The floating iron ore is nothing to do with corruption, it is just a glitch in the way the scenery was put together. On the XBox 360 I have three characters, two float above the iron ore when mining, one stands on a floating iron ore. It is the same game, no point reinstalling for a texture glitch. Unfortunately my PC version has neither problem so I have no screenshot, will get one from the Xbox 360 shortly when I find the camera.

Edit
Best I could do for a picture of the floating iron.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j215/aussie500/Skyrim/floatingiron_zpsfc7ecc98.jpg

It seems getting a picture of a floating miner is a lot harder, on the consoles you will notice you drop a bit after the mining animation finishes, but I cannot show that in a picture, could not get any followers to mine it, and could not catch Calder mining it. But if you have someone at the house who does mine there, just watch them when they do it and you will notice the floating effect.

Edit 2
Finally caught someone mining the ore vein. Lydia standing on thin air.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j215/aussie500/Skyrim/Shfloatingmining_zpsa08e8525.jpg

The clay mining loop seems to be a general issue, not a homestead-linked one; I first encountered it near the Solitude mill.

The main issue I have - which I can't be certain is HF and not DB (or both) is that in Skyrim my encounter rate has sky-rocketed, and I'm getting multiple encounters at once. On my last trip from Windhelm to Whiterun, in addition to the three bears I usually find on the road, I met a Giant + cow being attacked by another bear, and a Pyromancer/Cryomancer fighting each other and a pair of Sabercats, and then got attacked by a dragon, yet another bear and three bandits. There also seem to be deer and foxes (and goats) around every corner, and again all the foxes are in pairs or triples. (Deer and goats have always come in multiples.) Most of the time between DB and HF I was in Solstheim, where the encounter rate is pretty low, but I didn't notice the mobs of encounters when I did briefly return to Skyrim at that time. It's not a major problem for this (level 61) character, but it may not go so well for my level 3 when I start playing her again.

Your level 3 character will have the same rate of random events she always had, the rate is dependent on what you have done and what level you are, your level 61 character is considered good enough to handle a bit more now. Although I must say it sounds a bit like you are travelling with a horse, that will also up your rate.

I typically am on horse, yes. But I have typically been on horse for the better part of a year now (and fairly intensively for the last three weeks which has all been at level 61), and I've never run into these multiple encounters that I recall. Certainly not for most of the encounters I have. To add to the count, yesterday I ran into Blood Horkers and standard bandits, another Giant + cow with a Kajiit caravan traveling with them, and a farmer + cow about ten feet away from Maiq the Liar. I can see the game occasionally having overlapping encounters, especially if I try to run away from one and run into the second, but these are all located in the same spot, and in some cases fighting each other before I even arrive.

It's just odd that they all appeared since last Tuesday. Now that I've got Dawnguard I'll pull out my other characters and see if they run into the same thing.

Again it depends on your level, you get to level 60 and start having fun, and what you have done, but if you decided it is too much, getting rid of the horse for a while will cut it down to just frequent single groups attacking. It seems like your character is not a warrior type or not done those typical questlines, since a lot of your random encounters are not hostile, that could change with Dawnguard. That level 61 character will probably get a lot of vampire attacks on towns and in the wilds, you might want to consider that one becoming a vampire, or avoiding towns.

Thanks for the advice, especially regarding the vampires; I'll keep that in mind. My level 58 character is still getting encounters individually and at the expected frequency, so I'll hope the same holds for the low level one. I'm just surprised I never noticed it before for the level 61, since she's been that level for months (most of the skills she uses are high 90s or maxed).

Got the house built, filled it out completely and adopted two kids, but now every time I enter it I cannot leave! Taken to calling it Hotel California. The game freezes on every exit and all resulting saves are corrupted. Help Bethesda! I haven't seen my kids in days!

Did you turn autosaving off? The bigger your save file the more chance it is not going to work with autosaving and will either freeze or just trap you with endless loading, both consoles have that problem. So you need to turn all autosaving options off to continue playing, and just remember to save a lot, in different slots in case you have to go back and redo something.

The dreaded workbench glitch just occurred for me at Heljarchen Hall. I cannot select any outdoor improvements, but I built everything outside the other two houses. I took a break from building and completed the Dawnguard main quest. Apparently this breaks Hearthfire, which is pretty hilarious because the order of release for the DLC was reversed on the other platforms. Plus I get the glitch at the drafting table to remove workbenches from Windstad Manor. This DLC is all kinds of broken.

