Jonzjob
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Posts posted by Jonzjob
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We will shortly be moving out of our rented house and into our new house (yippeeeee) and I want to plumb the washing machine into the hot and cold water system. Does anyone know any reasons why I can't.
I know that it's common practice to plumb into the cold water pipe here in France, but I can't really see the sense in having solar water heating and then paying the electrifical supplier to heat more water from cold? I also realise that some if not most French washing machines only have a cold connection. I have had to fit a 'y' connector on our U.K. bought machine.
Before anyone goes on about using a high wattage machine, U.K. machine over here. It was bought a couple of years ago to replace the 18 year old machine that gave up the ghost and I was budgerigared if I was going to dump it and buy another new one here...
John.
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Hi Saramck,
If you are still looking try BIBA (British Insurance Brokers Aquitane). Talk to an English lady called Gaye Galliver (I think she is the boss) on 05.53.01.13.84. She is very helpful and our U.K.plated car was covered on the spot. The cover note arrived the next day. Since then I have directed a couple of people in the same situation and they have found the same as me and said that they were cheaper to boot... She only deals with ex-pats and she seems to know what she is doing.
Good luck,
John.
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Hi Puccette,
No loans of any kind, just an insistance from the notair. Also we wouldn't consider not having house insurance any more than car insurance or insurance for my radio controlled gliders.
John.
"Who does not know the winter countryside, does not know the countryside and does not know the life." Drieu La Rochelle. (correct?) -
We are due to sign for our house sometime mid March and have been told that no insurance, no keys. We have got to have insurance before we can sign. The part about insurance on a rented property is correct. We will have to find out if we can get a rebate on the part of the year we will not be using when we move out of rented and into our new house.
Roll on mid March!!!
John.
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Hi Hugh,
Simon Pullen is a chiro working in the Lot region. He was very helpful when I e-mailed him and he put me onto http://www.chiropratique.org/annu.php . It's a list of the regestered chiros in France and it led me to one near me in the Aude. It's the best thing that's happened to me since I hurt my bach 15 years ago.
Good luck.
John.
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Hi Chris,
I must say that we started the other way around and can only get French TV. We moved into a rental house that's only got a dish. We got in touch with an English guy the other side of Revel, Aude, wot just deals with ex-pats. He sorted us out with a digibox for our dish and we can get the 6 'free to air' channels, but our dish is pointing Southish. Where's er mountain? We are, hopefully, helping our French by watching only French TV and listening to French radio. The biggest challenge is the Metio and we are convinced that they are on piece time and paid by the word. If that's the case then they must all be rich!!!
When we move into our new house, hopefully mid March, we will have an antenna so we will be able to watch one programme while we watch another. That's not possible is you only have a dish, because what the dish sees is the only thing the 'haunted fish tank' and the VCR or DVD writer can see.....
John.
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Hi Chris,
If you look at the site the Steriotype posted it gives some good info. It is for repair work. The canal is suposed to be finished today, but I can't remember when the lake will be done by. When we had a walk round it last it was more like a rockyole than a Ferriole. Much deeper than we had imagined too.
We were watching some workmen the other day at the bottom of an empty lock. One of them was using a mains power angle grinder. It was plugged into the mains supply at the side of the lock and there was no transformer. He was stood up to his ankles in water!!! He was grinding away at the concrete at the bottom of where the lock gate closed and sometimes the disk was in the water. He probably puts an electric fire in his bath water to keep him warm? I can't remember the last time I ever saw anything so stupid!
John.
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We had a walk along the canal today by Pont Rouge, just west of Carcassonne, near Intermarché.
They've found at least one of the plugs because there's water in one stretch now! We were fascinated by the way the canal has been built. How did they manage to find such a flat route 300 years ago? Perhaps they had oil powered lazer levels that no-one knew about? It certainly was an incredible feat. We didn't realise how deep it is either, about 15 feet in most parts! A lot of that cut through rock too.
John (very impressed!)
