The Great Pool Debacle of 2009: Part I

See what happens when you consult for someone else? Particularly someone who HASN'T SEEN THE PROPERTY? And someone who is a government official so whenever some crazy constituent calls the official jumps sky high and then lands on my shoulders?! I actually have a ton of respect for this government official; he is smart, has years of experience and a real love for his constituents. But he has not seen the house and he is currently tap dancing on my head about non-issues.

This is about the pool at the chalet. Yes, it has snakes in it, but it is in the country, people. There are snakes all over the place. There are snakes in the neighbors' backyards and in their pools too. Apparently this particular complaint was not about the snakes, but about the possibility of someone falling in the pool. The house, along with the pool, has been abandoned for 5 years. I don't know when, but at some point HUD sealed off the pool with a metal grid and plywood. A person could walk across the pool without getting wet, but some resident has been calling the county every 45 seconds about it and the county is understandably not trying to be held liable for hazards on a property they just bought.

So this is how the day goes down: my director (who hasn't seen the house) gets frantic calls and texts from the government official (who hasn't seen the house) about securing the pool. Of course, my director is customer service-oriented and she wants to put our client at ease. So she has another person on our team, Charlene, start looking for service providers who can drain and secure the pool. But Charlene calls me to get the address for the property and I immediately start arguing that this course of action doesn't make any sense. Charlene is used to ignoring my tirades and starts looking for vendors. So I call my director and tell her that I am directly contravening her orders. She can't imagine why I am so worked up about this, so I send her pictures of the secured pool. She says she just wants to make the official happy so could I please just drain and cover the pool? I don't want to do it. I think it's an unnecessary expense, but she looks at the pictures and says, "Well sure an adult couldn't fall in, but a TODDLER'S LEG could get caught...." O.M.G. A toddler? A toddler?! A toddler toddling about in the backyard of an abandoned house? FINE. FINE. YOU WIN. Anytime you use the toddler trump card you know you're in for a win.

I found myself purposely contravening direct orders from my director because I desperately want to keep all pre-construction and construction work at each property with one general contractor (GC). I am responsible for 84 houses and I am not trying to set myself up to have to have a contractor matrix for each one. Besides, I wanted to keep the pool; it could be a really cool feature and a great selling point.

I asked my GC about the pool and here is how he broke down the dollars:

• Keep the Pool: new filtration system, pump, refinish the concrete pool walls and repair the surrounding concrete deck = $10,000-$15,000
• Let the Pool Go: drain the pool, collapse the concrete walls into the empty hole, fill the hole in with gravel and dirt, plant grass seeds = $3000
  

Uhhh....now the pool is crowding out the interior modernization package. The pool is on shaky ground. Pools aren't even that big a deal with middle income families here and young families (the type that might need 5 bedrooms) will likely have young children or pets that will require an extra fence which is just more money to spend outside.

As I was coming to this realization, emails and phone calls kept lighting up all of my means of communication. The pool must be drained! What about the toddlers? Think about the toddlers! I gave him and ask the GC to have the pool drained first thing the next morning and we would move forward from there. Since I got him started, I get to keep him as my sole contact on the project. Score one for efficiency. The pool is still striking out and the saga will continue in Part II.