Gyn_Paul

A vegetable clamp seems more likely.

thank you all, I've passed the responses on. paul

A friend's new Ikea kitchen arrived - much to his suprise - with solid beech worktops. There's bound to be a special Ikea oil (called something like 'Visgolum' or 'Vlatt' or something), but short of that (and given that we are 250 miles from the nearest Ikea) what else would people use ? Someone suggested Danish Oil, which I have never seen here in France, at least not called that. Suitable ???

Actually the whole issue boils down to wether the existing chevrons are up to the job. I picture them as being 80 - 100 years old, cupped, cranked, and full of shakes and splits. Having held up two generations of black slates, they are full of rusty nails and cooked to an iron-like consistancy through years of high and low temperatures. If this is the case, I probably wouldn't be too keen on subjecting them to the addition load of a plasterboard ceiling. They may, in reality, be nothing like this. paul

If you're going to cover them up with plasterboard anyway, then it probably makes sense to replace them. You will spend so much time packing them out to try and get a semblance of a straigfht line that you will be sick to the back teeth of the job before you are halfway through. Strip it back to the purlins, put on new chevrons, then some sort of vapour barrier. For my barn I used Spirtech (which is a sort of reinforced sarking felt) held in place with lathes running down the chevrons, then more lathes at 90 degrees to hang the tiles on. However if I was doing it for the house, I'd probably substitute the Spirtech for the thickest version of the multi-layer foil stuff I could afford. There is a fabulous system I have seen which is an all-in-one system of roof lining, polystyrene foam, and plasterboard in one unit which hangs directly on the chevrons. Fast, efficient, but expensive!

I haven't the time at the moment to fish around the murky depths of the Leroy Merlin site, but somewhere there you should find a chauffeau electric with a coil for heating the water either from a chaudier, or solaire. A friend bought one a while back and it was something like 450E for a 250L size. Needed ordering, though, so you won't find it in the store necessarily. For evacuated solar tubes have a look at Andrew-the-pool-guy's site, as one example (go to the swimming pool section and you're sure to find him), but don't try to access his site using anything but Internet Explorer ! paul  

Sorry Nick, I wasn't ignoring or contradicting you post, merely fleshing it out a little! Dr Orloff - you're taking us round in circles ! if the land has a house on it already, then - ipso facto - it already has what you term 'a positive' CU (although the idea of a negative CU. sounds like a contradiction in terms!). paul

That only reloads the current available version, I think. And since the box is permanently plugged in and pointed at 28E it should have the current version anyway. paul

I have an idea that some versions of the software are more suseptable than others to this problem of getting into a state and locking. Our village is having some EDF re-wiring, and as a result, we get dips and micro-breaks in the supply while they are working on it. Just long enough to make the Sky box, the DVD recorder, the PC and the microwave all either shut down or drop into standby. One of my skyboxes is currently in disgrace because it refuses to wake up again from this state. Responding to neither the remote nor the set front button. However I agree that more often than not, yanking the mains lead and counting to 10 before plugging it in again, usually effects a cure. Next time there's a software revision sent OTA it will probably fix itself

Do you mean in the phone socket, or in the box where the exterior wiring enters the house ? p

A non-habitable building - like a stone barn for example - attached to an existing house (provided they both sit on the same land parcel) does not need a separate C.U. The CU (or implied CU) for the house covers the entire structure. It's academic of course, because you still need a P de C to do anything more than keep animals in it ! paul

If you really want, you can double up on the 13 BA sheets on either side, It feels realyl solid then. paul

"....120 & 150W transformers (and SMPS) are available, from pro suppliers." Yeah, .... at a price which will make my eyes water, no doubt. Not a viable proposition really for a temporary kitchen to be scrapped in a few months time. Nothing for it then but to break up the current cabling into separate circuits of 4 x 3 lamps. I take it, Nick, that this is because two different units wouldn't necessarilly chop the wave-form in the same place? So a common rail return wouldn't work either, would it ? Thanks for putting your brains to it, chaps.. paul

I have our temporary kitchen lit by 2 sets of 3 x 20w halogens on a rods-and-catenery-cables system. They are each powered by 60w electronic transformers (convertisseur electronique) I now want to add more lights to the cables (the wires themselves are more than capable of carrying the additional load) but can't find any transformers for 120w. I plan to gang identical transformers in parallel (obviously paying very special attention to the polarity!)to give me double the current (double the current current, if you see what I mean !). Assuming the internal circuitry is identical in each convertisseur, does this sound like a plan? Given that they devices are kicking out AC, and I don't have access to a scope,, is there any way of checking they are each kicking out 12vac phased the same way? And if they're not what is the likely effect of parallel output connected contra-phase? paul

