Old House Chronicles: Well, well, witching well......1/13/16 #2

Tomorrow we close on the Foster house. Today was a flurry of activity and last minute details before the rehab work starts. And a banner day, because we got an almost definite A-OK in the new well placement.

I figured the new well could be dropped right where the dug well is....a good vein of water that only dried up in August. The dug well is about 16 feet deep; when it's dry, you can see the dirt at the bottom. Another 100 feet or so in the same location would be perfect.....right?

Not so much. This house is in a little linear village, originally settled in 1720. Over the years, and a lifetime before there were any water or septic regulations, the village inhabitants graduated from outhouse to cesspools. Some modernized further with septic systems. Most private wells were eventually drilled deep but some houses, like ours, have dug wells. Old school country stuff. Unfortunately, though, modern regulations call for those things to be a certain amount of feet apart and therein is the issue. Old well is too close a placement to the neighbor's septic. So the new well has to be moved to the northeastern side of the house. It's going to be a real challenge for the well drilling truck to fit where it needs to go. Power feed needs to be disconnected and I have to get a tree guy out ASAP to trim some branches.

My neighbor there, an 85 year old walking fund of all matters country, called me a few nights ago.
"You know, you've got to witch that.....you might not hit water." She reminded me that all the neighbors to the north had troubles finding water, but she had hers witched and it serviced two houses, never an issue at less than 75 feet. She had the same person witch the well at the restaurant she once owned, and same thing, hit water right off. It's funny how one spot can yield access to a great vein of some underground stream, but 20 feet away is just ledge.

In case you town and city folks don't know about witching a well, it is using a person, known as a douser, who has the skill, the special magic, to use a live twig or branch to locate water sources. Here is a link to a great article that appeared in Mother Earth News a few years back: http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/witching-for-water-zmaz70ndzgoe.aspx

I haven't found a douser yet and I'll ask my well guy what he thinks. I'll bet he knows someone who does it and probably believes in it, too. I'll keep you posted. Fingers crossed. I figure my odds of hitting water are a lot better than hitting tonight's Powerball drawing.

Old House Chronicles: The Foster House, #1

Once upon a time, decades ago now, I lived in a very old house in Hopkins Mills. It was a house with original clapboards, spaced closer together as they approached the barge boards, wavy in spots from centuries of settling, and old wooden windows. The house was painted white, like all the houses in the historic village, and was perched on a hill overlooking the Ponaganset River. The interior had been largely altered over the years as its residents made sequential changes to "modernize", but it still had a cove ceiling in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and steep stairs to the second floor. I always worried about the girls taking a tumble on those stairs, but they never did.

So now the house had fallen into disrepair, and was for sale, but no one was intrepid enough to take it on, what with its overgrown acreage, deteriorating structure, and 1980's fixtures. I started driving by, worrying that the old house would inevitably be bulldozed. I think you know where this is going: we bought it. To save it. And hopefully find someone to love it.

And there isn't an inch of it that doesn't need to be touched. The last few weeks have been busy finalizing financing, lining up contractors, and struggling with what is going to be restored vs. renovated. There is a difference. Being somewhat of a purist, I'd prefer saving the old 6/6 wooden windows and the narrow stair treads, but I am trying to think of what a buyer might want today. Maybe some added elements of safety and convenience might work to save the house for future generations to appreciate.

I can tell you, no vinyl siding will be on it! But some interior walls will come down, anything rotted will be replaced, there will be a new well, land will be cleared, and the kitchen and baths will be sparkly new. That is it in a nutshell; the detailed specs are almost 20 pages in length.

I'll be posting regular updates on this old house adventure. Coming next, everything you want to know about drilling a new well to replace the dug well that went dry every August.