Anton Redman II

There are a number of relatively cheap routes in the UK to become qualified to carry out domestic wiring. In France working as an electrican takes you down the ten year insurance and therefore suitable experience or qualification route.  When working on your own property probably exposes you to an insurance risk. For instance if you chose to reuse the 1mm wiring which feed some ancient socket and installed a 3 kilowatt electric fire I suspect the insurance company might repudiate you claim or indeed sue you for the fire damage to adjacent buildings.

Butane typically are small cylinders stored in the interior - either as part of a stove or beneath a hob. Propane are typically but not always bigger cylinders on the outside of the building. All the hoses have a use by date - typically five years for the butane in rubber up to 25years for propane in metal reinforced plastic

First and I hope only time I had a motoring accident in France I walked about 45 kms with three broken ribs having been pushed complete with car about 90 metres into a fosse. Sapeurs eventually told a couple of passing ambulances to disappear at 5 am once they had found Isabel who I had left behind in said fosse because I could not carry her up and out,despite trying my only excuse was that it was at least 50 metres straight up. I would suggest going to see the local pompiers and asking their advice - I suspect they will know exactly how to deal with the ambulances. The ambulances are not any form of public service as far as I am aware you have not a contract with them. Re reading sorry if it sounds a bit brusk but first stage try the Pompiers. They are volunteers and decent people

Just to take it the other way round for the last 40 years I have picked up French students and people doing NS at Canterbury or on the A20 hitching to France. 

We a short 'phone call to insure current house. About 9 months latter moved to a local broker and they did count a landing as a room but said if we had had no furniture on it it would not have counted.  

Buy a copy of 'Construire ou renover sa maison' link as below loads of illustrations http://www.amazon.fr/Construire-ou-R%C3%A9nover-sa-maison/dp/2207252620/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280388809&sr=1-7 Are you sure you will want /  be able to stay in the house ten years ? If not look very carefully at the ten year insurance requirement as without it you will probably take a knock on the price if you sell within ten years.  

He may have had probation, he may have a court order which forbids him to leave France until a debt or fine is paid. In any event he can take a bus or train out of France, in the direction of Romania any time he chooses. The French are faster to expel than say the UK but are in theory bound by the same legislation and even if they do expel short of branding him on the forehead he can be back next week.  

I have never found a full mobile or FOIP central directory and it may be you cannot be ex a directory which does not exist. Never found a need for more than Liste Orange.

I think there are at least three routes the power restrction will have been acheived and comparison of the UK and French on line workshop manuals/parts lists should reveal which has been used : 1. Different chip with another part reference. - 2. Smaller throttle ( mening restriction) somewhere in the inlet manifold - 3. Restriction in the exhaust system. My money would be on 1. but bikes are not my specialist subject. You might search the other way round and find out what part the Belgians will sell you to make your bike go faster.

One place to price check speedo conversion. At one time all that was required was an accurate display of speed but it not needs to be both MPH and KPH. http://www.speedofixer.co.uk/imported_car_conversions.html http://www.renault4.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=286 with carriage return so link can be clicked on  

You can still swop the cards in Speedo's Boost and Max Power regularly show how it is done. A quick look at Auto Trader and Renault Occasion suggests this is finacial bad news. If you take the details of a French car for sale in France - subtract say € 2000  for dealer margin and then try and buy a similar car in the UK you still seem to be better off and you are spared the grief of headlamp changes, possible reversing light and high intensity rear light problems and the future grief of sourcing handed parts like clutch cables.

I would say try the Gironde but south of Bordeaux.

Many thanks again for the kind offers. Have sourced 1 metre of 6mm bar and a very small amount of sanding with a belt sander allows it through the hole, which must be marginally more than 5 mm. I had some sheet metal left over from building a pulley shield for the lawn tractor and using tin snips and a small vice have made the sleeves. I now just have to source the handles at a reasonable price. They one set the left behind, because they sheered the grub scred are ebonised wood with one side a conventional knob and the other offset like the old Paris Metro carriage handles.

The problem is the adaptors are in England and I am in France. If I find out the guy I bought the house from sold the handles I may kill him. If he threw them away I will kill him.  

Many thanks for the kind offer. I will sort a short term solution for a couple of the rooms on Monday. I will order the parts for delivery to  a couple of friends who are due out in the middle of August.  There is no great rush as I am still removing layers of wall paper from the doors and crawling through the loft pulling new wiring.

The doors are oak, probably as old as the house so at least 130 years, and the locks do not have a standard spacing that I can buy from a Brico of even the specialists. Therefore I do want to cut them about to fit modern locks. I had hoped that as there were more 5mm spindles in France than in the UK that there would be an easy to obtain French solution and I was just not looking in the right place. At the moment just making sure I have the right sized screw driver in each room in case the door blows shut when I am working in the room. I will try the square section and some square section tube over it next week. Failing that will order and collect during holiday in UK this summer. The worst element of the whole job is that 10 out of 11 sets were removed but they broke the screw on the 11th. Took me about 3 minutes to remove it so I know what the originals looked like and I cannot find either repro or second hand sets to match.

The problem then is how you pack them out to 8 mm for the door handles to grip

We have ten doors with no door handles all have a 5mm square hole through them for a square bar to which you attach the handles. Apart from a few bathroom sets I have not been able to find door handles with 5 mm bars. I have found 5mm bars and adaptors to the Euro-norm of 8 mm. One example below : http://www.doorfurnituredirect.co.uk/scpro/bernards/productssearch~search~spindle~page~2~order~prodorder~subsort~.htm Has anybody ever found anything similar on sale in France ? If so where ? Has anybody found made a work round for the bar problem. If so where did the source the materials. I have worked my way through Google.fr without success but have discovered you can pay in excess of € 300 for a door handle.

Liste Orange - which I thought was free should prevent this.

The thing which cuts the heating rather than tuning off the PC and TV is a ‘Delesteur’ http://www.promotelec.com/technique/espaceinfo/espace_3b.aspx Your meter should given a hint as to how much the upgrade will be. 3 Kva to 6 Kva or 9Kva ( almost kilowatts) is normally easy and cheap more power than that may be an issue. Depending on where you are reversible air conditioning may be worth considering.

I would suggest posting your favourite towns in the UK or what kind of a holiday you want. I like all of the places but unless we know what you are looking for it is very hard to advise.

I think € 1500 per square metre is nothing like the maximum people can and do spend. In the Gironde new builds to good rather than high standards are about € 1000 a square metre plus land.

I suspect you have torn the earth strap off the engine. If it starts with a jump lead from neutral on the battery to the engine block then I am correct.

You may get some help from either a ‘Économiste de la construction’ or a ‘Maître d'œuvre’  both of which are categories in Pages Jaune.  There used to be a series of books called ‘Prix Pour Batir but these seem to have last been printed in 2004 On line site for construction but subscriptrion only. http://www.batitel.com/prixbtp/?gclid=CPTE6O_CwKICFZFh4wodU0sq6Q Example of problems – your site has perfect drainage and soft sandy soil or it is on granite and need drains cutting through it. Best of luck anyway.

Typical 60 cm dish 37.5 as below : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_dish Discussion on dish size for Astra 2 D http://www.satcure.co.uk/2d/fprint.htm Db measure varies with frequency which may be why it is rarely quoted http://www.sdsdigital.co.uk/Visiosat-65cm-Fibreglass-SMC65-Satellite-Dish-pr-735.html but higher values than the 60 cms above. I think you will struggle the dish using this particularly for BBC and ITV on Astra 2D. Using an 80 cm conventional dish we lose Classic FM a couple of times a year in very heavy rain but I spent a lot of time and effort of setting up