Florida

As we expected, there was not much progress at Independence this week for our home – although next door (to the left) did close (purchase) yesterday; we met one of the new owners today, who told us that they completed purchase even though the home is not finished! There were painters working there when we visited today, while the new owners belongings were being moved in to the garage. Lennar are providing temporary housing for them, and they hope to properly move in next week – remember again that November is the end of Lennar’s financial year, so there’s an incentive to close homes!

Meanwhile in our home, electric still awaits completion and inspection, but the “pest defense” tubes were installed; and today they’ve started putting stucco on the exterior – so the outside of our home is getting closer to completed! It seems to be a very labor intensive process; one worker runs the mixer, and then the mix is transferred spade by spade lifted from one scaffold level to the next, till it’s high enough to be applied to the wall! You can see a spade delivering to the lowest level, in the picture:

It seems that my optimism a week ago was misplaced as far as Lennar’s progress with our new home is concerned! I wrote “electrical wiring finished now, and preparations for exterior stucco progressing rapidly”, but a week later, there’s been little change from that position.
Inside, there’s been a few small steps – including framing the false wall in one upstairs closet that hides the AC ducts:

Inside too, a “second phase” of electrical wiring was completed this week – alarm pre-wiring which brings sensors to the downstairs windows and doors (as well as a bundle of wires in an upstairs closet); but at the same time, the main electrical wiring apparently failed inspection, which then delays any possibility of interior insulation, sheetrock, etc! I don’t know the failure details, but there’s some evidence with a removed exterior power outlet on the rear patio:

In the same area at the rear of the home, the upstairs deck has been partially framed – though it’s missing a few horizontal beams:

 

Unfortunately it looks like the rear deck has cracked some of the block wall, so perhaps that’s a reason why the exterior stucco hasn’t happened yet:

 

In addition, a big reason for slow progress this week is the two homes either side of ours – both of them are supposed to be sold this week, so a big push to get them completed makes it obvious that the construction focus moves away from our new home. Luckily, we can be patient!

Reading a fascinating article about driverless cars and Google on New Yorker, I was prompted to review Google Street View near our new home; it gets quite close, to the turning in to Bridgewater Crossings Blvd, outside Bridgewater Middle School – but it looks different!

It’s hard to know exactly when this was recorded, the Google Map has a 2013 copyright, but in tiny writing states “Image Date April 2011”.

To get to our new home you go straight ahead on this image (over the (now non-existent) gate), along the side of Lake Joval, and turn right when you reach the far edge of the lake. Meanwhile if you go “ahead” on Google Street View, you reach the next housing complex; and if you turn around 180 degrees, you’re facing just trees. There’s been a lot of change there, since these images were recorded!

What’s interesting, is that Google Street View knows that those two points are connected, it just can’t fill in the details! You see this on the normal Google Maps too, where it knows the route of Bridgewater Crossings Blvd. Apple Maps has no such knowledge, nor does Bing Maps, and nor does Mapquest (but does anyone use Mapquest these days?)