Ptostevin

we had our roof re-newed and included in the devis was 29 ml of dalle .... I could not work out what flagstones had to do with the roof ! It turned out that 'dalle' seems to be used locally for 'guttering' - though I never found that translation in a dictionary!

Hi  tuyau de descente zinc  = the downpipe from the guttering   Paul

Hi We have a house with metal volets - the house has been empty  for many years and most of the volets have a 'nice' coating of rust - some of them have nearly 100% coverage. Fortunately the rust is fairly superficially so they do not need replacing but I have not had much joy when treating rust in the past and do not want to spend ages renovating/painting them to find the rust re-appearing  in a couple of years time. Has anyone got any experience of using some of the products available and can recommend one? Hammerite seems a common choice but is it the best? thanks Paul

I was wondering how the weather has been affecting the channel ferries - we will be travelling with Speedferries - and was looking to see what information was available on the internet and found... BBC Travel News - Ferries - has reports of incidents affecting the ferries :-  http://www.bbc.co.uk/travelnews/index_sea.shtml To listen to Kent traffic news which can include ferry information:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/index.shtml  To look at Wind information and forecasts:- http://www.xcweather.co.uk/index.php?Loc=FR The good old Shipping Forecast:-  http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/datafiles/offshore.html I had a look yesterday and BBC were reporting delays of 1 hour for the Norfolk Line due to earlier adverse weather conditions in the Channel - but no reports on Speedferries which I would have thought would have been more affected by the strong winds! Anyone found any other interesting sources of information? Paul (Now where did we put those travel sickness pills...)

How do you register your house as a second home?  And what is the relevance of it being a second home (except being able to get this form!). Paul  

Thanks - we never received one nor did my sister-in-law who also has a maison secondaire. I'll contact them or pop in at half-term when we are across there. Paul

Hi We received our Taxe D'habitation through the post today which now includes payment for the TV licence. This is our 'holiday home' (a misnomer as its sometimes anything but a holiday when we are out there!) and as we do not have a TV we do not want to pay the 116euros - does anyone know the correct procedure for opting out? The form does not give you the option... thanks Paul

Hi - has your wife tried the Michel Thomas courses - they are entirely CD/Cassette based with no books so good for listening to in a car - I do not know what level the Linguaphone course gets to but beyond his first course (8CDs) there is a Language Builder (2 CDs) and his advanced french course came out recently (4 CDs). I certainly listen to them in the car but find that with driving I can't always concentrate on listening as much as I would like or need to! I once borrowed from the local library a french course by Hugo called Drive-in French - unfortunately I don't think its produced any more but they were story based interleaved with grammar/vocabulary I have occassionally also download from www.rfi.fr  their news programs and burnt this onto CD to listen to in the car - that way I can listen to it a few times in order to get the gist of what is being reported!   Paul

Hi - the one held in Civray made the news - go to http://videojts.france3.fr/  and under Editions Locales click on Poitou-Charentes Paul

Hi We had booked last year to use the Hoverspeed crossing between Newhaven-Dieppe for our Easter holidays. I rang to check what was happening when the announcements were made that Hoverspeed were not going to operate this crossing in 2005 to be assured that they were still taking bookings and our crossing would be OK. Today we received a letter informing us that the commencement of this service had been delayed and our booking had been transferred to the Dover-Calais service.  I suppose the truth is that the transfer to Transmanche Ferries has not happened yet! I rang up and cancelled the booking and was promised a full refund.  Checking on the internet the cost of the Dover-Calais crossing is £100 less than what we paid for the Newhaven-Dieppe crossing. I was annoyed that the letter did not ask if we were Ok with the transfer or offer any refund of the difference just an apology for any inconvenience!!   Paul

We have a booking at Easter with Hoverspeed for the Newhaven-Dieppe route - I rang today expecting to get a refund or have to amend it to Dover-Calais but was told that they are still taking bookings for this route. So does this mean Hoverspeed will still be operating it or are taking bookings for whoever is taking over? Paul

Thanks for the replies. We have been trawling the internet and its possible to download some newspapers from the past week but beyond that its down to searching the archives and most sites that have the facility are charging at least 3-4euros/article. If only he had decided on his dissertation in the summer it would have been a lot easier! We have got Le Monde but its the 'tabloid' thats the problem - time to resort to writing some letters to see if we can buy back issues.   Paul

My son is doing a dissertation on the how tennis coverage varies between broadsheet and tabloid newspapers (referring nowadays to the type of coverage/target readership rather than the physical size of paper!) and besides comparing English newspapers he wants to include French ones as well. I had a look last week when we were in France and the only National Daily newspaper I could see that could be classed as a tabloid was 'Aujourdhui'. Does anyone know of any others? The problem then is trying to get back issues! Paul

...the charge for our velux (377euros) was when we too had our roof renewed. We will want 2 more installed but were uncertain, at the time when the other work was done, of exactly where we wanted them and the builder said it would only work out about 30euros more per window for him to install them later. Paul

well we were charged 377 euros for a 78cm x 98cm Velux to be supplied and installed earlier this year.... Paul

Hi - I was aiming to join the Eurotunnel Property Owners Club  and even  downloaded the application form a couple of days ago - but went on their website today to check the terms and conditions only to find the scheme is finishing on the 28th Feb 2005 - to be replaced by a 'better value for money' scheme. Paul 

Hi - I have been recently reading up on le prise de terre to see what I need for an earth and generally 100 ohms is quoted as the maxium resistance but I just found a document from Promotelec (that I must have downloaded ages ago) that states 'avec un disjoncteur differential de 500mA --> 100 ohms' but 'avec un disjoncteur differential de 650mA --> 77 ohms' - this is referring to EDFs disjoncteur and the 650mA seems to be the older model. I'll have to check when I'm next in France what we have as its all pretty old! Does anyone know under what circumstances EDF change the meter, disjonteur etc free of charge?? Paul

...one of the reasons for the damp in the room is that the ground level in the stable next to the room and the garden level beyond that is a lot higher (about 2 feet in the stable). The stable floor is earth at the moment but I (not a builder this time!) will eventually lay a concrete floor with dpc here. I was wondering if digging down in the stable next to the house wall and putting some sort of damp barrier here would help? Also perhaps some drainage at the rear to take away some of the water that is perhaps coming from the garden. We may have to wait and see what the floor is like after the winter - hopefully if its not too bad we can some how avoid having to dig it up....but when we bought it last Oct. and lifted the rotten wooden floor there was surface water underneath!! Last week when we were there I put guttering on the garage behind the house and routed this to a drain so thats a slight reduction in the ground water which may help... I still can't get over the fact that a reputable builder didn't put a dpc in - especially at 45.73euros/m2 - originally I thought the only reaon I could not see any visible dpc at the edges of the room was that he had bridged it with the screed.... C'est la vie... Thanks for the advice so far. Paul

Hi Earlier this year we had a french builder renew our roof  and also put in a concrete floor in a room where the timbers had rotten because the ground was so damp . With the heavy downpours in August we found that damp was coming up through the concrete floor. We contacted the builder and were left speechless when he said that he hadn't put in a membrane "it was not in the devis"! We had automatically  assumed that one would be installed - to us its like saying that he didn't nail the roof timbers together as nails were not explicitly mentioned in the quote! Part of the room already had a concrete floor and the dampproof membrane was clearly visible here. I don't suppose we have any come back on this? As we do not want to break up and re-lay the floor can anyone recommend a solution?? Paul

Hi - I hadn't got round to finding out why my link to their site was no longer working but I also use http://meteo.france3.fr/ - type in your post code and you get a 3 day forecast provided by meteo france. Paul

Hi - a friend gave us an old analogue satellite set up this week so my son can watch the Tour de France on Eurosport in July - it just happened that to make it easier to get the dish pointing in the right direction I got out a french (pal/secam) portable TV that we had in the garage and we setup the dish in the garden with the portable next to it. Powered on the tv and found that on its small dipole aerial we were picking up French TV, admittedly quite poor quality. We are right on the south coast in Sussex and I was wondering if using a good aerial pointing to France we could get a good enough signal to watch French TV. Has any one tried it? If not I'll have a further play with the satellite dish and try and point it at a satellite that has French channels. Paul

Hi - we have used the vouchers occassionally over the last 3 years. We were given one and when booking found you could buy another one - so every time we booked we bought another one. They were 9 but are now up to 21 (I think) from Landround. The vouchers do not have your name on them and the ones we bought are no different to the one my daughter was given recently so I assume they are transferable. Because of changes in plan we now have 2 that we are unlikely to use before they expire at the end of the year. Generally we found them to be a good deal as we always took the car and extended the ticket to 10 days. Paul

Hi - We used them for the first time this year - and have had no problems. A quick weekend trip (using the 35 offer) to check the house out before going over again at Easter. We are using them again for Whitsun. As mentioned the facilities may be more basic but the cabins are fine and as we have been going over on the evening crossing all I want to do is sleep before driving through the night. Paul

We have a chimney that is now unused and closed off and goes up the middle of a stone wall. The chimney has no lining and we are not intending to use it but as a result of past use it 'excretes' tar or what ever through the stones. I did get round to having a browse at the various ' Ramonage' products for chimneys but one ran out of time during the summer to do anything about it and secondly wasn't too clear on what was the most suitable product to buy for our purpose. Has anyone got any recommendations on what to use and how effective they are? thanks Paul