First Bumps in the Road

The barn is now serving as our storage unit.

I spent much of the past weekend making trips out to the property with all of our stuff that will not fit in the apartment. (we are renting a townhouse in the city for a year while we build the house) While I was out there I got to meet one of our future neighbors. He was able to fill me in on much of the history of our lot.

Apparently his house, our lot and the lot next to us were all part of a single property at one point.  The owner, after unsuccessfully trying to sell the house and the 2.5 acres of land, split it into three lots.  My neighbor bought the lot with the house.  My other neighbor bought the smaller lot and built a house and  our lot was bought by his daughter.  She later sold the lot to the people that we bought from.

Half way through our informative conversation he says "They told you about the pool right?".  Of course no one ever mentioned a pool so I thought he must be talking about the small ditch in the center of the lot. Maybe it fills up with water when it rains? Nope! As it turns out our lot used to have a full blown in-ground swimming pool on it.  After they sold the lots the pool turned into a nasty pond and the town finally made them deal with it.

Naturally they drained the water and then used a bulldozer to push the pool shed and the pump into the hole and cover it over with dirt. I guess this means you can look forward to future posts about dealing with an abandoned swimming pool!

Also, as it turns out, the utilities that we thought were all on the property are not.  The electric is there, the gas must be brought across the driveway and the water and sewer may need to be brought all the way up from the road.

And for good measure the lot may have some natural springs on it.

I guess it is better to find this out now but the second elevator is already starting to look like a feature that may have to be cut out.