Fiberglass Pool Refinishing in Florence, Texas

Florence's permit list and pool repairs

The City of Florence keeps a list of the projects that need a building permit, and pools are on it in plain words: "Building a swimming pool, repairing or filling in a ground pool." The next line covers spas, noting that a self-contained portable plug-in spa needs an electrical permit and must meet safety glazing requirements. Decks are on the list too, and the City points out that even building or replacing a fence, or a retaining wall over four feet high, takes a permit. Projects it calls cosmetic, "such as painting, wallpapering, carpeting, cabinets and trim work," don't.

The list doesn't say in its own words whether recoating or painting a fiberglass pool counts as repairing a ground pool or as cosmetic work. Ask the City's Building Services which applies before any refinishing is booked.

Free chlorine in the City's water

The 2025 water quality report

Florence buys purchased surface water. The City's 2025 water quality report lists free chlorine as its disinfectant, averaging 1.77 ppm with detections from 0.2 to 7.7 ppm, against a maximum residual disinfectant level of 4. The report also records a compliance item on total trihalomethanes, measured as a running annual average: the City requested monitoring data from the purchased surface water provider, and a public notice went out between April 1 and June 30, 2025. It prints no hardness figure.

Calcium and scale on gelcoat

Without a hardness number, the calcium in a Florence pool is something to test, and fiberglass makers watch it closely. In River Pools' view, most of the discoloration seen on fiberglass pools comes back to calcium, and its answer is a chelating product that controls stains, metals and scale. Tallman Pools tells two white scales apart with a drop of muriatic acid: calcium carbonate foams and reacts, while calcium silicate, grayish and hard to shift, shows no reaction and is best left to a qualified fiberglass service technician. Killeen Pool Resurfacing will check the shell for both at a free estimate.

Brooksville, the railroad and the city pool

From Brooksville to Florence

Florence was settled in the early 1850s, was briefly called Brooksville, and was known as Florence by 1857, when its first post office opened. The Handbook of Texas gives two possible sources for the name: Florence, Alabama, an early home of the first postmaster, or Florence Brooks, the daughter of the town's first merchant. Near town stands a native-stone meeting house on land John C. Caskey gave on March 8, 1845. Believed built before 1855 and paid for by J. W. Atkinson and Dr. O. Benedict, it housed a school, Baptist and Methodist worship and the Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges before Primitive Baptists bought it in 1924.

By the 1890s Florence had retail stores, mills, churches, schools, lodges, hotels, a stone quarry, a bank and a cheese factory, and Florence College held classes for about eight years from around 1895 under W. S. Holden. The Bartlett and Western Railway, chartered in 1909 as the Bartlett and Florence Railway Company, served the town from 1912 until the line was abandoned in 1935. The population grew from an estimated 350 in 1900 to 1,000 from 1927 to 1929, dropped to 421 by 1931 and stayed there for eight years, climbed to 672 by 1976, and went from 829 in 1990 to 1,054 in 2000. State Highway 195 still runs through town on its 34.7 miles from Interstate 35 north of Georgetown to the east gate of Fort Hood, a route Texas law names the Phantom Warriors Highway.

The City's swimming pool

The City operates the Florence Swimming Pool. Its 2026 season ran from June 2 through August 9, open Tuesday through Sunday from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. and closed on Mondays for maintenance. The City is required to keep three lifeguards on duty at all times, and it rents the pool out privately from 6 to 8 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday, for $200.