936-676-6732Montgomery, The Woodlands, Conroe, Lake Conroe, Magnolia, Tomball & Spring, TX
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More control, less friction

Pool Equipment, Automation & Efficiency

Thoughtful equipment and control upgrades that make the pool simpler to operate and better aligned with current needs.

A row of pool filtration and equipment pumps sits on a paved pad behind a stone outdoor kitchen with a covered patio and outdoor bar in the background

Pool ownership should not require a daily puzzle. Modern pumps, controls, lighting, heating, sanitizing, and monitoring can make routine operation more understandable and convenient when the system is selected and configured around the actual pool.

Reef Pools and Spas reviews the goals behind an upgrade—simpler schedules, remote control, quieter operation, lighting scenes, heating, or replacing aging components—then helps define a coordinated equipment direction rather than a collection of disconnected devices.

  • Clearer control of schedules, lighting, temperature, and features
  • Equipment choices aligned with the pool’s size and functions
  • Potential for quieter and more efficient day-to-day operation
  • A coordinated upgrade plan instead of piecemeal replacement

What is included

What this service can cover.

  1. Equipment review

    A practical look at current pumps, filtration, heating, sanitizing, lighting, and controls.

  2. Automation planning

    Control priorities organized around schedules, spa use, lighting, water features, and remote access.

  3. Lighting upgrades

    Pool and landscape lighting direction that supports safety, visibility, and evening atmosphere.

  4. Coordinated replacement

    A sequence for updating aging components while minimizing unnecessary duplication.

Before you decide

What this actually turns on.

The parts of the job that are decided by the ground, the weather and the way things fail here — rather than by taste.

Variable speed is the rule now, and the reason is real

Federal efficiency standards have required most dedicated-purpose pool pumps above a small threshold to be variable-speed since 2021, so on a new build or a pump replacement this is rarely a choice any more. It happens to be the right rule for this climate: a pool here filters across a long season, and moving water slowly for longer moves the same volume for a fraction of the energy, because power draw falls away much faster than flow does as speed drops. The practical consequence is that a pump should be matched to the plumbing it is attached to rather than bought by horsepower — an oversized pump on undersized pipe spends the difference as noise and friction.

Freeze protection is the setting that matters here

For most of the year, automation in Southeast Texas is a convenience. On a few nights it is the thing standing between a homeowner and a cracked pump housing, a split filter body, and burst above-grade plumbing — the pattern this region saw at scale in February 2021. A system with a freeze setpoint runs circulation once the air drops below it, which keeps water moving instead of expanding. It is worth knowing what that setpoint is, which circuits it protects, and what happens when the power goes out, because a freeze event and an outage often arrive together and at that point the answer is manual.

How the water is sanitised changes what surrounds it

A salt chlorine generator does not make a pool chlorine-free; it makes chlorine on site from dissolved salt, which most owners find gentler to swim in and simpler to run. The trade-offs are specific: cells are consumables with a service life, the system needs adequate water temperature to produce, and salt water in contact with soft stone — limestone and some travertine coping — and with certain metals is harder on them over years than a tablet-fed pool is. That makes the sanitiser and the deck material one decision rather than two, which is easy to arrange on a new build and awkward to revisit later.

Bonding is invisible, inspected, and not optional

Everything conductive around a pool — the shell's steel, the ladder, the equipment, the deck reinforcement — is tied together into an equipotential grid so that no voltage difference can exist between two things a swimmer can touch at once. It is a licensed electrician's work under the national electrical code, it is inspected, and it is completely hidden once the deck is poured. It is named here because it is the part of an equipment installation a homeowner never sees and the part that matters most, and because equipment added later to a finished pool has to be bonded into that same grid rather than simply plugged in.

Written from how Robert Welty builds here — more than 35 years of hands-on pool construction, and the person who walks the property before anything is drawn.

About Robert

Our process

How the project moves forward.

  1. 1Document current equipment and pain points
  2. 2Define control and performance goals
  3. 3Select a compatible upgrade path
  4. 4Coordinate installation
  5. 5Configure schedules and owner controls
Long view down the geometric pool with clean coping lines and woodland backdropCovered outdoor living area with stone fireplace, mounted TV, wicker-style seating, kegerator, and built-in grill stations under a wood-plank ceilingCovered outdoor living area with tufted sofas, armchairs, and built-in grills overlooking a freeform pool and spa with a wood-plank ceiling above

What a customer said

Not our words.

5.0 from 8 Google reviews. One of them is below; the rest are on the profile. Transcribed from the profile on August 20, 2026. Read them on Google

Robert and Samuel are first rate. Robert is easy to work with, and has 50 years experience building pools. Pool was finished in 2 months. Excellent quality and beautiful to behold. Jandy pump is super quiet.

Kevin BronsonGreat price

Inground pool installation

Questions

Helpful answers before you begin.

Can I control my pool from my phone?

Many modern automation systems support app-based controls. Compatibility depends on the selected system, equipment, site connectivity, and configuration.

Do I need to replace everything at once?

Not always. A review can help separate immediate needs from upgrades that can be phased, while checking which components need to work together.

Can automation be added during a remodel?

Yes. A renovation can be a practical time to coordinate controls, equipment, lighting, and water features because other pool work is already underway.

Is a gas heater or a heat pump the better choice in this climate?

They solve different problems. A gas heater raises the temperature quickly regardless of the weather, which is what a spa needs and what an occasionally-used pool wants on a cold evening. A heat pump moves heat out of the air rather than making it, so it costs substantially less to run and loses ground as the air cools — which suits this region well, because the shoulder seasons here are mild and long, and that is exactly where a heat pump earns its keep. Plenty of pools with spas end up with both, for the reason above. The question to settle first is not which unit but which months you intend to swim in.

Plan it together with

Seen in these builds

Read before you decide

Where Reef builds this

Equipment & Automation across Southeast Texas.

Ground conditions, permitting, and approvals change from town to town. Each page below covers what that means for a property in that market.

All 50 communities Reef builds in

The next conversation

Tell Robert what you
want to build.

Upgrade pool pumps, filtration, heating, lighting, sanitizing, and automation controls for easier ownership around Montgomery and Lake Conroe.

Start a project or call 936-676-6732
Based in
Montgomery, TX
Serving within about 100 miles
Hours
Monday: 9am – 5pm
Tuesday – Friday: 8am – 5pm
Saturday: 9am – 4pm
Sunday: Closed
Direct
936-676-6732
reefpoolsandspas@gmail.com