Ianhaycox

Blowing my own trumpet but you could visit my Running a Gite in Brittany blog I haven't entered anything for a couple of days as I've just brought a new PC and I'm really struggling with the AZERTY keyboard and French XP and transferring data from the old one.

I've been reading the book, L'installation électrique, regarding the different methods of getting light and power from the loft to various rooms. Am I allowed under NF C 15-100 to use a star configuation ? The book is not very clear. To explain, without pictures, if I had three rooms each requiring two sockets am I allowed to have a single power feed from the tableau to the loft, then in a boite derivation (or boite de combles) drop three separate spurs (one to each room) with two sockets each daisy chained off each other. Make sense ? If I can't use lots of separate spurs from a central 'distribution box' then do I have to daisy chain all the sockets up and down all the studding walls from room to room ? Thanks,

Have you tried Loxam or Laho ?

I would agree that 6 months is optimistic. It's more likely that you could get 8-10 weeks high season (£400 ? for 1 bed gite) and maybe 4-6 weeks at £300. Back of envelope calcs shows about £5,000 per gite per year. Targetting a niche market may increase occupancy but don;t count on it. There are lots of empty gites in low season. Ignoring the capital outlay there are quite a number of expenses that eat very quickly into the income - advertising (£500), insurance, accountancy, heating, electric, linen, wear and tear, ... etc. I know it sounds very negative, but you do need to go into these things eyes open. I would suggest reading (and searching) this and other forums extensively, searching via Google etc. I've put together a selection of links as at starting point at http://radio.weblogs.com/0136203/stories/2004/07/11/giteLinks.html which may help. Good luck.

We've got a large underground Butagaz tank that we fill approx every 18 months. Last time we had 1,811 litres delivered for 787 euro but we had a small discount for commercial use. epinay is correct in saying that the tank is rented. When we moved in the tank was already installed and the contract/rental for the tank was transferred to us. Butagaz wouldn't fill up without a contract. The rental cost I think was about 600 euro (one off payment ?) Butagaz have been to inspect the tank and I don't think we got charged extra. As for usage/consumption it's very difficult to gauge. The gaz tank only does our hot water (all year) + three gites (6 months). Is it good or bad, I couldn't say, but you need to be pragmatic with an existing installation. For a new installation it is possible to get comparative figures on the capital costs and on-going expenses for various heating/hot water combinations. I've seen them in Maison & Travaux magazine.

You can get loads of UK radio stations on SKY, not just all the BBC ones but loads of independent/local radio and XFM especially for jond. Plumb your SKY box into the HiFi.

Have you tried the sabliere up near Bretagne Materiaux for soft sand ?

I believe the maximum length for a 10mm cable at 45A is 22 meters so you might consider using a 16mm cable (good for 36 meters). For three phase double the above max lengths.

As a useful stop-gap take a load of English extension leads and when you arrive chop of the UK plug and put a 3-pin French plug on. It saves having to change loads of plugs for the computer/monitor/printer etc. and TV/video, HIFI etc. Genenerally older France houses don't have many sockets anyway so you will need and extension/multi-plug of some sort.

You can buy an English configured PC (keyboard, XP, manuals etc.) from Dell, France (www.dell.fr) if you wish. As with buying anything from the UK, warranty and support is often troublesome. I think changing the language setting reconfigures input/output locales etc. not the language of all the dialogs and messages etc. Personally I don't think XP is easy to use in any language, but hey ho.

Bit of a long shot, but is there a horizontal metal plate (baffle?) at the top of the combustion chamber ? E.g. if you laid on your back and stuck your head in the fire (preferably when it's out) can you see the sky ? Our inserts have a horizontal plate to stop flames (and heat) rising up the flue, but a small gap around to allow the smoke to escape.

I recently bought from amazon.fr L'installation électrique and La Plomberie. I, like Anton, searched and searched for English translations but it ended up being easier to plough through the books and learn the French terms and names. You'll need to know them when buying or communicating with an artisan anyhow.

