Above All Pools

Above All Pools is essentially one man and a small crew: Joe Pausek, whose Massachusetts Home Improvement Contractor registration 146004 is verified active in the state registry under his own name. He installs in-ground pools around Westport and the South Coast, replaces liners, and opens and closes pools — and reviewers overwhelmingly write about him personally rather than about a company. What people describe most is the phone being answered. A 2026 customer called late on a Friday expecting voicemail and says Joe offered to stop by that evening on his way home, identified the problem, and came back the next day with the part. Another in 2026 says he fit them in and fixed the issue within an hour after a different pool company had offered no solution at all. A 2025 reviewer who called too late in the season for the work to happen at all describes a half-hour phone conversation anyway, ending with a referral to someone else. Several people came to him after another contractor left them stuck. The liner work is the most documented specialty. A 2025 customer whose in-ground liner tore irreparably mid-summer says they were back up and running a little over two weeks from the first measurement, including a new drain to bring the pool up to code and repairs discovered only once the old liner came out. A 2024 reviewer describes what was meant to be a simple liner swap turning into a groundwater problem — trenches dug by hand, the vermiculite refinished on hands and knees, an auxiliary pump wired in. Another in 2024 had a liner Joe installed twenty years earlier repaired rather than replaced. Longevity shows up repeatedly: a customer in 2025 said he had done their pool work for about thirty years, and another said a pool he rebuilt in 2008 still looks fantastic. New installations get similar detail — a heated salt-water in-ground pool in 2025 where the estimate visit came the previous autumn, a pool built in seven to eight days, a small city lot navigated so tightly the yard became a showcase, and equipment fully replaced after a house fire. The two low ratings on file are worth reading before you sign. In an October 2024 review, a homeowner said their pool was set much too low relative to the surrounding yard despite repeated assurances it would be kept level with the high point, that four years later they still have runoff problems and the liner has slipped in two places, and that the remedy offered was a ditch. In a September 2024 review, another customer said that after a pump was installed for a high water table the communication stopped — repeated calls, no site visits, weeks before he reappeared. Both complaints are about follow-through on a difficult-site job, not about the liner or install work itself, and neither pattern shows up in the 2025-2026 reviews. A strong pick for liner replacement, pool service and straightforward in-ground installs. If your yard has grading or water-table complications, get the finished elevation and the drainage plan in writing.