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Gyn_Paul

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Everything posted by Gyn_Paul

  1. I have a 9.5 x 4.25 above-ground pool which came supplied with a sand filter not unlike the one detailed below (illustration nicked from an earlier posting by Théière - thanks). It came supplied with flexi hoses. I have encountered the multi-port valves before but always in bigger installations, where valve was separate from the actual sand filter, and with fixed 50mm plumbing and the waste outlet some distance away from the valve. It came with no instructions but went together with a degree of common sense (although it's a bit of a bugger setting the pipe in the sand at the right height to ensure it goes in the base of the valve properly once all those lateral pipes are screwed in!), All connected up and leaks stopped with a combinations on PTFE tape and brute force, it works properly in filter mode. However, in backwash mode (and indeed any time the lever is depressed) it pours water and sand out of the waste/drain pipe. This doesn't seem right to me, anyone any ideas?   Also unlike 5/ on the diag below, mine came with nothing to go on top of the sand. Should it have? The valve was pre-assembled.   p Link HERE for more information and diagram
  2. [quote user="Quillan"]Change of subject a little. Is there such a thing as a dish size calculator?[/quote] I calculate that if I can't receive all the channels, I need a bigger dish! p
  3. [quote user="Martin963"]Wish I did.   Astra SES is one of the most idiotically paranoid and secretive organisation I've ever known. But watching other discussions it does seem that the signal is going up and down for no apparent reason once one gets away from the target area. Of course,   anything transmitted in DVB-S2 is more prone to atmospheric attenuation in poor weather than its DVB-S counterpart.   Can't remember which of the new 2Fs are using S2,  but certainly one of them is..... [/quote] DVB-S2 ???   Is that just a posh way of categorizing the upper frequencies?  I was probably looking out the window at the Evesham countryside and dreaming of a pint in the BBC club at that vital moment.... ! p
  4. [quote user="AnOther"]As a commercial vehicle I'm surprised it doesn't have a plaque on it somewhere. I would suggest that you find the equivalent native French vehicle and just replicate the plaque from that. [/quote] No, didn't have anything like that when I bought it in Birmingham, and in the subsequent  10 years its lack has never been noticed either! I intend to do just that (snap a quick photo with my phone when next I see one in a car park). p
  5. One of the (many) things to be applauded about the French health system, is the fact that you can have a PSA test done when you present with no symptoms. Given that our 'natural' hormone levels all fall within an extremely wide band of what is defined as 'normal' it is very useful to have a few year's antibody figures to express what is normal for you. Damned hard to achieve that in the UK, I found. p.
  6. [quote user="Sprogster"]I am down on the Med in south east France and have lost Channel 4HD with my 1 metre dish, so does not bode well for the other channels when they switch.[/quote] La Creuse/limousin/more-or-less-in-the-centre Yes, last night my Panasonic TV (built in freesat) asked to download new channels, and I watched as it ambled up the frequencies and noticed how the top bunch  - which includes Ch4HD - which previously had a signal strength of '5 or 6' now show a rather sad '4'. I wonder if SES have been trimming F's footprint? - bet Martin knows! p.
