Gyn_Paul

I don't suppose its sister radio network has popped up anywhere has it? I don't find its internet stream very stable.

I know this is an old posting.. I found it after a search for 'fouines', but thought it might be a good place to start - the title is certainly apt : something  is living in the small flat part of the cathederal roof of our living room (steeple you fingers together, then flex the top knuckle joins and you'll get the idea). It is noisiest in late afternoon when the room is quiet, although it's clearly active at night as I came down the other morning to discover not only the usual light dusting of dead wasps falling out of the ventilation holes in the recessed lights fitted in this bit of flat ceiling, but evidence of what I first took to be a water leak, but now suspect might be urine (something under a half a cupful from 5m up, dried as dark brown splashes all over the new flat-screen TV oh good!). My late cat caught a lerot in the adjoining room a few weeks ago, but this sounds w-a-y more noisy. Incidentally, I thought lerots hibernated.... yet we were troubled by them (deafened more like) in a stone wall in -10C in February.

reinstalling - as opposed to repairing - should do it. The key will be a screen saying 'Warning !! all existing data will be erased !!!' (or somthing like that) If you don't see that, it may not be reformatting the disk. Just as an aside.... can you actually get an OS to eat itself? i.e. to format the disk its installed on? p

C of C. I imagine when you are thinking about flues and bends you are remembering the throat part of a traditional UK open hearth. That did indeed stick out and constrict the airflow, but actually acted a bit like an aircraft wing, forcing the gasses to accelerate as they passed into the chimney. It was thought to aid the 'draw' of a flue, and minimize smoking in a cold chimney.  A bend in a flue, where the cross-section of the flue itself is largely unaltered, served only to impede the flow of gasses, and the fewer you have, the better. And in this case, zero is the perfect number! p

[quote user="sid"]I live 14km from the builders merchants, and there's no convenient quarry. Sand (grade 02) is 32€ cu.metre and delivery for me would be flat rate of around 30€. They would deliver free within the town, but not outside. So it pays to get as much other stuff as possible at the same time. I use "Renocal" for pointing and general stone repairs here (limestone region) and that costs 14€ for a 32kg sack. Basic chaux is probably 5€ cheaper. [/quote] .....but I'd recommend going with the renocal rather than the chaux unless you're pretty experienced. The former is more plastic and much more amenable to work with, I find, but then pointing definitely not part of my skill-set. Catsncarp... you're not that far from Eguzon (across the A20.). go to ELS-Boiche which is a small builder's merchants who deliver. Their wagon takes about 3 cube of sand, and Guillaume will happilly give you a price for delivery of just sand or sand + everything else. Very pleasant chaps . p

[quote user="sid"]I live 14km from the builders merchants, and there's no convenient quarry. Sand (grade 02) is 32€ cu.metre and delivery for me would be flat rate of around 30€. They would deliver free within the town, but not outside. So it pays to get as much other stuff as possible at the same time. I use "Renocal" for pointing and general stone repairs here (limestone region) and that costs 14€ for a 32kg sack. Basic chaux is probably 5€ cheaper. [/quote] .....but I'd recommend going with the renocal rather than the chaux unless you're pretty experienced. The former is more plastic and much more amenable to work with, I find, but then pointing definitely not part of my skill-set. Catsncarp... you're not that far from Eguzon (across the A20.). go to ELS-Boiche which is a small builder's merchants who deliver. Their wagon takes about 3 cube of sand, and Guillaume will happilly give you a price for delivery of just sand or sand + everything else. Very pleasant chaps . p

....there didn't seem to be, Steve, my English plasterer, used all the usual UK bits of kit. The only time I ever saw real French plasterers at work (on my other house), I didn't notice what's brand of plaster they used but they threw it on the wall in a consistency not much different to double cream (un-whipped), with most of it, seemingly, ending up on the floor. What little of it that did stick to the walls, they then proceeded to scrape off with one of those long aluminium straight edges. So a markedly different system seemingly.! p

Dave, just out of interest, what colour are your sacks of Lutece? At my Point P, the 'C 'are turquoise blue and the 'L 'are orange. What colour are your 'R'? p

