Florida

We have electricians at Independence now! Inside, there’s wires everywhere, running in the ceiling spaces, walls and bundled in to outlet boxes; in the exterior walls, they’ve punched holes in to the block wall (shame about the loss of insulation – maybe it’ll get patched up again):

UPDATE: Two days later, the electrical wiring is complete – and they’ve patched the block walls with foam insulation! In the garage, all those wires are now tidily routed into a fuse panel:

When you take a look at the Google Maps satellite view at Independence, you see a large number of strange oval shapes in the ground; many seem to be connected, but it’s still not clear what they are:

In fact, they are RIBs (“rapid infiltration basins”), part of a large water reuse system “Water Conserv II” set up by Orange County, Florida, to improve water reuse and reduce discharge to waterways (see also here); the basic idea is that when there’s a lot of waste water, it’s pumped to these shallow storage ponds, from where it can slowly drain to the underground aquifer. There are also benefits in delivering water to where it’s needed, reducing farmers pumping from the aquifer.

And today, finally, I saw an RIB in use – I had to stop and take a couple pictures: