Charlie Nott<P>Many Thanks<P><P>Charlie Nott<P><P><a target=_blank href="http:www.giteshols.com">www.giteshols.com<A><P>

We have a 5 bed main house for us all the year around and 4 gites sleeping 26 persons in total. We have four 3000 litre fosses, which work very well (so far!).

We have similar results to Loiseau. I expect to be using my 2 phone lines (one for phone and one for fax/Internet) and DUN (modem dial up networking) for a little while yet. I'll just have to take an extra sip of wine between requesting a webpage and receiving it. Life could be so much worse! They have committed to a new mobile phone mast to frizz our brains though!

C'est la vie! Your connection speed is quite typical but it has little correlation with how well your ISP can send on your requests and responses to the webpage that you are visiting (like your bank). Even if you upgrade your modem your ISP may be having to deal with so high usage (throughput) rates that your increased connection speed has no effect nas your ISP is so busy. Just a word of caution.

I have also found that some PC's have connection problems. I have fitted the Peabird 56K/V92 PCI internal modem in a number of friends computers and the reliability of the connection and the speed has been excellent. The drivers work well for 98SE up to XP no problem. They are available for about 18 Euros from the company Internity either from their stores or from their website. The nearest store for me is in Trelissac (Perigueux) I use a website http://www.testmyspeed.com/speedtests/international.htm for checking the real download times of a modem and ISP and it is surprising how it varies during the day and weekday and which ISP you are using. Wanadoo and Neuf for instance are dreadfully slow and Tiscali is fast when using these tests on the same PC/modem at the same time of day.

More buy luck than judgement!!

Bon Chance I do hope so as Castorama are soooooo expensive!

Hi Bill I think my last order was June time or maybe a bit earlier.

It would be interesting to know if EDF say that 3 phase is more expensive than single phase. We use a 3 phase supply for our pool house (3 phase pool heater and pump) and also we split the load over our house and gites to try and give an even spread over the 3 phases. This means that no one phase is heavily loaded.

I ordered online and then their export department picked the order up.

I recently ordered a stack of materials from Screwfix which they delivered to me in the Dordogne within a week for a 10 pound charge. The weight of the materials must have been about 50 kg!

We are on 3 phase supply and not charged anything extra. I would be vary of your 2 oil filled radiators as these can guzzle electricity at an alarming rate. We use a wall mounted towel rail from BricoDepot that is rated at 50W. When we changed to tempo our bills dropped from 120 € per month to less than 100 € per month. On the red days we just don't use the dishwasher and washine machine.

Dear Paul With greatest respect I beg to differ. Under the latest release of NFC 15-100 it is recommended to install 2 circuits. One (Rangée inférieure) using a type A RCD and one (Rangée supérieure) using a type AC RCD. I have checked this recently with my Legrand rep and he concurs. I would never recommend anyone to wire sockets in 1.5mm. Surely this is a recipe for trouble, especially as people are using higher and higher power appliances (usually at the same time as they all try and dry their hair!). Therefore I always recommend that people wire to the safest possible standard and not the lowest common denominator. I did do a typo on the size of the MCB and you are right that 20A is recommended.  

This is scary. I am an electrical engineer and to hear recommendations that 1.5mm cable should be used for sockets (Prise de courant) is highly dangerous. Under the Promotelec regime (the best) then a maximum of 5 sockets are allowed (a double socket counts as one), the section is 2.5mm, it must be earthed with 2.5 mm cable and the breaker should be 25A MCB (disjoncteur) or 20A fuse (fusible). Also you must now split the circuits for Washing machines, Dishwashers, cookers, immersion heaters (i.e. anything that could get wet) onto a totally separate fuseboard and use a type A RCD (differentiel) on this circuit and a type AC RCD (differentiel) on your other circuits.

Are you looking for an English Version or a French version?

Try FranceOnecall at www.franceonecall.com If you fancy the North Dordogne instead then give us a call!