a few stains in our pool that we haven’t gotten removed yet but we were told balancing the chemicals would fix it. It doesn’t look like it’s going away on it’s own so we have to figure out how to fix it. The pool robot gets stuck in the stairs for 85% of its scheduled cleaning time so it’s pretty worthless. When it gets stuck the tail sprays salt / chlorine water on our outdoor furniture and plants damaging them. Overall, the pool stayed clean and didn’t develop any new mechanical difficulties in 2013. We were able to enjoy it this season but it didn’t make up for a lost 2012 season.

Elite Pools installed an in-ground, gunite pool with an auto cover, a gas heater, and retaining walls included in the stamped stained decking.

The installers arrived as scheduled and all work was performed as detailed in the written contract. The contact person, Mike Shaffery, was great in leading this project to completion. I am very pleased with the end result. Everyone who saw the pool before renovation compliments me on the final product.

fine

In terms of price actually they haven't billed me as of yet I think they might have just done it for free but I'm not sure and I'm a good customer of theirs but that wasn't major. I did write a good review for them they built my pool and they are very responsive so they are very customer oriented, they always call me back when I call them quickly and they come out really fast for service like the same day usually. I would recommend them to a friend or family.

Their service was unsatisfactory.

everything went great

I contacted several other pool company's and settled one to and quot;resetand quot; the pool. As soon as the new company started deconstructing the pool they realized that the entire pool installation was wrong. You figure the law of averages, they would have gotten one thing right, but literally EVERY part of the installation was wrong.

Elite even voided my manufacturer's warranty by using all the wrong materials under the pool.I am currently in litigation to get the 47,000.00 back that I spent to reset my brand new pool.

STAY AWAY FROM THESE CHARLATANS if you are building a fiberglass pool, they do not know what they are doing and they will rip you off!!!!

They build beautiful pools. We will use their services again in the future.

Very easy to work with, creative and we never got that up-sell feeling. They provided several upgrades to us at their cost (which I confirmed with my own research). At our request, they did the shell and rough grading in the Fall, 2009, then completed the build in Spring 2010. We had a separate hardscaper in to build an extensive retaining wall over the winter, and Elite worked very well with them. The result is beautiful and we have had no material issues with the build. When the computer board in our Pentair controller died, Elite was able to provide a replacement board to us that actually included and upgrade. No extra charge.

They did the work in one day. There had three guys but I still didn't know how they got it done so fast. I was very pleased with the work. I was pleased with the price and the work was beautiful. The owner was very cordial and very straightforward. I have nothing bad to say about it. I had bathroom tile that cost me $5,000 and this was considerably more tile..

Very nice to deal with. Very good price. Absolutely love it. Mike was our salesman and he was very creative with the design came out with spray paint and drew it in our backyard so my wife could see it.

Elite Pools initially came to my attention through our landscaper. We were new to the area, and the landscaper we initially hired was interested in providing us with the pool and the hardscaping (patio, retaining wall) that we wanted in our backyard. They introduced me to the owner of Elite Pools, Michael Shaffery. Our pool installation began in late October. Mike immediately impressed me on a couple of fronts. First, he is more than just the head of his company. He is involved with the customer. He met with me several times and definitely listened to my ideas. Second, his sales approach is a soft one. I never felt pressured or rushed to make a decision. Finally, his pricing is very competitive and includes many important pool components. These three things made me feel good about my decision to go with Elite - - and at this point, 90% of the way to completion, I still feel that I made the right decision. Pool installation occurs in a number of phases which (as best my memory serves) included excavation, putting in the rebar that holds the structure of the pool, spraying the concrete in to create the form, plumbing and electric, installation of the tile and coping. Our pool is not yet completed, but we are close to done, and I will report again when the plaster is done and the pool is opened. At any rate, I would describe the first four steps as absolutely flawless. The excavation went very quickly, and the rebar installation was done by a man was incredible - - he worked so hard and quickly and just had a terrific work ethic. The people who did the plumbing were equally impressive!!. Everyone who came was friendly and professional and tried to be courteous (not blocking my car in the garage, trying to keep things neat, etc.). The last step that was done - - tile and coping - - seemed to go a little less smoothly, but it was hard given the weather at this point. On one hand, I felt that the employees that did this step were not quite as professional as the others . . .there was some "junk" left on the property, and when they went home, it wasn't always as neat as I might have liked. BUT, in the end - - the tile and coping LOOKS FABULOUS!!! The pool hasn't even been opened, and we've gotten so many compliments on the design and how great the stone looks. In addition, Elite helped in many ways that really weren't part of their job. I needed a bigger propane tank, which Mike arranged (and I've used the company he recommended for other things). I needed some fencing removed, which Mike arranged. I needed new fencing installed; Mike connected me with a great company for that. Demolition work needed to be done, and Mike arranged that. These little extras came for either very nominal charges or nothing at all. In addition, in the middle of this project, I ended up having a huge disagreement with the landscaper who was going to install the patio, and I had to fire the landscaper. This situation could have created a lot of difficulty for the pool company because in my case, they were working hand in hand. I hired a new company to install the patio, and Mike immediately established a positive working relationship with the company so that the end result was smooth for me as the customer. He also solved some tricky problems with retaining soil by offering some new suggestions that differed from those we had been exploring initially with the landscaper. These suggestions saved me money, and I think they look a lot nicer too! I think what I learned from this experience is that a pool is a big construction project, and it is key that there is a person who is willing to stand by their work, address issues that come up, and sticks to not just the letter, but the SPIRIT of the contract that you sign with them. Michael Shaffery is that kind of ethical person who cares about the reputation of his company and who goes above and beyond to make sure the end result is going to make the customer happy. It's really nice to be able to work with the owner of the company as opposed to a sales rep (which is what you get with most other high end pool companies). Our pool looks great, and I'm confident we'll be enjoying it very soon. We got a high end product at a fair and reasonable price.