We wanted to get going earlier as it was likely to be a busy day at the house.
Elizabeth, Catherine and James set off in good time to get to Disney Springs as it would open and Graeme stayed at the house to receive the various tradesmen who were likely to arrive.
The first one to call was from Ireland Surveying and we wanted him to find the four iron rods in the ground which would mark the corner of our plot. A very jolly guy, he was at the house for around 30 minutes with his theodolite and his magnetometer as Americans would describe it or metal detector as we might say!
He had barely gone when the arborist arrived to give us his view on the fast-growing oak tree on our front lawn. To my relief he suggested only a serious hair cut and not removal. I also asked him about the unattractive palm tree which he said would be best to remove. I said we’d prefer something more modest and more colourful and he suggested a magnolia which I thought was ideal.
I told him I’d need to get approval from the Home Owners’ Association and that we would like to go ahead with both projects when I had obtained clearance.
Later on Arthur Brown came – a specialist in irrigation and Smart home technology. He had already made our pool controllable remotely – the pump, the temperature etc as well as getting our irrigation system controllable remotely. We were interested in having the lights at the front controllable remotely so that we could switch the external lights on from home when new guests might be arriving late and in the dark. This would save our property managers having to turnout during that day to switch them on remotely.
Having had our boundaries determined, we realized that part of our irrigation system was not actually on our property so will have to be moved before the developers at the back get too near to our boundary.
Following on from that we finally managed to get a quote for home insurance for 2022-2023 as our current insurers have given us notice that they are no longer insuring properties in hurricane areas. The other problem is the ongoing scam from insurers who are saying that they won’t insure roof coverings older than 10 years. As ours is the original from 2005, that could have been a problem. Most roof coverings here are so-called ‘shingles’ – a glorified version of roofing felt as far as I can tell and some insurers are now saying that whatever type of new roof covering is applied, the 10-year rule will be the same!
It as then a case of tea indoors as, while it might be 21C plus during the day, the temperature falls off steadily once darkness falls. Apparently, just as we leave the weather is due to warm up – exactly what happened when we were last here in early 2020.
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