Pierre's post hits the nauil on the head. I was in Auchan yesterday, and they have a wall of flat screens all fed from the same source which was - suprise suprise - a cartoon, but even with this there was motion blurring and an incredible amount of picture noise on some of them from what was supposed to be an HD source. Like Martin, I'm hovering on the brink but have yet to be seduced. One thing I *do* know is I won't be buying a model with a shiny black frame (it was either LG or Samsung, can't remember) which I think is caled 'piano black'. It would faithfully reproduce the reflections from every lamp in the room and drive me mad in about 10 minutes. Oh, and what's the difference between a set labeled "HD ready" and "Full HD" ? Anybody care to proffer a guess more likely than the technobabble produced by the assistant? That's interesting to hear about the latest techno-leap, Martin. Care to add anything more, like a link, for example ? paul

Hereford, you rather imply that you would be getting-a-man-in, as opposed to doing-it-yourself. In which case you are stuck with the cost option you outlined. However if you *are* up to it, you will find that somewhere like Brico Depot (for example) sell 80cm dishes and perfectly suitable free-to-air digital receiver boxes for well under the 100 Euros mark for them both. Not only free UK TV, but gazillions of radio stations as well. Personally, on a scale of loss, I'd lose French TV with hardly a shrug (true, my language would suffer a bit), then UK TV would go, accompanied by a few tears (much more work would be done around the place however), and only *very* reluctantly would I part with the radio channels. Access to Radio 4 was one of our guiding principles when we looked for somewhere to live: this was before satellite, of course. And now it's available online it's less of an issue, but even so, I'd hate to think of it not being on Astra. paul

Simple. It's now out of guarantee ! paul

If it's the stuff I'm thinking of it's expensive for a reason: it's heavy-duty, unlikely to be pierced by sharp bits on the top of stones, bricks or blocks. You could buy a roll of the ordinary under-floor DPC and cut it into strips - I'd use at least 2 even if bedding it into a sandwich of mortar, but I have to say, the phrase "spoiling the ship for a hap'orth* of tar" is coming to mind, but I've no doubt there are others on the forum who have made perfectly satisfactory DPC's out of packets of old freezer bags. paul (It’s probably 40 years since I last had to abbreviate 'half-penny-worth' : its spelling seems to be eluding me!)

And Physics is only maths with knobs on. p

It's all that damp sea air, Lollie, getting into the works! p

Yea well the PROCESS may be all physics, but I reckon you'll find the pipes are rather more full of things made by CHEMISTS than by physicists, which makes it a joint project in my book ! p

And still nobody's answered Callie's question as to what a heat pump is... It's any device which by a combination of mechanics and chemistry manages to shift heat from one place to another. A fridge is the example of a heat pump we are most familiar with: it extracts the heat from the interior and dissipates, it via the mesh of pipes on the back, to the kitchen. Their use in space heating is the exact same principle, with the 'cold' part outside the building, and the 'hot' part inside. The source of this low grade heat can be: the ambiant air, collected via a long run of pipes buried in the ground, or a coil of pipes in a bore-hole. The distribution of the heat can be either blown hot air, or hot water circulating in pipes under the floor, or in radiators. It's reckoned that the most efficient systems can derrive (sp?) 4kw (equiv) of heat, for every 1kw of electricity used to power the heat pump . paul PS     C. has just gone off clutching an empty coke bottle to fashion a water-proof 'shoe' to go on the end of Ted's plaster. He claimed it was an example of his capacity for lateral thinking !

extract from http://www.3phasepower.org/1phaseloadson3phasepower.htm In multiple-unit residential buildings in North America, lighting and convenience outlets can be connected line-to-neutral to give the 120V utilization voltage, and high-power loads such as cooking equipment, space heating, water heaters, or air conditioning can be connected across two phases to give 208V. This practice is common enough that 208V single-phase equipment is readily available in North America. Attempts to use the more common 120/240V equipment intended for three-wire single-phase distribution will likely result in poor performance since 240V heating equipment will only produce 75% of its rating when operated at 208V. Where 3 phase at low voltage is otherwise in use, it may still be split out into single phase service cables through joints in the power supply network or it may be delivered to a master distribution breaker panel at the customer's premises. Connecting an electrical circuit from one phase to the neutral generally supplies the country's standard single phase voltage (120VAC or 230VAC) to the circuit. The power transmission grid is organized so that each phase carries the same magnitude of current out of the major parts of the power transmission system. The currents returning from the customers' premises to the last supply transformer all share the neutral wire, but the 3 phase system ensures that the sum of the returning currents is approximately zero. The delta wiring of the primary side of that supply transformer means that no neutral is needed in the high voltage side of the network.

I gave it a... What, ?? good talking to, ? second chance ? clip round the ear ? bunch of flowers ? coat of paint ? ten minute start ? what ??

So Martin, I take it this is the reason C4 HD is encrypted?- at least that's how it appears on my Fortec Star. How do the 'official' UK HD boxes cope with this ? paul