Who installs Thursday Pools

Thursday Pools is a single-plant Indiana manufacturer with a genuine patent on beach-entry fiberglass shells and the most transparent published pricing in the category. It fits buyers who want a walk-in zero-entry pool, or who want to compare real numbers before they call anyone. It fits less well if you need gelcoat color permanence, because the surface warranty covers osmotic blistering rather than discoloration, and the clearest complaint pattern in the record sits exactly in that gap.

Who makes it

Thursday Pools is headquartered at 840 Commerce Parkway in Fortville, Indiana, and manufactures from that single facility. There is no multi-plant network. The company was incorporated in August 2010, corroborated by its BBB profile, though its marketing frames the technical roots as going back more than 30 years to founder Bill Khamis's composites work in an Indianapolis garage. Treat the 30-year figure as founder experience, not company age. Khamis is named as Founder and CFO in trade coverage. The company is privately held, with no public ownership breakdown. Thursday states it holds both ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certification.

The ownership fact that changes how you should read a shortlist: Thursday Pools acquired River Pools in 2023. Pool Magazine covered the acquisition, with AQUA Magazine corroborating, and reported that Thursday folded River Pools manufacturing and key personnel into its own operations. Jason Hughes, River Pools' founder, became President of River Pools Franchising, and the two brands still trade separately in the market. Thursday had already been manufacturing River Pools models under a supply partnership since 2016. A third-party comparison of the two brands reports that post-merger both carry identical warranty terms. So if a builder offers you a Thursday quote and a River Pools quote as alternatives, one company builds both shells.

The company sells exclusively through independent dealers across the United States and parts of Canada, with no direct-to-consumer sales and no published dealer count.

The lineup and sizes

Thursday lists about 24 model families across rectangle, freeform, beach-entry, plunge and spa or wading designs. The smallest is a 9 by 9 foot wading pool. The largest standard model is the Goliath at 16 by 41 feet, 6 feet 8 inches deep, holding more than 13,500 gallons at the top end.

The beach-entry line is the differentiator, and the patent behind it is real. US Utility Patent No. 10,358,837 was granted on August 26, 2019 for the Sandal and Grace designs, with a related utility patent, 10,472,839, also confirmed. Thursday claims to be the first and only manufacturer offering a true beach-entry fiberglass pool. The patent number is verified fact; the "first and only" superlative is company language we did not test against the full competitive field. Grace is the rectangular beach entry in three sizes from 14 by 36 to 16 by 40 feet. Sandal is the freeform version in two sizes from 16 by 34.5 to 16 by 39 feet. Other named patented features include the Geo-Anchor Pool Wall, the Double-O7 Skimmer and the Backfill Eliminator.

Thursday publishes its pricing, which is unusual here. Its cost page states $45,000 to $100,000 or more, with $65,000 to $90,000 for a mid-size pool with standard decking and basic equipment. The same page breaks that down by size: small pools under 26 feet at $45,000 to $75,000, medium pools of 27 to 34 feet at $75,000 to $110,000, and large pools of 35 feet and up at $110,000 to $150,000 or more. Add-on figures are published too: a heater at $3,000 to $5,000 and up, an automatic safety cover at $10,000 to $20,000 and up, LED lighting at $1,000 to $5,000 and up. State-level pages for New Jersey, Florida, New York and Georgia show dealer-survey pricing in a $56,700 to $94,000 band.

The warranty, actually read

Thursday's structural warranty runs 35 years and covers leaks from workmanship or material failure. The surface warranty runs 15 years against osmotic blistering. Read that surface term carefully: osmotic blistering is a specific defect, not general fading or discoloration, and the complaint record below turns on exactly that distinction. The warranty is one-time transferable to a subsequent home buyer, which is friendlier than several competitors.

The voiding conditions are worth knowing before your first winter. Lowering the water below the skimmer voids the warranty. Improper backfill causing wall deformation or cracking voids the structural warranty. Professional installation is required to keep both the shell and labor coverage intact, so a do-it-yourself or uncertified install voids coverage.

One honest caveat on all of the above. The underlying warranty and owner's-manual PDF could not be parsed as text during our research, so these terms come from Thursday's own restatement of the document on its marketing pages, not from the legal document itself. Ask your dealer for the signed warranty and read the exclusions yourself.

What owners say

Thursday's public footprint is thinner than the larger brands, and we will name what is thin rather than inflate it. BBB gives Thursday Pools an A+ letter grade, and the company is not BBB accredited. Specific complaint counts were not visible on the profile we read, which is a gap rather than a zero. Birdeye shows 4.1 out of 5 stars across 129 reviews.

The clearest recurring complaint is gelcoat discoloration that the company then declined to treat as a warranty matter. BBB's profile summary states that customers report coating discoloration appearing quickly after purchase and that the company characterized the problem as cosmetic rather than a warranty-covered defect. That pattern lines up precisely with the published warranty scope, where the surface term covers osmotic blistering and not general discoloration. Read it as a coverage-gap complaint, and price the risk accordingly rather than assuming a defect the warranty should have caught.

A second theme is the limit of manufacturer accountability when a dealer or installer causes the problem. A Birdeye reviewer wrote that "If something goes wrong...they will simply tell you to get yourself a lawyer." Trouble Free Pool commentary makes the same structural point from the other direction, that installer quality matters more to pool longevity than the manufacturer. This is a consequence of the independent-dealer model rather than a manufacturing defect, and it is the single strongest argument for vetting your builder harder than your brand.

Two other items surfaced once each and we are excluding them as themes: a forum mention that salt systems are not recommended on these shells, and secondhand mention of cracked-shell photos in a Facebook group with no verified cause or source.

On praise, long-term structural durability cleared our bar, thinly. A Birdeye review reports "the build quality is solid around 6 years in, no major cracks," with a Trouble Free Pool thread describing a positive experience with a 16 by 33 Goliath install. Beach entry itself draws repeated positive mention from families with young children, pets or mobility needs, but that corroboration is thin enough that we score it as a single strong signal rather than an established theme.

On the legal record, we searched specifically for lawsuits, recalls and class actions against Thursday Pools and found none. The recall results that surfaced concerned unrelated above-ground pool brands. That is a genuine clean finding.

Questions to ask a Thursday Pools dealer

1. Does my surface warranty cover fading and discoloration, or only osmotic blistering? Show me the clause.
2. Am I buying a Thursday shell or a River Pools shell, and does the warranty differ at all between the two?
3. Who does the backfill, and what is your written procedure? Improper backfill voids the structural warranty.
4. If I want beach entry, which model and size, and what does the walk-in slope do to my usable swimming depth?
5. Your published cost page puts a mid-size pool at $65,000 to $90,000. Which of those line items are in my quote and which are not?
6. If the shell itself is defective, do you handle the claim with Thursday or do I? Put the answer in the contract.

Last updated: 2026-08-08