The Livebox (WiFi router/modem) arrived yesterday morning in the post. It was ordered on the 17th, so only 5 days. Plugged everything in that evening and presto, everything just worked. The desktop PC is connected via a USB cable and the laptop via WiFi. I didn't change anything with the telephone and had no problems with my dial-up service in the previous 5 days. It looks like Wanadoo and France Telecom have smartened up their act. I was quite impressed. BTW www.degrouptest.com was very useful and showed that I was limited to 512K. At the moment, compared to the dial-up service, it's fantastic. Just like being back in the office in the UK :-)

ADSL arrived in our exchange today, hurrah, so I'd like to subscribe to one of Wanadoo's ADSL services. 1024K ? I'm currently a Wanadoo dial-up customer. I'm I correct in thinking that as well as subscribing to ADSL I also need to rent a ADSL modem/router from Wanadoo. Can I just buy my own wireless router, plug it in an it will work once the line is enabled ? I'm assuming that once ADSL is enabled my telephone will not work unless it's plugged into the router. Is that correct ? Sorry a bit of a newbie with ADSL etc. Advice on setup/config etc. from anyone who has been though this loop is much appreciated. Thanks,

In order to check uptime infomation about various hosting companies you can use http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/Hosters There are also other stats available on Netcraft that may help to make you decision. If you pay for a hosting package (not 'free' web space) then you should have no problems accessing them from France. They should just provide you with access details for a FTP server to upload your files onto.

As Will says, it depends. We have bought a house, a car, created an enterprise (SARL) registered with the chambre de commerce, USSAF, Organics, Green health card, TVA registered (company and personally), etc. etc. WITHOUT translated certificates of any kind. Like everything in France, all the rules are open to interpretation depending HOW and WHAT questions you ask. Don't go in with the answers (even if you know them). Each functionary has a job. Let them do their job and you will be rewarded.

Invest in a small trailer and take all the rubbish to your local dechetterie (sp?). You'll wonder how you ever got by without a trailer. It will be the best investment ever.

Did you clean the tiny little rollers deep inside the bowels ? Cleaning it's ball is enjoyable but not always fruitfull. A bit of colonic irrigation is required.

I thought you needed the 'L' designation for Long/Longue for more working time. E.g. Lutec 2000 L or 3000 L

I wouldn't regard your installation as dangerous, as long as the cable section is 1.5 mm2 or more on the spur (which is highly likely). The fuse blowing is a pain, but it's just doing it's job, protecting the installation. As mentioned before, your choices are really, 1. New spur(s), or, 2. plug less things in ! Adding a new spur is not very difficult especially if you are happy to have the wires run within conduit (trunking) 'exposed' on the wall. BTW my book says it's OK for 5 sockets on 1.5mm cable and 8 on 2.5mm cable. Thickness is most important.

If you subscribe to a topic to receive an email when a new reply is posted the email has the subject Living France Forums - Reply Notification It's a useful feature I use alot, but would it be possible to include topic title in the subject header to make it much easier to decipher which mail relates to which topic. For example, Living France Forums - Re: French electrical regulations then for a prolific poster it it much easier to see at a glance which topics have been to replied to and respond accordingly. It would also make the GMail conversation feature much more useful. Any thoughts from other posters ?

You can buy PVA glue from an office supply type shop fairly cheaply. Well cheaper then wood glue from a brico. I bought 1 litre for about 3€ locally. I suspect this expensive compared to Unibond (never bought it) but if you are desperate.

We have had the same reaction from artisans. Insulate and cover everything. The most sensible general advice we had was to insulate North walls and expose South walls is required. Also it's not necessary to expose the whole wall, you can cover some and blend in enduit/placo to the wall. I think it's a good comprimise. Another option is to cover the lower third of the wall and expose the top 2/3s, then you can run your services behind the covering.

Firstly don't just put in a larger fuse. The fuse is there to protect the wires overloading/overheating in the walls and potentially starting a fire. Have you got lots and lots (maybe 10 or more) of fuses in a 'fuse box' similar to the UK ? Are the fuses breakers (i.e push to reset) or small ceramic cartridges you need to replace ? Do the sockets have two pins ? I.e. is there an earth ? Are they French sockets, not UK ones ? 10A is not enough if you plug in a kettle and a toaster and a coffee maker on the same circuit. It's quite likely to blow. Any more info that might help us diagnose your problem.

Are you paying Tax D'Hab on your gites ? I don't think you should be. We went to the Hotel D'Impot with cadastral, house and gite (3) plans (internal & external) to calcuate floor areas, and our Tax Fonciere and when down to 550 and Tax D'Hab to 50. No Tax D'Hab on the gites. I didn't think that Tax D'Hab was based on income, isn't that Tax Professionelle ?