  7. My Citroen Relay (Jumper?) has been running on French plates for 10 years now, and I took it to a new CT garage for its pollution test last week, and the helpful garagist pointed out that - unlike French vans - it didn't have a data declaration plate (what I would call a weight plate, but I'm sure that's not the proper term!) and that it risked a fine if stopped. I must say, this is the first time anyone has pointed it out, and I am naturally eager to remedy this oversight. can anyone point me in the direction of an example of one so I can duplicate the layout please (I'm assuming all the info needed for it lies buried in the endless codes on the CT?) ? p
  8. [quote user="Théière"]An easy question to answer [:)] thin above ground liners will be even more susceptible to over heating 28+ C so will loose the plasticiser quicker and become brittle sooner.  Higher temperatures also speed up chlorine reactions and cause greater evaporation, so a bit more of everything. As you have specific needs you could if budget allows consider a different above ground pool that can take hotter water, easily up to another 20 deg C (50 deg C in total) [/quote] Yes, if I were starting from ground zero I probably would go for a different pool (or at least investigate one with a thicker liner) but the kit is sitting in the barn - and has been now for some 4 years, during which time this back problem has sort of crept up on her - so we're stuck with it! This brittleness and loss of flexibility: are we talking a couple of years? Or a couple of months?    In other words would we be likely to get a couple of seasons out of it while I research something more suitable? A hot tub isn't a good alternative, as you can't really exercise in something that shallow: far more conducive to just sitting and wallowing ! p
  9. Does anyone know if it is possible to buy online a UK - to UK rail ticket with a (French) Senior+ discount? I did try to add St P. to Bedford & ret. to my La Souterraine - Londres ticket but - quite frankly - I lost the will to live somewhere around the middle of the second hour of battling with the lamentable SNCF site. I know I'm hardly the first to discover that it is quite possible to book tickets on french trains using the DB or Belgian rail sites which -according to the SNCF site - don't exist. There is a Direct TGV service which runs from Limoges to Lille which I needed to use to get to Belgium, but the SNCF site insisted it didn't exist and I could only get to Lille via Paris. Useless piece of cyber-junk! It seems the most efficient way of planning a journey is to research it using foreign sites, then troll to the station, queue, queue a bit more, then debate your needs and findings with a booking clerk. France in the 21st century ! What rail sites do the rest of you use? p
  10. I'm finally getting round to installing our oval above-ground pool. I say 'above ground' but in fact it will be completely surrounded by decking, practically to the height of the coping rail. My wife has a chronic spinal condition which responds to gentle exercise in warm water, and - while I'll never be able to afford a proper hydrotherapy pool - I'm sure she's likely to use this one more frequently - and benefit from it - if the water is warm (say 33C?). Heating it per se is not an issue with a bloody great wood boiler the other side of the barn wall, and since it's a new installation, I can site it on and clad it with high density insulation panels to keep the losses down, and obviously, the better the cover the less heat/evaporation losses. My questions concern the effect of a higher temp on the life of the liner, and does it use up the chlorine faster at a higher temperature, or is it simply the UV ? There's probably some other insurmountable opportunity I'm missing....
  11. You mean a Stirling fan... Saw one working in a stove shop in Pwllheli in Feb. Works just a bit better than you might cynically imagine it would. Quite expensive though. Mail order from many places including: http://tinyurl.com/ao2af9d p
  12. Thanks for that, Anton, but I fear the total length of the Screwfix joint, is less than the 40mm flexy, but of course adding a straight connector would make it too long... and I haven't the access space to get a junior hacksaw in to cut it. The whole thing's an absolute b*gger. I remember now, I had to glue one end of the flexy on to 2 m. of waste, slide it into place, then fish around in the cavity for the end, encourage it round the corner, then glue the next piece on in situ. What I wouldn't give for the UK polypipe system with 'O' rings in every connector! What I shall probably end up doing is drilling a hole straight through the wall in the back of the sink unit and completely re-routing the waste. As an attached question... does anyone have a 15 Litre chauffeau feeding - say - a kitchen sink without a groupe de securitie? (that's the other item draining into the existing waste... just wondering if I could manage with the H & C fed directly i.e. without the G de S). I suppose I could always add a small vasque to take up the 600mls expansion.... thoughts anyone ?? p
  13. A word to the wise plumbers out there... If you are forced by circumstances to use the flexible rubber connectors on either your 32mm or 40 mm drains make bloody sure the finished installation is inaccessible to rats and mice. I had a hideous joint to make where a waste turned in not-quite 90 degrees in 3 planes (if you see what I mean) hard up against a concrete doorway where it was fighting for space with the existing hot and cold feeds. The only solution - other than demolishing a large section of the existing wall - was a flexible coupling, which I installed, checked for water-tightness, and then buried in foam. The little b**gers ate through the foam and nibbled some of the lower concertinas away, so now I have the contents of the kitchen sink sloshing around in the cavity behind the plasterboard. The only good(ish) thing is, because of the underfloor heating, both the plasterboard and the insulation start some 13 cms higher, at floor level. Not so the wooden studding, unfortunately... I just hope they dry out! So be warned... the little sods get everywhere! p