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I've been using Skype for a couple of months now and phone my daughetr for an hour or so, no problems. Top ups appear to be on a secure site and are done on our French account in €s. Yes TVA is added, but it is still a hell of a lot cheaper that any other method I have found. Plus if you phone anyone else on their PC then the call is FREE. I have been calling the praises of this lot for ages now and it appeared to be falling on deaf ears. Glad to hear someone else using and enjoying the benifits!!!
John.
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We are, hopefully, about to buy a house with a 9.5 X 4.5M pool. At the moment it is a chlorine type pool. Does anyone know if it is possible to change this to a salt pool? I know that the maintance on a salt pool is much less and we don't really like chlorine anyway!!
John.
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"A mechanics answer :- why do you need a battery charger ? because the battery is flat.. why is the battery flat because it is A not holding the charge then you need a new battery"
You forgot 3. Lots of short journeys, on the school run for instance. A car battery charger will charge any car battery, petrol or deisel. Just because the battery has a larger capicity does not mean that it needs a bigger charger, it will just take longer to charge. Lots of short runs where the battery gets a bashing on start and not topped up by the altenator will cause the battery to sulphate. A sediment forms in the bottom of the battery and partly shorts out the plates.
There is not really any chance of acid spitting all over the place and even if it does get on the skin it will not burn if it is washed off fairly soon. It will play hell with your clothes though. The specific gravity for battery acid is 1250 fully charged, which is quite weak. thge main problem with battery charging is that if it is done in a confined space when the battery is fully charged it gives off hydrogen gas. If this can't escape it can cause an explosion, but it would take a long time to build up to that.
So basically get a good charger from a supermarket or garage, cahrge the battery in the car if you can, connect the negative lead first and don't worry. There is enough air blowing around the battery to disperse any gas that MIGHT form and then enjoy your motoring. If it still won't start, then get a new battery.
Something else to check, are the battery terminals tight and not corroded???
John.
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I've been in touch with the guy on the Midi-Life site about books on the Canal and he recommended a couple of books, one in French and one in English, from Amazon. I agree, the site is really good. Lodesa info...
Le canal du Midi et Pierre-Paul Riquet: Histoire du Canal royal en Languedoc
~Jacques Morand Edisud
And The Canal Du Midi: An Introduction
Andrew Smyth
Calypso Press (UK)We are trying to find out a lot more on the Canal and this could really help.
John.
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"You'll have to let him believe that I made him first"
Sorry don't believe that! Otherwise why would men have one more rib than women
?John.
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Adam said to God "I need a companion. Someone I can talk to and enjoy the company". God said that he could creat a woman for him. What's that said Adam. God said that a woman is a wonderful creature that will cook, clean, listen to you without interupting, make herself wonderful and obey your every whim. She will always be beautiful and never argue or raise her voice to you, but there will be a cost... What will the cost for such a beautiful creation be asked Adam. An arm and leg said God. What will I get for a rib said Adam. The rest you know
.John (sleeping in the shed tonight. I really wish we had a shed, it's cold out here!
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You didn't say how much you want for the camera? Or what make it is. No bull now, a realistic price and I may be interested?
John.
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I used to have the official IBM routine for cleaning 'mouses balls', but that must have been in a former life when I was an IBM hardware service engineer? Are we allowed to say 'mouses balls' on here
?John.
P.S. I've also got a copy of the words and music for the 'Official IBM Song' too. Good 'eer init.
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Hi Bob,
"Did you selct 'dial up' and enter the P8,35 in the space for phone number?"
Yes that was the route I took and it was straight forward from there. Where it tells you that you have a connection I just selected the ADSL 'modem' and went on from there. If you have deleted the W/doo connection and you have no other showing on your 'Network and Dial-up Connections' then I'm not sure why it shows one in the Wizard?
John.
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The OS that we have is Win 2000 Professional. I managed to get rid of W/doo, with the help of 'Quillan'. I deleted the W/doo connection in the knowledge that if I did need it then I could reload it. I then used Network & Dial up Connections to manualy create a new connection. Took the option to connect via ADSL and when it asked for the number I put 'P8,35'. I know live in a W/doo free zone
!!!Can't get the same to happen on our laptop which is running XP though
?John.