From what my friend tells me you have to have the bedroom addition that goes onto the left side of the house if you were looking at it from outside. So that would mean entrance way, Main Hall with added bedroom to the left side of that. Once you build that you have to build the beds that are labeled child bed or children bed not sure but it had Child in the name. Then you have to build the Chest that go in front of the beds too. Once that is done you can adopt kids. My friend adopted a kid in Whiterun and one in Solitude. He did not go to riften to the orphanage to adopt, so don’t know how that works.

Strangely enough, I got options for Falkreath and Hjaalmarch from the orphanage and I did not have any child's beds at Windstand Manor. I was smart enough t send them to Falkreath where I had beds. I likely would have broken the game had I chosen Hjaalmarch.

The Ancient Nord helm won't show up on any mannequin's head even though the inventory screen will show that the mannequin has it equipped.

Again he did not get the kids from the orphanage.
My frined started a new character after downloading Heathfire and Dragonborn and built two Heathfire homes, one up near solitude and one near riverwood. During his travels he came across a kid begging in the streets in Whiterun and found he could not adopt the kid do to it said he did not have room for the kid. He did not know why that was do to he had upstairs in his home near whitrun 3 beds, 1 large one and 2 small ones. So he went back and started to add in beds and chest to the bedroom addition and only after making a child bed and having a chest in front of it was he able to adopt the kid in whiterun.
So possibly there is a glich in the game or its just that way if you get kids from orphanage it does not matter what beds you have as long as you have them, but going and finding the kids on your own. It would seem you need the bedroom additon with childrens beds with chest to do that.

You only have to build the two single beds and the dresser between them in the upstairs Main Hall to be able to adopt, I doubt the PS3 version is that broken it will let you send the children to a house with no suitable room for them.

I didn't have the child bed in my Lakeview master bedroom so the kids slept in the guest bedroom, thereby kicking my housecarl out, poor thing. So I put the workbench back in, added the 2 beds, but the kids stayed in the guest room. That was on the Xbox. I am now rebuilding Lakeview on the PS3 and I will avoid the same problem.

Aussie, from just 1 night's play, it doesn't seem broken to me. When I talked to the lady in the orphanage, she asked me where my possible adopted kid would live and I only had 1 option, Solitude, since that was the only place I had added a child's bedroom up to that point. After that, I went to all the Jarls where I already had houses--which is all houses possible in the vanilla game--and bought a child's bedroom. Even in Windhelm, where they talk to me like traitor scum, they still make nice and sell me the room.

I can't believe how satisfying building homes is. I love it.

I chose Onmund for my steward, since i'm primarily a magic user and doing the College questline right now but i've encountered a small but very annoying bug where he keeps repeating the line: "We shouldn't have been disturbing sarthaal no matter what we found down there" every time I'm in my house and its actually rather annoying. If I ever want a change in steward it seems I only have the option to kill him. Can Bethesda somehow add specific dialogue for when he is a steward? Or give us the option to change steward without having to kill him/her off ?

All of the NPCs other than Serana have annoying, limited dialogs. Since I am building all the houses I will need to recruit 3 stewards so this is going to take a long time. But I won't be talking to them much once they're on the job. I just have 2 trophies to go on Hearthfire and then I will start Dawnguard.

Just wondering, are you unable to have two towers on one homestead? I've planned to do Greenhouse, Alchemy Lab and Library, but once building the Alchemy Lab the option for Library has been removed. But I've looked online and other people seem to have been able to do Greenhouse, Alchemy Lab and Library...

... Confused.

Bloodscythe refuses to go onto any rack, Soulrender has no problems.

Ancient Nordic Helm won't display on mannequin despite the manniquin's inventory showing it as equipped.

I've come to the conclusion that weapon that glows red won't display correctly on any racks. The Ebony Blade, Bloodscythe and Bloodskal Blade all have issues.

lakeview manor, i cant get it because of longtime bug of kill the bandit leader, he's dead in the cave an still has arrow over head. sure would like another chance to purchase...sigh

Embershard Mine? I think I'm in the same rut.

I can't move my child/wife from Whiterun into Lakeview. I have the max number of beds. Pretty sure I have all the chests too. Any ideas?

EDIT* That particular dialogue option isn't even there. Ugh, Breezehome is too cramped!

did you try waiting about a week in-game time, and see if the bandit leader will respawn?

Am I the only one that's having problems using the display cases in Hearthfire? I can build them, and they look great. I just can't put anything in them, all it's letting me do is open and close them.