Dave&Olive....      actually it's 'C' for court (as in 'short): unless there's an even quicker setting version, that is. My English plasterer uses Lutece C  unless the weather is very hot when he adds 'L' or switches to it completely, but in general he finds 'C' is fine when he makes up enough for about 10 - 15 minutes work, after which he comes back to it to polish the finish. I do appreciate though that a professional would tend to work quicker than we amateurs, for whom the 'C' might, indeed go off too quickly. Quillan. ...      that builder who said English plaster can't cope with high temperatures is talking bollocks, it's far more likely to be either old stock which didn't chemically cure (and therefore bond) properly, or applied to a poor substrate. I twisted Steve's arm to skim-coat a ceiling composed of painted particle board. He said it wouldn't stick, and - sure enough - 3 months of laundry steam and it came away in A4 size chunks. He's the professional: I should have listened to him! p

Nomoss, Thanks for your swift reply. I've just been and done some measurements, and it looks like from the evaporator, the pipes will fall in a loop about 50 cm then go up and out through the wall, rising about a metre (that is, 50 cm higher than the evaporator). Then the spare pipes loop around behind the compressor and make the connection on the opposite side. Does that seem like an acceptable arrangement? p

When the smoke clears, would somebody like to tell me how I can tell the difference between a native hornet and its Asiatic cousin? A picture or two would be nice. We had hornets living in the barn wall couple of years ago. Fortunately they were exiting and entering by just one hole so one calm evening when I estimated that all gone to bed I did for them with the aforementioned aerosol. My God they're powerful, the jet propulsion effect nearly blew me off the ladder! That was the last we saw of the hornets but this year we are inundated with wasps. Most mornings there are 10 to 20 corpses to brush up in the living room. Since the middle of September, I must have disposed of several thousand corpses. And good riddance too, three things that if they didn't exist, we wouldn't need to invent them:  wasps, hornets, and nettles! p

Does anyone know if it is possible to mount Airton split pack air-conditioning units with the external part higher than the internal part? obviously the drain from the inside part still has to be vented separately and lower but I'd really like to put the external box higher than the internal otherwise it'll be visible through the side of the conservatory. I'm sure the instructions on the CD and/or installation guide in the box would have told me, but the box for the external part has been sitting in the field covered by a tarpaulin for a year and the mice have made short work of the paperwork, and the damp has done for the CD! In fact, recovering the box, the brackets, the bolts and the pipes was a bit like archaeology 101! Fortunately, the indoor part which has all the wiring, was safe and sound in the barn. p

I don't know. Maybe there are special, local, circumstances which influence the commune's attitude. Are you, perhaps, in a very densely populated area, Idun ? Your avatar doesn't say which department you live in.. I suppose I could understand it if it was an area beset with travellers and potential squatters. But it certainly doesn't seem like the attitude we Limousiniers would routinely expect to encounter, eh? Rob Roy. p

[quote user="Antonia"]31 West. Now that brings back memories!![/quote] D-Mac - or was it D2-Mac? and LNB's with a noise figure of about 5db !

[quote user="Antonia"]31 West. Now that brings back memories!![/quote] D-Mac - or was it D2-Mac? and LNB's with a noise figure of about 5db !

[quote user="Martin963"]Thanks..... Those six months spent a long time ago in BBC Engineering Information Dept weren't entirely wasted then...... Satellites for broadcast back then consisted of Astra 1A and the ill-fated British Satellite Broadcasting craft at 30 deg W from what I remember.... [/quote] Those awful Squarials,  aaaaaaagggh !! p

This varies from dept to dept - if not in actual law, then certainly in application of that law. In one Department the local mayor may send the heavy boys round after six months but in the neighbouring one a caravan could be there and occupied for anything over 20 years and nobody would notice. Technically, you can't live permanently in a caravan, but if you were manifestly building or renovating on the plot, then it would be a hardhearted mayor indeed who would object to you living in the caravan while the work was going on. As always, the soundest advice is when you have found your dream plot to go and see the local mayor and ascertain from him the local interpretation of the law. In reality if you can hide the caravan behind the house while you renovating nobody will be any the wiser anyway. p

I have an email from M. Feltes this morning (27th) which is still in the future tense: "...all programming that will be transferred to 1N will continue to use exactly the same frequencies." So maybe the transfers haven't happened yet. OK Jacko you were right.... don't gloat. p

