Guerambault

Thank you for that I will do as you suggest.

I would like to use 'Masterboard' rather than plasterboard if this is available in France. If it is availablecould anyone please tell me where and the French translation?

Do you mean those beautiful irridescent navy blue bees which are about 1" in length?

I have spent ages looking for the search facility and eventually found the posting which says it is not available. So my question: we are in the process of cleaning 1000 old terre cuite tiles found on the first floor of an outbuilding which needs replacingand some which we bought second hand . We intend to lay these in the kitchen but have read conflicting views on the width of the gap between tiles, ranging from no gap at all to quite a few millilmetres. Anyone any opinion on this. Once the floor is laid which is the best method of treating the tiles please? In my renovation book it suggests giving it a coat of hot linseed oil, then four coats of liquid polish, leaving  at least a week between each application. Has anyone used this method? Thanks for any help    Dorothy 

Thank you so much for all the info. Our local Gamm Vert does not have any but I shall take a trip to Angers and Castorama. We have had so little rain over the past few weeks, more sunny hot weather forecast and well water level very low,  so we are hoping to catch anything that comes ourway! Dorothy

I have been thrown out 3 times from the Forum search with 'time out expired' so I am obviously doing something wrong I presume. In the meantime all I want to know is where can I buy a water butt. All searches in our local bricolage and garden centre shops have proved fruitless. Must I go to a hypermarket type shop like Castorama, which for us is a long way, or do I just buy a large plastic barrel and stick a tap in? Thanks

Thank you very much for the info. I shall now go and dig up a plant which is dying to look at its roots and proceed according to what I find. The moles have also started to be active so we may have some of each! How awful to lose such a large percent of leeks, I Always get despondent when the mole gets busy, they cause so much damage in so little time. And we are still checking the potatoes 3 times a day and picking off the colorado beetles and eggs and dealing with the blackfly on the broad beans. Not so easy this organic gardening. Our neighbours think we are mad. At first sighting out comes the appropriate spray. To make matters even worse our stray cat comes and eats the lizards. Still there are some friends around (and talking of leeks) - when my husband was watering them the other evening up popped a small toad who either fell into the hole or was thinking of making it his home until he had cold water poured on him. We haven't seen him since!  

Iceni, I desperately need more info on the mulot. Here I have been in the Loir marvelling at the lack of moles this year when 2 days ago a creature went from one end of a border to the other moving from plant to plant, just under the surface with no mole hill in sight! I presume it is the mulot although I have never seen him. How can I tell who is the culprit? There is 2 or 3 very round holes in the ground - would this be him? I cannot feel very sentimental about whoever is causing this devastation as he has killed off 9 months of waiting for hard wood cuttings to turn into plants. I have cherished them lovingly, giving them everything they could possibly need only to find everything felled in one evening!. I am truly sorry but if there is no other remedy it will have to be rat killer but where do I put it. Down the hole?  

Our French friends, who keep an eye on our house when we are not there, have been redirecting our post for the last year with no problems. They just cross out the French address, add our English address and put it back in the post.I queried the difference in cost of stamps but am assured the stamp covers the EU countries. So far we have received everything without any delay. Dorothy

When we bought our house and land, the crop was maize. The year after the maize was cut huge weeds grew which we just couldn't tackle. Last year we asked a farmer to cut the fields - we have roughly 4+ acres - and he charged us by the hour. I think it cost 65€ and it took him just less than an hour. This year the wild flowers and grass are beginning to come through. We have had loads of cowslips, star of bethlehem and now  broom so have delayed asking the farmer back until late June/July. I would rather do it myself but unfortunately I dont have anything to ride on. I only have Boadicea, our brush cutter, who cuts her way through anything if we are kind to her. I know the excerise would be good for me but it takes me ages and ages to do the bits the farmer can't get to!   Dorothy

I haven't been logged onto the Forum for a while and was happy to see your question re AOL. I have been using AOL unlimited access in France just as Val has said with no problems.I would like to update to broadband but AOL seems quite expensive for us and I was wondering whether anyone has used Tiscali.? An advert in the paper today gives broadband at 15.99 per month but is Tiscali happy to let me use it in France or England? or should I stick to AOL and suffer the slow connection to a website? Thankyou Dorothy

I have eagerly read all the remedies for eradicating moles in the hope that there is an ultimate weapon to finally get all our moles to move house. Tried some of them plus others our French neighbours have suggested i.e. stick cuttings from a rose bush into the tunnel, or broken glass or get 2 or 3 cats. Tried the rose cuttings - didn't seem to work: would love to get the cats but that is not feasible at the moment. We have tried traps and have had some success but we cannot seem to control the population at all. I do feel sorry for all of you with lawn problems but no-one has mentioned the devastation that our moles cause us! I lovingly care for plants I have grown from cuttings until they are big enough to go out into the big world of the border. They flourish for a while and I tend them with care only to go out one morning to see them a bit droopy. More water, no improvement. Then I dig around a little with my fingers only to find a mole run has gone directly under the roots and left them earthless. They do the same in the vegetable plot. I once used to think moles were sweet and hated neighbours cats for digging up carrot seeds which had just been planted. Now I'd swop mole for cat anyday! At the moment they are a bit quiet I think they are drawing up battle plans. Dorothy

We live 10 mins drive from Poole and our house in France is near Angers. I could not consider driving all the way to Dover and then all the way from Boulogne to Durtal just to save money. However much I would like to support Speedferries I think the extra costs involved would reduce the gap between what we pay now and the cheap fares. We are held to ransom by Brittany Ferries now - perhaps Speedferries would like to operate from Poole and put back the day time services that BF have cancelled causing us to have to drive to Portsmouth.

