Quiet care for considered pools.
Tidemark looks after architect-designed and estate pools across Westbrook and the valley. Stone and natural finishes, equipment rooms, and water chemistry kept as a craft, by the same hands every week.
Most of our pools come to us by referral, from owners and from the architects who drew them. Monthly care from $420.
Water is the one material in a finished house that changes every day. We treat its chemistry the way a mason treats lime: slowly, by hand, and with a record of every decision.
A stone pool is ruined quietly. Too much acid etches travertine, too little leaves scale on basalt, and a careless brush scratches plaster that took a month to cure. None of it shows until it is too late to undo.
So we keep few pools, test in hand rather than by strip, and send the owner a written note after every visit. Many of our clients never meet us. They know us by the water, and by the journal.
Basalt coping at the waterline, the day after a stone visit.
The pools we keep
Four of the thirty-eight in our care, shown with the owners’ permission and never with an address.
The Long Pool, Hollins Ridge
Honed basalt coping, white plaster, 82 feet end to end
Designed by Orla Faye Architects. In our care since 2019.
The Garden Steps
Reclaimed flagstone, limestone treads, green glass mosaic
A 1970s pool, restored with Hale & Birch Landscape. Since 2021.
The Vaulted Pool
Lime plaster arches, travertine floor, a heated indoor basin
Under a converted dairy barn. Ours since the day it was filled, 2016.
The Oak Court
Dark plaster, bluestone edge, one very old oak
A private house by Studio Nakamura Reyes. Since 2022.
The water journal
One pool, one season. The Long Pool at Hollins Ridge, from the April cover-off to the November close, as our technician wrote it up after each visit.
Every client receives a journal like this, privately. Tap a point on the line, or scroll the visits below.
14 April Visit 1 of 9
Commissioning
- pH
- 7.9
- Water
- 54°F
- Free chlorine
- 1.2
Cover off after a wet winter. Brushed the floor by hand and balanced alkalinity first. We left the pH high on purpose while the new plaster at the steps finishes curing.
Care, and what it costs
Every pool begins with a first visit and a written water report, $180, credited to your first month.
- Monthly care
- From $420 a month
- A weekly visit by the same technician, all year. Water tested by hand and logged in your journal, waterline, baskets and filters, floor brushed rather than robot-vacuumed. Twice weekly through leaf season at no extra charge.
- Commissioning and winterising
- From $640 each
- In spring: cover off, a slow balance and a careful start for new plaster or stone. In autumn: water lowered, lines blown, winter chemistry and a tensioned cover. Booked for the same week each year.
- Stone and tile care
- From $380 a visit
- Waterline cleaning with stone-safe soaps, joint repair, sealing and efflorescence. Travertine, limestone, basalt, bluestone, glass and ceramic mosaic. We never use acid on natural stone.
- Equipment rooms
- Survey from $260
- Pumps, filters, heaters, automation and dosing. We survey, label every valve, fit quietly and leave the room cleaner than we found it. We work with your architect on new rooms.
Mara Lind, founder
A small studio, on purpose
Mara Lind spent eleven years running the plant rooms of a historic public bath house before she looked after her first private pool, for an architect who had just lost a travertine terrace to a careless cleaner. That was 2011. Tidemark has grown by referral ever since, one pool at a time.
We are four technicians and a small studio with a water lab. Each pool has one technician who knows it, and we stop taking pools when the week is full. There is usually a short waiting list in spring.
- Pools in our care
- 38
- Technicians, one per round
- 4
- Keeping pools since
- 2011
Certified pool operators. Fully insured. Lic. #000000 (sample)
In their words
Sample reviews, written for this concept
I send every client with a pool to Mara. The stone we specify is still the colour it was on the day we handed over, and I cannot say that about anyone else.
The journal arrives after every visit. I read it with my coffee and have learned more about my own pool in two summers than in the ten before.
They are the only contractors on the estate who have never once needed chasing. Same technician, same day, and a note if anything changed.
A private enquiry
Most of our pools come to us through an owner or an architect. If that is how you found us, tell us who. If not, you are just as welcome. We reply within two working days and always visit before we quote.
(555) 014-2012The studio, Barn 2, Fallow Lane, Westbrook
Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm