Pool Service in Richmond, TX

A courthouse town inside a ring of newer subdivisions

Inside city limits, Richmond is compact: about 4.4 square miles around a six-block downtown historic district. The copper dome of the 1908 Fort Bend County Courthouse rises over it, the Fort Bend Museum sits on South 5th Street, and Decker Park holds the 1887 county jail and a 1901 rail depot. Many homes with a Richmond mailing address are well outside those limits.

Long Meadow Farms started in the early 2000s and kept groves of native pecans. Aliana began in 2008 near the Grand Parkway and FM 1464. Harvest Green includes a working farm, and Veranda opened in 2017 where Richmond Parkway meets I-69. Pecan Grove, an established community of more than 22,000 people, borders the Brazos on its southwest side. Equipment ages vary just as widely: a pool from Long Meadow Farms' first years could still be on its original pump, while a Veranda pool may be only a few seasons old.

City water, MUD water, and why the numbers differ

The City of Richmond's Main System draws on six wells in the Chicot and Evangeline aquifers and adds Brazos River water brought in through the NRG canal system, roughly 43% of Main System demand in the 2024 water quality report. That report rates the water moderately hard at 118 mg/L, while the city's water-quality web page gives 167 mg/L. As a pool loses inches to summer evaporation and gets topped off, the minerals stay behind, building a chalky line at the tile and crust on salt cell plates.

Richmond also disinfects with chloramines. Fresh fill water arrives carrying combined chlorine, which a proper test separates from the free chlorine that actually sanitizes. Aliana, by contrast, is served by its own Fort Bend MUDs instead of the city, and other Richmond-address neighborhoods may be as well. A number borrowed from the ZIP code is no substitute for testing the water from your own spigot.

Bottomland clay and the trees that grow on it

USDA soil scientists chose Fort Bend County as the reference location for Brazoria clay, a Brazos floodplain soil that takes in water very slowly and shrinks and swells as it wets and dries. Next to a pool, that movement can show up as cracked decking, a widening gap at the coping or a failed expansion joint, often after a dry spell ends with heavy rain.

Native growth on that soil runs to pecan, hackberry, elm, ash and oak. Catkins in spring and leaves and nuts in fall fill skimmer baskets, push filter pressure up and can stain plaster when they sit on the floor.

When the Brazos comes up

The river gauge at Richmond peaked at 54.74 feet on June 2, 2016, then topped that with a 55.19-foot record on September 1, 2017, during Harvey. Major flooding there starts at 50 feet. National Weather Service impact notes for the gauge list Strange Drive, Greenwood Drive and the Newton Drive low-water crossing taking water around 48 feet, Second Street under at 51 feet, and FM 359 between US-90A and the Pecan Grove levee going under at 52 to 53 feet.

A backyard near the river can catch silt and runoff in an event like that, and any pump or heater the water reached needs an inspection before anyone flips the breaker back on. Storm cleanup covers the silt removal, that equipment check and a full rebalance.

Three ways east to Sugar Land

Downtown Richmond is about 10 miles from the Lanterra office. US-90A heads east out of downtown into Sugar Land, I-69 connects the Veranda side to Sugar Land to the northeast, and Aliana, Long Meadow Farms and Harvest Green reach either road by the Grand Parkway. A major flood can close part of that route: NWS notes say the eastbound lanes of US-90A between Harlem Road and New Territory go under at 54 feet, a stage both the 2016 and 2017 crests passed. Weekly customers keep one technician and one service day, and repairs are diagnosed before they are quoted. Rosenberg and Sugar Land have their own pages.

Richmond and Richmond-address communities