Spa Resurfacing in Lost Creek, Texas

Spa finishes in a neighborhood planned in 1972

The Lost Creek Neighborhood Association's history says developers began planning homes here in 1972, aiming for a premier community in the Eanes School District with underground utilities and sewer service, and that about 50 homes stood when the association was organized in 1976. In the Census Bureau's 2020–2024 survey, the median Lost Creek home dates from 1977, older than the medians for West Lake Hills (1992), Lakeway (2004) or Bee Cave (2012).

About 75.5% of the homes were built before 1990 and 32.3% in the 1970s alone. Some 381 of the estimated 424 units, about 89.9%, are single-family detached houses, and the median owner-occupied value is $1,163,100. The survey's margins are wide for a place of 1,276 residents (2020 Census), and it counts neither pools nor spas, so the age of a house says nothing certain about the age of its spa.

Why a spa finish wears differently

The National Plasterers Council points out that pool and spa finishes, unlike other masonry, sit underwater full-time in chemically treated water, so the minerals in the surface and in the water are always reacting. Heat tips that balance. On the Council's saturation-index calculator, the temperature factor climbs from 0.6 at 76°F to 0.9 at 105°F, which means hot spa water leans further toward scaling than the same water at pool temperature. Universal White Cement adds that heaters and spillways create local zones of higher stress on plaster. The 2024 International Swimming Pool and Spa Code, a model code, sets the same plastering standard for permanently installed concrete spas as for pools, APSP/NPC/ICC-12.

Deed restrictions, the ACC and County permits

Every Lost Creek home is covered by deed restrictions, and the Limited District counts more than a dozen different restriction documents across the neighborhood. They require approval for many common building and remodeling projects. The Lost Creek Neighborhood Association's Architectural Control Committee handles the requests, approval has to come before work starts, and the District warns that starting without it may bring enforcement and delay. The committee may also ask neighbors affected by a project for their views, while the District, not the association, enforces the restrictions.

Travis County Development Services says any development in the county requires a permit, and it issues a residential permit to build a pool or a spa. The Limited District adds that Travis County, City of Austin and ESD 9 (Westlake Fire Department) permits may also be needed, and that its committee doesn't issue them. None of these pages says whether resurfacing an existing spa needs a permit, so ask the County and the committee before the work is scheduled.

From a utility district to a limited district

The City of Austin and the Texas Water Commission let a Lost Creek Municipal Utility District form and sell bonds for water and sewer service, the association's history records. When Austin later annexed the neighborhood, residents voted to turn that district into the Lost Creek Limited District, which keeps up the common spaces and enforces the deed restrictions. On May 4, 2024, voters approved leaving the City of Austin, and the disannexation took effect on September 10, 2024. The association raised the money to design and build the community park at Quaker Ridge Drive and Lost Creek Boulevard in 1982, and its own count puts Lost Creek at about 775 acres in 24 plat sections, 20 of them residential. At the Census center point, the federal soil survey maps Eckrant-Rock outcrop complex on 18 to 50 percent slopes, a single mapped point rather than the whole neighborhood.