Stop Patching, Start Upgrading: A Renovation Playbook for Pool Owners
From Desjoyaux Pools India, for hotels, schools, societies, and the architects who advise them
At Desjoyaux Pools, we see the same story play out again and again: a pool that started as the showpiece of the property slowly turns into its biggest headache. More complaints, more downtime, more bills.
Every owner or facility head eventually reaches the same decision point:
“Do we approve yet another round of repairs, or is it finally time for a proper swimming pool renovation?”
For us, that’s not a cosmetic question. It’s about downtime, guest satisfaction, safety, and long-term operating cost. We’ve written this guide for the people who own those decisions: hotel GMs, resort owners, school administrators, society committee members, architects, and serious swimming pool contractors. To help you think clearly about when to renovate and, more importantly, how to renovate.
We’ll walk through the signs your pool is due for a major upgrade, then contrast a conventional renovation with a system conversion to a Desjoyaux pool, including our pipe-free swimming pool filtration system, active casing, and reinforced liner finish.
Signs Your Pool Is No Longer “Just a Maintenance Issue”
- Visible Cracks, Leaks, or Structural Damage
When we visit older pools, the first thing we look for is visible distress:
- Repeated cracking in the same areas
- Hollow or loose tiles across larger patches
- Constantly dropping water levels that no one can fully explain
At that stage, you’re no longer dealing with routine swimming pool maintenance. You’re looking at a structure and plumbing system that is simply aging out.
Most legacy pools were built with long runs of underground piping and a separate plant room. When those pipes start leaking under decks, gardens, or buildings, the cost of “finding and fixing” often rivals, or exceeds, the cost of upgrading the pool into a modern system. If you’ve already patched leaks more than once, that’s a financial red flag we see very often: you’re paying to keep an outdated design alive.
- Outdated Pool Design & Aesthetics
Your guests and residents don’t complain in engineering terms. They complain in photos and reviews.
We know design has become a problem when:
- The pool looks flat and lifeless in marketing images
- There are no built-in steps, benches, or lounges
- The shape and finish clearly belong to another decade
At this point, pool remodeling isn’t vanity, it’s asset management. A visually outdated pool drags down a luxury hotel, a premium school campus, or a high-end residential complex. Renovation is your chance to rework depth, edges, entries, and ambiance, not just re-grout the past.
With Desjoyaux’s active permanent casing structure, we’re not locked into what a civil contractor built 20 years ago. We can reshape and reconfigure the pool with a modular system and convert a tired legacy design into a modern, inviting one.
- Frequent Water Discoloration or Algae Growth
If your team is constantly fighting:
- Green or cloudy water
- Slippery walls and floors
- Heavy reliance on shock treatments
The issue is usually not “lazy staff.” It’s typically a combination of poor circulation, an outdated swimming pool filtration system, and surfaces that naturally harbour algae.
Traditional rough tiles, aging grout, and dead spots in circulation create perfect conditions for algae to return. Over time, you pay in three currencies:
- Higher chemical cost
- Higher man-hours
- Higher guest or resident dissatisfaction
When we renovate, we look at filtration logic first and finish second. Upgrading the way water actually moves through the pool, and switching to a smooth, reinforced liner surface, goes much further than another round of scrubbing and chlorine.
- Increased Maintenance and Operational Costs
Every facility head has a story about the pool that eats the budget. We hear them daily.
The patterns are familiar:
- Electricity bills are high because old pumps must run longer and harder
- Regular service calls to external swimming pool contractors for “small issues”
- Frequent water top-ups from leaks and backwashing
- Chemicals being consumed at a rate that doesn’t match actual usage
- Over a three- to five-year period, these “small” issues add up to serious money.
When we sit with owners and boards, we don’t just talk about repair invoices. We talk about total cost of ownership: the difference between maintaining a legacy system and upgrading to a modern, integrated Desjoyaux system that is designed to reduce those hidden costs.
- Safety Concerns or Missing Features
For our commercial and institutional clients, safety is non-negotiable. We pay close attention when we see:
- Slippery, chipped tiles
- No proper handrails or steps
- Poor underwater visibility
- Depth profiles that don’t match your real users (children, learners, seniors)
These aren’t just maintenance issues; they’re liability and brand risks.
A well-planned swimming pool renovation with Desjoyaux allows you to redesign access, lighting, and depth alongside the structural and filtration upgrade. That’s the difference between “we fixed the tiles” and “we made the pool safe, compliant, and future-ready.”
- Equipment Failure: Pumps, Filters, or Lights
When pumps, filters, and lights start failing in clusters, it usually means your system is reaching the end of its useful life.
At that moment, you effectively have three choices:
- Replace like-for-like, keeping the old pipes and plant room logic.
- Upgrade to better hardware but keep the same hydraulic design.
- Use this opportunity to rethink the swimming pool filtration system as a whole and convert to a Desjoyaux system.
Instinctively, options 1 and 2 feel smaller and safer. From our experience over decades, they are often the most expensive options over a 10-year horizon.
