OLD ORCHARD BEACH – It’s about 85 degrees out, and humid, when Warren Meech tells me we’re going to the back of the Sunspray high-rise condo complex to the pool.

But instead of taking a dip, I get to skim bugs off the surface of the water with a net. And push a long-handled vacuum back and forth along the pool bottom.

Additional Photos

Reporter Ray Routhier works with Adam Hawkes of Meech Property Management as they clean a pool at a condo. John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

“Yeah, it’s something we’ve really got to do daily,” said Meech, 40, a site manager for Meech Property Management, which was started by his father, Phil. “I’ve got six other pools to look after, too.”

Meech set me up with Adam Hawkes, 18, of Gorham, who is working with Meech for the summer. Hawkes has become an experienced pool cleaner, so he spent some time teaching me the finer points of this aspect of property management.

He told me, for instance, that there was a sort of ledge in the pool, about four feet down, and I should make sure the vacuum follows its contour.

So I grabbed hold of the long, fairly heavy vacuum and starting pushing it back and forth. I could feel the suction, but I also had to press down to keep it against the bottom of the pool. The water was a little cloudy this morning — Hawkes told me they had just “shocked it” with chlorine. So I couldn’t really see the bottom I was cleaning.

“It’s like mowing a lawn, you just go back and forth, row by row, to make sure you get everything” Hawkes told me. He also told me the pool wasn’t particularly dirty that day. Since the pool is only steps from the sandy beach, on some days there’s a lot of sand to be vacuumed up.

After a while, I handed the vacuum back to Hawkes and grabbed a long-handled net to begin skimming bugs. At first glance, I saw only a few dark specks on the water. But as I began narrowing my focus on each bug, I found there were dozens, maybe hundreds of dead bugs in the water. So I carefully scooped them up a few at a time.

“Once you have so many in the net that they start going back in the water, it’s time to empty it,” Hawkes said.

After helping Hawkes for a while, I joined Meech as he watered gardens and containers around the property and did some weeding.

He explained to me that his job as a property manager was a combination of physical straight-ahead tasks — pool cleaning, emptying garbage, weeding, cleaning — and being responsible for anything that goes wrong.

While I was making the rounds of the seven-story building with Meech, one of the elevators was broken, so people were asking him about that. He had already put a call in to the elevator repair company. He also was dealing with a broken elevator at another beachfront property his company manages, and he had a call in to a different elevator repair outfit for that one.

Once the elevator repairmen arrived, it would be Meech’s job to help them and to give them access to any parts of the building they needed access to.

One of the most common emergencies Meech faces is water problems, particularly with hot-water tanks. He’s been called in the middle of the night because of leaking water in one unit and literally had to search floor by floor to follow the path of the water and find the extent of the damage. He’s also had washing machines go haywire and overflow.

“Water is probably our worst enemy in this business,” Meech said, “because it can do so much damage.”

Meech said one thing he likes about the job is that he’s not chained to a desk. He’s often outside. At the Sunspray, we did our weeding and watering and pool cleaning with the sand and ocean within view. We could hear the surf the entire time. And at one point we were on the balcony of a penthouse unit with a magnificent view of the whole beach, from Pine Point to the areas south of the Pier.

Meech says he also likes dealing with people, helping to solve problems. At one point, he was in the lobby answering renters’ questions, including one from a woman who wanted to know how to get her mail sent to the building. Meech ended up giving her directions to the Old Orchard Beach post office.

As a property manager, Meech is basically an answer man for any residents who have problems they can’t solve.

“If people don’t know who to call, they call us,” he said.

Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:

rrouthier@pressherald.com

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