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I'm not sure if I am missing the point here, but I thought it was against a raft of EU rulings to sell food that's out of date! If you check the bottled water even that's got a use by date on it. Mind you it has been around form the beginning of the Earth so I assume that it has to go out of date sometime. It's a budgar that it has to be next week or sometime soon like that.
The idea of date stamping food is so that it's in tip top condition when you buy it, so how can anyone legally sell it when it's outside those limits?
When my parents finally shook off their mortal coil and I sorted through the stuff they had in the cupboard some of the dates were in Roman numerals on a small stone tablet attached to the bottom of the stone jars... And my old mate next door, 93 when he died, had enough solid bags of sugar to build a wall with. He used to have 4 heaped spoons of sugar in an ordinary cup of tea. I used to tell him that he would never live to collect his pension if he didn't cut down, bless him , the lovely old fellar!!
John.
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"Just looked at one of my calls, 31 minute call cost 1.63 euros, dont think theres any on/off peak difference"
Hi Scoobi, as a matter of interest your call with Skype would have cost you about 65 centimes inc the dreaded TVA.
John.
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I have just sent an e-mail to IGN and asked the question of what to set the GPS to. IF I get a reply I will post it here and let everyone know, 'cause I don't know either?
John.
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OK someone own up. Who's got the plugs from the Canal du Midi just outside Carcassonne and the lake at St Ferriolle?
We often go for a walk along the canal between Trebbe and Carcassonne, lovely walk, but some rotten sod has knicked the plug and it's empty! I don't know what's happened to the fish either. Our local Intermarché don't seem to have any extra fish on the counter? I must say that the road bridge/viaduct where it crosses the river Fresquel is quite impressive, especially as it was built over 400 years ago. None of the modern red French hole filled bricks there. We were told that they had to empty the canal every now and again because the boat users don't bother emptying the loos in the proper places, but just dump it overboard. If this were the case an you tried swimming would it be for real or would you just be going through the motions?
We went for a ride out to the lake at St Ferriolle today and bugerigar me that's empty too. We saw it in Feb. and it was lovely with water in it, but empty it is really impressive, deep to in the middle. If they are going to have it full again for the start of the season then someone is going to be busy with his bucket. You can walk down to , what would be, about 100 feet deep and still be on a beach. Gets a bit muddy further down though. There are a few very sad looking sailing dingies tied up where the water should come to. Opertunists perhapse?
If you get the chance then I would recomend a look. It only happens about every ten years and as that is also over 400 years old who knows? (good grief, that makes it older than me!!!)
John.
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Don't know. The Bio supermarket in the centre of Bass Carcassonne is good, they don't sell 'out-of-date-stuff' and is reassuringly expensive..
John
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The cheapest way we have found is using your PC. Have a look at www.skype.com . I have used it for a couple of months now and as we are on ADSL there are no overheads for being online. The calls are charged at 1.7 centimes/min (1.1 pence) to the U.K. and lots of other places. If you can get the person at the other end to go onto Skype then you can phone them on their PC for NOWT! I don't work for this lot, I'm
retardedretyrednot working cause I'm too brudy old! You pay-as-you-go so you can't run up any horendous bills! We even got a USB 'telephone handset'. Makes it feel like an ordinary phone call, or as we did, you can use a microphone and headset plugged into your PC motherboard. Works a treat and is cheep...John.
Buying a house from a private vendor
in Finding/Owning French Property
Posted
We are buying through a notaire. In Carcassonne the notaires have got together and formed their own 'immobilier'. Now we have the situation where we are getting the agents service, all the utilities sorted, etc. and still dealing directly with the notaire. Incidentally, the agent is English and VERY helpful
No matter what is said, if the seller is using an agent and paying 7.5 or 8%ish they will put that on the price they are asking whereas the notaire is only charging the seller about 3%ish for his/her services.
In most cases that we have seen the buyer does not pay the agents fees, the seller does that, but if you think that most sellers are not going pass them on to the buyer then please can I come and live on your world
.. Which ever route you take I wish you good luck and loadsa happiness in your new life here...
John.