Three Renovation Paths: Where We See Clients Go Wrong (and Right)
Across hundreds of sites, we see the same three renovation paths:
- Cosmetic Repair
- Retiling, replastering, patching cracks
- Same underground pipes, same plant room, same design
- Works if you’re buying time for a short horizon, but problems tend to return
- Legacy Upgrade
- New pump, new filter, maybe a new finish
- Still based on the same old hydraulic design and concealed plumbing
- Slight efficiency gains, but doesn’t remove the core risk: the underground network
- System Conversion—the Desjoyaux Pools Way
- Replace long pipe runs with our pipe-free, integrated filtration units
- Reinforce or reshape the structure with our modular casing if required
- Finish with a reinforced PVC liner instead of traditional tiles
Cosmetic repair and legacy upgrade feel cheaper in the moment. System conversion often proves cheaper over the life of the pool, especially when water, energy, downtime, and complaint-handling costs are properly counted. Our role is to put those numbers and trade-offs on the table so you’re making a strategic decision, not just signing another repair PO.
What We Do Differently in Renovation
Our philosophy at Desjoyaux Pools is simple: if you’re going to open up a pool, use that disruption to fix the fundamentals, not just the finish.
- Our Pipe-Free, Integrated Filtration
Instead of long underground pipelines and a dedicated plant room, we use a patented pipeless swimming pool filtration system integrated into the pool wall:
- No long buried suction and return lines
- In many cases, no separate plant room requirement
- Easier leak detection and almost no hidden plumbing risk
- More efficient circulation, simplifying day-to-day swimming pool maintenance
For a hotel GM, society committee, or facility head, that translates directly into fewer surprises, fewer shutdowns, and a system your team can actually understand and operate.
- Active Permanent Casing: A Structure You Can Trust
In many renovations, you’re building on top of civil work whose drawings nobody can find.
Our active permanent casing introduces a standardized, modular structure that:
- Can reinforce or reshape an existing pool shell
- Uses long-lasting, non-rotting formwork filled with concrete
- Is designed as a complete system, not as a one-off “site experiment.”
For architects and consultants, this means less guesswork and a clear, repeatable specification instead of reinventing the pool every time. For owners, it means a structure built for decades, not seasons.
- Reinforced PVC Liner Instead of Endless Retiling
If you’ve re-tiled the same pool more than once, you don’t have a tile problem. You have a finish strategy problem.
We typically line renovated pools with a reinforced PVC liner:
- A continuous, welded membrane that provides complete waterproofing
- Smooth, comfortable, and visually modern
- Far fewer joints than tiles, making algae growth and staining easier to control
Your marketing photos look better, your guests feel better underfoot, and your maintenance team has a much simpler surface to keep clean.
Why Renovate with Desjoyaux Pools?
When you combine these elements, pipeless filtration, active casing, and reinforced liner, you’re not just repairing an old pool. You’re converting it into a controlled Desjoyaux system with predictable behaviour.
For different segments, that means:
- Hotels & Resorts
- Better guest experience and reviews
- Less downtime and more predictable OPEX
- A pool that finally matches the rest of the property’s positioning
- Schools, Clubs & Residential Complexes
- A safer, more manageable pool for in-house teams
- Fewer emergency calls to outside swimming pool contractors
- More confidence when presenting budgets and usage plans to stakeholders
- Architects, PMCs & Builders
A branded, proven system to specify instead of piecing together components
Reduced risk of callbacks and reputational damage when things go wrong
A credible, long-term answer when clients ask, “What will this cost us to run over 10 years?”
In a market where retiling and patchwork are easy to sell, we deliberately offer the opposite: a system-led approach to swimming pool renovation that is designed for long-term ownership, not quick fixes.
Continue reading: How Long Does It Take to Renovate a Pool?
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: How Long Does It Take to Renovate a Pool with Desjoyaux?
A: Timelines depend on the scope: simple conversions can be relatively fast; structural changes and full pool remodeling naturally take longer. Because our components and methods are standardized, projects are often more predictable and efficient than fully custom civil rebuilds.
Q2: Can You Convert an Existing Non-Desjoyaux Pool into a Desjoyaux Pool?
A: Yes. In most cases, a legacy pool can be upgraded by modifying the structure where necessary, installing our pipe-free swimming pool filtration system, and finishing with a reinforced liner.
Q3: Will This Reduce Our Maintenance Burden?
A: That is a core design goal. Better circulation, fewer hidden pipes, and a smooth liner surface significantly simplify swimming pool maintenance, reduce water and chemical wastage, and cut down on those recurring “mystery issues” that keep coming back.
Q4: Q4: Is This Only for Luxury Villas or Also for Commercial Pools?
A: Our approach is particularly powerful for commercial and institutional pools, hotels, resorts, schools, clubs, and societies, where every day of closure and every guest complaint has a real cost. We also work extensively with luxury homes and villas that want a premium, low-maintenance pool.
If your pool is old enough that cracks, leaks, algae, and rising bills have become “just normal,” the real question is no longer whether you need renovation. It’s what kind of renovation you choose.
At Desjoyaux Pools, we’re here to help you move from patching the past to installing a system that’s ready for the next decade.