  14. [quote user="BIG MAC"]If someone had said a stratification calorifier...would have been easier to visualise :-)[/quote] Listen, I have quite enough trouble, at my age, remembering (let alone spelling) the words I used without summonsing up even bigger ones! Besides which the calorifiers I knew in the building I worked in were only about the size of a very big DHW cylinder. p
  15. Hi Mac, 3000 litres for an expansion tank? Even I would think this is a bit of an overkill ! This is a Akvatherm thermal store which stands 2.5m high and has 4 x 1-1/4 tapings, 2 high, and 2 low, connected internally to feed pipes running diagonally up and down to the highest and lowest points in the tank. The idea is you connect one ( H + L) pair to the boiler, and the other to the CH, the hope being that you can heat the contents, and subsequently draw off the heat with the minimum of internal turbulence. Maintaining so-called 'layering': the principal being that 2 foot of water @ 60 degrees C is more use in heating a house than 8 ft of water @ 30C.    Probably because of the way the pipes are arranged internally, the tapings are not aligned vertically, nor are the pairs 180 degrees round from each other, not yet 90, but a sort of 105 for the top ones, and 85 for the bottom ones. Hence the need for the flexis, as only one pipe could ever be at 90 degrees to the pipe runs (in fact the top CH flow goes into a 3-way mixer, then to an elbow, and the other 3 have flexis). The curves are quite gentle, and I shall monitor them for collapse (believe me, a 1-1/4 flexi is quite butch!). It's filled from the mains, and has a 3-bar pressure relief valve on the top - oh, and there's a 300 l expansion pressure vessel connected to the boiler return. Now if I could only get the damned controller to recognise the 3-way valve has a travel of 90 degrees I'd be laughing! p
  16. That's exactly the reason we had a multi-point in our 1st house. 3-hour drive+6 hour ferry+2-1/2 drive= desperate need for a long hot shower. NOW! I picked up a 2nd-hand Leblanc in a Depot Vent for about £40 (we are talking back in the dark ages) which delivered about 13-15 litres/minute. ample for a shower, but a bit on the slow side for a bath. The only problem was that the pilot light thermocouple would sometimes be reluctant to work having been switched off for perhaps 3 months (cannot think of a single reason why - it just was). You, I suspect, would have attacked this problem with the same solution as I did : forget the Piezo spark, hand me the blow-torch. A 10-second blast soon showed it the way. p.
  17. [quote user="Théière"][quote user="Gyn_Paul"]It's not so much that the French regs don't allow a pull cord - there's nothing particularly unique about it as a switch, and the zones extend to the ceiling, so a switch on a wall is in the same zone as one mounted on the ceiling above it (but you will have a bit of a hunt trying to find one with a NF symbol on it). It's just that there's no point to it It's really that the French regs take a different approach to bathrooms/safety/electricity than do the British ones. The British ban everything, then permit certain items provided you can't reach them (wall-mounted heaters for example) and go for earthing and earth bonding. The French require all circuits to be protected by a Interrupteur Differentiel of no more than 30mA, and go down the unearthed, but double insulated route, along with the principle of zones of exclusion. So as long as the light switch is more than 60cms from a shower doorway, or a bath, and the circuit is suitably protected (in practice, there's little point in not protecting every circuit with a Int Diff of 30mA) it would be fine on a wall. Why would you bother messing about with the ceiling? [/quote] I have to disagree.  The 17th regs are RCD's (Interupteur Differentiels) to all circuits. Low voltgage to be used in zone 1 The French use earths and earth bonding and ONLY permit low voltage fittings in volume 0,1 & 2.  Low voltage transformers are also to be located in volume 3. Heaters can be used in volume 2 if they are double insulated class 2 or 3 [/quote] Théière, I'm not entirely sure what you are disagreeing with.   I didn't say the French regs didn't require earth bonding (although the whole concept is becoming less and less relevant with plastic plumbing, plastic baths, plastic wastepipes, and plastic shower enclosures),  and - yes - the 17th regs call for RCD's of 500mA to the property (as a minimum) and 30mA to bathrooms. Items in zone 2 are double insulated, and so not earthed.... sockets are obviously earthed... zone 3 is beyond the regulations (i.e. +60cms to infinity). which bit did you take issue with? p
  18. [quote user="Chancer"]Have you filed up the ends of the fittings flat and square? Normally the fibre washer will seal after that. [/quote] No, but I ran the palm of my hand across it, there were no burrs. Bit late to think about filing - it's got 3000 L in the tank now. I'll drain it in the summer and tackle it then. I did think about putting the side of a grinder on it, but worried about getting a perfectly flat surface which wasn't then at 90 degrees to the pipe.