[quote user="Jako"][quote user="Gyn_Paul"]Jako, when a channel changes transponder the new data addresses are incorporated into a revised version of the EPG (for Sky), so Channel 4 (for example) still appears on Sky 104. However the transponder (and indeed entire satellite) that that listing refers to may be entirely different from one day to the next, although to the Sky customer there is now visible change. [/quote] No. There will be absolutely no change whatsoever. That is only the case when a transmission is moved to a different frequency. When the transponder frequency and all other parameters stay the same, but SES-Astra decides to move the transmission to another transponder or even to a different satellite altogether -nothing changes for the customer. Astra can do this in a blip, without anyone noticing-not even Sky. This it is also done in case of a malfunction. That is why spare capacity is built-in. Normally, Astra can even cope with the loss of an entire satellite by spreading the lost capacity over the remaining satellites. Most people will notice nothing next Tuesday whatever receiver they use. Some might just have a better signal and others worse. That is why no information is given by channel4: it is completely irrelevant for all customers. Only the ones living on the edges of the current Astra2D footprint  are anxious to see what happens and they are the only people that might notice a difference. [/quote] Just the one question... What evidence do you have that the transponders on 1N will be the same as any of the existing ones? p

It probably is possible for Astra to do an instant switch, but I believe there is a finite time needed for Sky to send the new EPG data to the various makes of set-top box, so it seems likely that the two feeds run in parallel until all the boxes have been updated. As for what you will see... I imagine you will either turn on one day and find the signal poor/missing (need a bigger dish) or detect no change at all. Now that I think about it, the 3rd option is that the transponders on the new, tighter, beam will be fine until some huge storm cloud passes SSE of your dish, and then those will be the first ones to break up. My advice is to keep monitoring the LyngSat page (http://www.lyngsat.com/28east.html) and when 'N' is listed in the header, you know it is actually in service and not just testing. Add.... Looking at the predicted footprint for 1N it won't even serve the Channel Islands, which seems, shall we say, unlikely ! Having read a few other forums, it's equally possible it will NOT have tight footprints as 1N is ultimately destined to join the others at 19.2E which is the pan-european market. It is only expected to do service at 28.2 until the end of 2012 when it will be replaced by 2F (I think). Now that one may well have tighter footprints (on paper, at least).

Jako, when a channel changes transponder the new data addresses are incorporated into a revised version of the EPG (for Sky), so Channel 4 (for example) still appears on Sky 104. However the transponder (and indeed entire satellite) that that listing refers to may be entirely different from one day to the next, although to the Sky customer there is now visible change. I assume branded Freeview boxes have something similar - I can't say not having even seen one. However generic boxes which carry no such proprietary programmme guide either have to be reprogrammed by hand, or require the listing to be updated. I suspect you'd lose you bet with Anton ! p  

Ikea France have double ovens (made by Whirlpool, I think). I know this because we bought one, and it is now installed in our French kitchen. Have a look on their French web-site. p

I think you might try sponging the stuff off the tile surface with a HCL solution. Doing you best to keep it out of the grout lines. The only thing I will say is that - as the tiles faces are absorbent - the longer you leave it, the harder it will be to clean the tiles. I laid 64 sqm of big (40cm) tiles, and grouted them and came to do the final clean up a few days later and then discovered to my horror that they were FAR more absorbent that I had supposed. And the 'brush/wipe the grout dust off the surface' process which had been the routine with other tiles, was useless with these. It took 2 days of v.hard labour and several bottles of HCL to shift the damned stuff. It bleaches the grout colour too if you're not careful. And make sure the room is well ventilated. I have some exposed copper CH pipes in the ceiling which I notice have gone quite black, which I can only assume is the effect of the fumes (God knows what it's done to my lungs!) p 

[quote user="BIG MAC"]Seems to me that some people in our commune just build willy nilly without too many formalities...others go the full monty with the board outside giving project details ....[/quote] [duplicate post]

[quote user="BIG MAC"]Seems to me that some people in our commune just build willy nilly without too many formalities...others go the full monty with the board outside giving project details ....[/quote] ..... are you sure they not people like me? People whose building work has been going on for so long the boards have actually rotted and disintegrated in the sunshine? p