From the Primordial Ooze

When we first toured This Old Purple House, it was under four feet of fresh snow. In fact, our showing was delayed a day for the blizzard that dumped said snow. Although the house was as sad and cold as any I had seen in the collection of "old houses in need" I had collected and tracked online, I must admit that TOPH looked colder and sadder for its blanket of wet, heavy white stuff.

We made some assumptions from what we saw that day, one of which was that the pool was a goner. First of all, the words vintage and pool generally shouldn't go together. Second, the pool "deck" (poured concrete slabs visible from summertime satellite imagery) had some disconcertingly extreme highs and lows around the edges that could not be attributed to drifting snow. Finally, the location of the pool placed several hundred square feet of non-permeable area above the grade of the house, which was less than 15 feet away. The words drainage and nightmare came to mind.

Although the idea of summer fun and fitness were tempting, TOPH had many more pressing priorities than a pool, especially if was going to be a money pit and time dump unto itself. So, the quick-final task of digging out and/or filling in the pool were on the to-do list before we were even under contract.

So, imagine our surprise when we came back for our final walk-though (in June) and saw that the pool was tightly covered by an expensive custom, albeit older, cover. The seemingly heaved deck was actually stepped up in places to accommodate a higher "mosaic" wall on one side. And there appeared to be no water damage or drainage issues from the improbable grading -- still puzzling about those hydrodynamics...

Still, it remained covered. We closed on TOPH and began the initial tasks of debugging the kitchen, sorting spaghetti-esque "vintage" wiring (that's another pairing you never want to see: wiring and vintage), and bracing for exorcistic plumbing failures.

While we toiled on priority tasks of food, water and Wi-Fi inside, Mother Nature embarked on a scorching heat wave that made us long for the uber-air-conditioned comfort of the Mid-Atlantic. Suddenly, making that pool work, whatever the cost or effort, became a priority.

Local sources told us it was covered for seven years. In that time, a hearty mix of compost and carrion collected and decayed. Let's just say we avoided skin contact with the resulting liquid.
We did not add chemicals to the soup, knowing that we would be pumping it off into the woods, which run downhill almost directly to Great Bay. To that end, we found an old sump pump in a dark corner of the basement and set to the task of removing somewhere north of 10,000 gallons of primordial ooze. (On what grounded circuit, you ask? Excellent question for another day.)

It took about 10 days of running (and regularly unclogging) the pump and 150-foot hose. We were down to about 14 inches in the deep end when I started power washing at 2700 psi in areas where I could reach or stand. We used a gallon of Simple Green on the nastiest areas. And then pumped some more. And thenm the pump gave out leaving the nastiest of the nasty at the very bottom of the deep end.

My hubby fashioned a manual rope tow for a 16-gallon shop vac out of an old halyard and scaled the slope in a pair of old knee-high off-shore boots. From the shallow end, together we lifted the full vac into a huge wheelbarrow which he carted out to the woods twenty times. And, at the last, at the very bottom, we found... a central drain. Hunh.

Well, from there, it was easy. Six gallons of Clorox and a hose filling 3 hours at a time off the well, it was full in 9 days. Clem the Plumber fashioned a replacement for the missing bleeder valve on the obsolete pump. Plugs were pulled. Switches were flipped. And it started on the first try. And the light even works!

The icy artesian well water is NICE. And I, for this season, shall avert my eyes from the crumbling "vintage" tile and weed-choked phlox border. Ideas for the mosaic wall are welcome. Next Spring.