As we are on heures creuses with EDF we have been contemplating night storage heaters. Can they be bought in France? As we do not own any it would be better to buy locally than have to bring them from England

  "Quote"   '49ers' where are you?!  Never seen any comments from Maine et Loire. We have a second home on the borders of 49 & 72 Sarthe near to La Fleche but closer still to Durtal. Don't know anyone else who lives close by? Is there anyone? Dorothy  

Okay 2/7 for me!!! And.. I know lots about France but perhaps I need to set the questions?

Looking at your details you must be on option base  which is the tarif we were on until Nov.  The only option for you, like us, is option heures creuses which charges heures creuses from midnight until 8am at 0.0450 and heures pleines at 0.0765 8am – midnight and standing charge at 7.50€ per month. Don’t know whether it will be cheaper or not time will tell. On the interrupteur our ballon d’eau has on/off and auto (when we are at the house it is set on auto and we don’t interfere with it)would our plumber have set the above times? I know I can go back and ask him but can I find the info for myself somehow?   I see that you are zeb (from the reply)  Please could someone tell me how you know who is writing?

    We have a house in Sarthe and  are usually there on and off from April to mid November plus a week or two in Feb.  We  changed to heures creuses tariff  in October when we re-wired downstairs and a new meter box was installed. We only have a puissance of 6kW, which is sufficient for us at the moment.  Am I right in thinking 6kW is too low for the Tempo option? If not would we be better off changing? 

Thank you Will for that explanation but what a pity that there is no longer a daytime sailing from Poole and that BF are concentrating on just using Portsmouth. I shall write and express my feelings. Dorset is a beautiful county and the coastline of Purbeck which the boat sails close to cannot really be appreciated in the dark!

The ripples from P&O Portsmouth to Cherbourg have also hit those of us living near Poole. Went on line last night to book a day sailing Poole/Cherbourg to find there would be only 1 crossing in May per day at 2345hrs. Rang a member of staff at Poole to query this and was told yes, unfortunately due to P&O only the fast craft would operate during the day and this would not start until the end of May. She said that staff at Poole were very upset as this was a very busy route, especially for dog owners: perhaps I would like to write to BF expressing my feelings? Is there any point? I hate the drive from Poole to Portsmouth but hate even more the cost and lack of sleep on the short overnight crossing. I am fed up, not much advantage living 10 minutes from Poole!

Oh dear Dick Smith I used to wash our dog in the bath, what does that make me? Guerambault  

Our house sits on the boundary of two departments and I have received a demand from each of them. Sarthe would like 73€, Maine et Loire 193€. I am in England at the moment so cannot go to either Trésorerie for advice. What I want to know is am I paying 50% to each or do they both want 100%? Also I have tried to understand all the breakdown of percentages given on the forms but am not sure what any of it means. Can anyone help please?

We are in the process of entirely re-wiring our house and have got as far as the ground floor. The main electric cable comes into the house via an overhead cable which is attached to the house by way of ugly lumps of metal. We asked EDF for a quote to run the cable underground, move the meter and the on/off switch (can't remember what you call it) in the house to the other side of the kitchen. No problem, the engineer who came to look at the work was very helpful and explained exactly what we had to do before they would complete their work. We used an electrician and the speed with which he re-wired the ground floor and took all other wires upstairs ready for next year was worth every penny!As the house is very old, he used some very expensive equipment to drill through the stone and lent my husband a angle grinder with a diamond cutter so that he could chase a route up the walls in order to hide the wiring. Couldn't afford to buy these sort of tools and hiring them means you have to work flat out to keep costs down. Can't wait to get rid of the two old meters on the outside of the house and the two old on/off boxes on the inside. Rollon the 29th!

Please dogsRus can you give the answers to 1, 2, 3 & 4 when you find out what they are please? We bought our house 2 years ago with a clause tontine added and now wonder if it needs to be changed. Although we are still living in England at the moment for around 7 months of the year, we may move permanently to France when the house is in a liveable state. Do the laws then change? French would be stretched to discuss something as important as this. Can anyone help?

We have had three nights of sheer bliss with our newly installed Villager A Flat (multi-fuel) which has 3 hot plates. Just using logs, I cooked the potatoes, stewed the blackberry and apples and boiled the kettle - all at the same time! I love it already and wouldn't swop it for anything, not even a Raeburn. It is very good looking too!