Fixture Installation in Harpswell, Maine

Harpswell Homes and What They Need

Harpswell's housing is almost all detached houses, over 90 percent in Census estimates, spread along Harpswell Neck and Orr's, Bailey and Great Island. Of roughly 4,300 homes, about a third are seasonal, many of them old summer cottages on the water. The median build year is 1979; about one in five homes predates 1940, and roughly half predate 1980, while under a fifth were built after 2000. Many started as summer places and were converted to year-round use, which often leaves shallow crawlspaces, piping in unheated spaces and additions wired and plumbed at different times. Salt air adds its own wear to outdoor equipment and fittings. On older island houses, repiping and plumbing upgrades are often part of making a cottage livable through February.

Water Supply and Drains in Harpswell

Harpswell has no public water or public sewer. Every home relies on a private well and, apart from roughly 96 properties with overboard discharge systems, an individual septic system; the town's own study says public systems are seen as cost-prohibitive because of the jagged shoreline and shallow bedrock. Harpswell has no sand-and-gravel aquifers, so wells draw from fractures in metamorphic bedrock, and yields vary widely even between neighbours. Where fractures connect to the bay, heavy pumping can pull in salt water; one condo complex's well turned salty in 2017. Iron, sulfur and arsenic also occur naturally. Water quality affects plumbing equipment directly, and water heater replacement on a coastal well goes better when salt, iron and hardness are tested and treated first.

Getting to Know Harpswell