Dansons Capital Group, in partnership with Accrual Equity Partners and Hydro Construction, has acquired Shasta Pools, Phoenix Metro’s most recognized pool builder, and is launching Shasta Home Services off the same brand. The acquisition closed August 6. The announcement landed August 31. Terms were not disclosed.
The asset.
Shasta Pools was founded in 1966 by brothers Bob and Skip Ast and has been family-owned for three generations. It has built or renovated more than 150,000 pools across Maricopa County. Skip Ast Jr., who served as president, said the family built the company on a commitment to quality “to every homeowner who trusted us with their backyard, their budget, and their own family.”
The release describes multiple divisions topping $100 million in combined revenue, and membership in the Master Pools Guild, one of 110 members globally. The mix is broader than new construction: residential and commercial pool construction and renovation, a luxury design series, backyard hardscaping, extended warranties, e-commerce supplies, and a high-volume recurring pool-maintenance business. That last line is the one that reads like a home-services company rather than a builder.
The platform.
This is not a named HVAC or plumbing platform adding a pool division. Three different kinds of capital showed up together.
Dansons Capital Group is a Scottsdale family office led by CEO Dan Thiessen, President Jeff Thiessen, and COO Jordan Thiessen. They built Pit Boss Grills into a worldwide brand and sold it in June 2023. Jeff’s relationship with the Ast family started when Shasta built his own backyard pool. The family has already met with more than 200 employees. Dan Thiessen will serve as chairman and lead the effort to hire industry talent and grow the home-services platform into a national brand.
Accrual Equity Partners is a founder-led, privately funded firm that partners with founder and family businesses in fragmented service industries. Co-founder and managing partner Jacob Tilzer built Kaizen Auto Care, an auto-repair platform later sold to private equity. Home services is a new vertical for a group whose public record is automotive retail and services.
Hydro Construction, founded in 1986 and led by Curt Lonsdale, is an Arizona commercial pool contractor. It is the operator in the room, not the sponsor.
The customer file is the deal.
Shasta Home Services is the structural point. The buyers are not describing a bigger pool company. They are describing a comprehensive home-services platform that starts with more than 200,000 customer relationships, route density in Central Arizona, and a 60-year brand, then expands “organically and through partnership across the essential services every home depends on.”
They did not name HVAC, plumbing, or electrical. They did not have to. A pool-maintenance route already knocks on the same doors, on a recurring cadence, with a brand those homeowners already let into the backyard. That is the same logic that makes a production roofer valuable to an energy platform. The construction book funds the brand. The maintenance book funds the platform.
A new Scottsdale headquarters and design center is already underway, with a contact center meant to be a single point of contact from pool service through the expanding home-services offering. That is a one-brand operating model, not a roll-up of local names.
The home-services M&A environment.
The buyer set for trades businesses keeps widening, and it is not only HVAC platforms and roofing sponsors. Family offices that made their money in an adjacent consumer brand, PE firms that rolled up a different service vertical, and operators from a neighboring trade are all now in the market for a customer file they can sell more services into.
Those buyers do not underwrite the same way. A pool-construction buyer values backlog, reputation with homeowners, and the ability to take a backyard from design through gunite. A home-services platform values the maintenance routes, the brand those homeowners already let in, and the right to sell the next trade into the same house. The same company can look like two different businesses depending on who is sitting across the table.
Shasta carries both books. The construction reputation built the name. The service routes are what make a national home-services story plausible. Buyers examine that mix closely, because new-construction pool volume and recurring maintenance do not move together through a housing cycle.
What it means.
For owners, two practical reads.
First, a large, trusted local brand with a recurring service base is an acquisition thesis even if the core trade is not HVAC or plumbing. Buyers will pay for the relationships and the routes. They will then decide which trades to bolt on. If you run a sizeable pool, lawn, garage-door, or restoration company with real density, you are already on that list whether or not you think of yourself as “home services.”
Second, the named trades those platforms still need to buy are HVAC, plumbing, and electrical. A new home-services brand with 200,000 Phoenix-area relationships and capital behind it is another inbound call those owners will take. The question is whether that call is the process, or just the first one.
Shasta has not announced a first add-on. Watch whether the next brand they partner with is another pool company, or a contractor in a trade they do not yet run.
Own a home-services, pool, or residential trades business?
Schryver & Co. advises trades owners across roughly $5 million–$100 million of revenue, and works with plenty of owners who simply want an honest read on what they have built. If you’d like to understand what your business is worth and which acquirers would genuinely compete for it, we’re glad to talk. No pitch, no pressure.
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