  19. I'm installing a central heating storage tank which has 1-1/4" iron flow and returns. These are connected by similar sized flexibles which terminate with female capture nuts. These would traditionally mate to whatever with a fibre washer to make them watertight, however the iron pipe is essentially a taper fit, rather than a union, and 2 out of the 4 of them are weeping slightly regardless of tightness, and I suspect the end of the pipe is actually cutting into the fibre washer. I can't see that adding hemp/boss white to the thread would help as the thread itself isn't where the leak is occuring. Anyone got an elegant solution for this? (I'm stuck with the flexys because the tapings on the tank are all at peculiar angles) p
  20. Well obviously the bottles would be outside so the propane/butane business isn't an issue..... Only fixed piping (i.e. copper) allowed inside with a auto-cutoff detendeur thingy mounted by the installation...  Respect the ventilation requirements.....   As for the auto switchover assemblies.. well they are available in the bricos, and I've seen them on multiple bottles outside campsite toilet blocks here in France, so I can't imagine there's a problem with them. p        
  21. It's not so much that the French regs don't allow a pull cord - there's nothing particularly unique about it as a switch, and the zones extend to the ceiling, so a switch on a wall is in the same zone as one mounted on the ceiling above it (but you will have a bit of a hunt trying to find one with a NF symbol on it). It's just that there's no point to it It's really that the French regs take a different approach to bathrooms/safety/electricity than do the British ones. The British ban everything, then permit certain items provided you can't reach them (wall-mounted heaters for example) and go for earthing and earth bonding. The French require all circuits to be protected by a Interrupteur Differentiel of no more than 30mA, and go down the unearthed, but double insulated route, along with the principle of zones of exclusion. So as long as the light switch is more than 60cms from a shower doorway, or a bath, and the circuit is suitably protected (in practice, there's little point in not protecting every circuit with a Int Diff of 30mA) it would be fine on a wall. Why would you bother messing about with the ceiling?
  22. Peugeot 308 bought 2 mths ago from Belgium garage, better part of 2K less than same model, same spec, roughly same kmage, in dealership in Limoges. May not be quite the same story for new, though, don't know as I never buy new. Prefer to let someone else take that 1st depreciation hit! p
  23. Belgium seems to be unique in that a car's plates stay with the owner rather than the vehicle when sold. Not a problem for a Belgian who just gets a new Carte Grise issued with a new number and then pops into BelgianHalfords and gets new plates cut when he buys a second-hand car. Somewhat more problematic for a foreigner. So the question is.... How does one get a plateless car from Belgium to France prior to the usual visit(s) to the sous-prefecture???   I'm assuming I need some form of trade plates, if so, who issues them? The prefecture website offers me no clues, but I'm sure the forum will. p
  24. It's been quite a while (think B&W, and trams, steam trains, strawberries which didn't taste of balsa wood etc.) since I last fitted steel water pipes, and now have to connect 2" and 1-1/2" ones to a central heating system. I *think* last time I used just Boss White, or Boss White + hemp, but I'm not certain. In these enlightened times what would you clever fellows suggest? They've got to be 5-bar water-tight as I don't fancy filling and draining 3000 L Would the threads be too coarse for PTFE tape?
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