londoneye
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Posts posted by londoneye
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You could work out a middle ground - eg how many logs would be used having a fire on from say 18:00 to 23:00, factor that by 7 for a week's rental (wheel-barrow loads, or any other measurable load) and include that in the rental. Then ensure advertising says that between eg october and april a moderate amount of wood is provided, and extra can be purchased on site or something similar. I should imagine that an evenings use would be less than a wheelbarrow's worth (perhaps half?) thus it should only cost (on the 5 euros per WB calculation !) less than 20 euros a week to provide what may seem to people like a lot of wood. of course we serious burners of wood would know at a glance that it wasnt a great deal, but hey ho most people from uk at least dont have wood burners .....
i think if i were renting a winter gite, i would be quite happy with this scenario, plus an estimate of what they could expect to pay extra - 5 euros a barrow is going to look pretty good to most people i think. after all who comes on holiday without money - no-one. so if they want to literally burn their money in a frenzy of heat they would probably feel it was money well spent !
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i did get a batch from uk (a box) which were really cheap (and papers) and got my mum to send. however postage was fairly substantial (about £7.00 i think) and of course she refused to take money for it. couple that with the fact that she is hugely anti-smoking and i cant bring myself to ask her again for those reasons!
i shall keep looking ! thanks
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thanks will do pet passport as per cat. wasn't meaning to imply criticism of vets - have been very happy with them otherwise would have changed. slightly frustrating to keep turning up and not have it done - sure the dog knows and is winding itself up to a temperature to get out of it! but rather a cautious vet than the opposite.
thanks for replying
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many thanks - do fully intend to have it done as i said, but you have put my mind at rest until i can achieve it. trust me our mutt is not show quality (unless they have a 'strangest looking dog' section), and not intending to go away any time soon. Will try vets again in another couple of weeks.
thanks for putting my mind at rest.
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does anyone please know an on-line site to purchase?
tried a few in uk, where papers are considerably cheaper than here, but the postage was astronomical, even though it still worked out cheaper than buying in france.
my OH also insists on swan ultra slim filters for his ciggies for some reason, which cant seem to find locally.
any advice appreciated
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i am totally confused. i have a cat brought over from uk, all jabbed up and passported. Recently took cat for rabies booster, taking decision to have booster done after (or few days before) the year was up, rather than the two years stated as validity date. some debate at vets and much head scratching over two year period, but i persuaded them to givre the booster anyway. so much for that, no problem there. I acquired puppy in france around 6 months ago. have been to our vets now three times with puppy for rabies jab. first time (my fault) puppy was 2 days under allowable age, and vet wouldnt do it. other two times puppy was found to have miniscule temperature (probably from stress of being in vets!) and ditto, vets would not administer vaccine. however, on all three occasions, three separate vets from same practice said there was no requirement for rabies vaccine in france, and that unless i wanted to leave country there was no point having it done. actually i do intend to have it done - as is clear from reading this site many people believe they will not return to uk and do so. i will try again within next couple of months, picking a day when dog looks exceptionally healthy ! and hope they will administer. But please can someone tell me what legal situation is ref rabies jab in france, as i am now really worried about it - i wasnt before because well, i believed what the vets said.
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thanks ian. it gets pretty wet around here - i can vouch for this right now as i am sitting in very damp clothes after trying to seed some bare patches of ground. still, saves me watering in the grass seed i suppose!
i will try to keep the older stuff dry next summer and then put under cover what i can manage, for next winter. Nobody seems to cover their wood around here either, but i had always assumed they had a 'secret supply' of covered stuff lurking somewhere - perhaps not judging from the smoke which bellows out of their chimneys !
I fear the 'semi-organised' pile is quite a long way away but i can work on that next year also ! i think the covered store may have to wait until retirement!
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we have absolutely loads of trees we have had (loosely speaking of course, because no-one put a gun to our heads!) to cut down. i had figured out by next setember the first one would be 2.5 years old, and ready to use, but sorry to hi-jack - any idea whether/how we should be covering it in the interim - i mean there is a lot ! far too much to put under any available hard-standing cover we have currently.
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maxine
any local woodyard should sell seasoned wood which is ready for burning immediately, as long as you are clear that you are looking for 'bois de chauffage'. have to be honest dont know the terminology but first time i bought i just checked if it was ready to use 'now'! i am advised by my neighbour that it is three years which is optimum for drying period for cut wood (eg trees) although i know of people who advise two years. i am fairly sure one year is likely to be insufficient for most kinds of wood.
they also might sell it in 'stere' or 'brasse' rather than cords. i think i brasse is 4 steres !
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currently investigating having a liner pool put in next year
very confused about covers. i have been thinking of a winter security cover, plus an alarm for summer. however, if i have a sensor alarm, i think that i cannot use something along the lines of a 'bubble cover' (this is what i have seen it described as mostly anyway - eg some kind of a solar cover?). Does anyone know if this is correct, and if there is an alternative cover which would suit all purposes and still cover us from security point of view - not an abri i am afraid as they are a bit out of my budget. is it actually necessary to have a solar cover does anyone know - i mean necessary in the sense of for the health of the pool ?
sorry if this has been posted before, i have been searching, but perhaps i have been using wrong words.
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strange heading perhaps but i cant think of a succint way to explain this in a heading.our neighbour purchased his house at around same time as us and is doing a lot of work on it. my OH is builder by trade, and because we are here all time doing lots of work on our place, we have developed a good relationship with him. OH tends to wander over at end of day, have a chat, supply advice, sometimes loan tools etc etc. neighbour normally comes in for one beer. OH does this purely out of goodness of his heart, because he simply likes helping people, and likes to see things done properly !Neighbour sometimes has a friend to help him, who is also really nice, same scenario, beer etc. pretty much these two are our 'french' social life at moment and we genuinely like them as people.anyway to cut to chase, neighbour said other day, we have been thinking and would very much like to help you with your roof - eg a few hours helping with some beams. this help would really be appreciated by us, but was not requested or expected in any way. i would like to gratefully accept, because they genuinely want to help us, but another thread which i have been reading put me in mind of a slight concern. genuinely this is not bartering or anything approaching that in my view - we were surprised and delighted to be offered this assistance for one small part of our job which might cause us problems alone. however, as per other recent thread i am now thinking, what happens if (of course it probably wont happen) one of them were to suffer an accident on our property? not sure if this is right place for this, or if i am becoming a tad paranoid (so soon !!)any thoughts gratefully received
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probably is late in day, but still useful for someone else at some point i am sure so thank you !
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thanks for this - i think (without checking) that limoges is nearest of those options for us, but still a big chunk out of our day to take a form in.
I believe i have read (probably a posting from yourself, though could be wrong) that its not necessarily a good idea to post the forms (although possible?). Might have to take this option rather than 'wasting' (sorry but it is a waste for us) a day going to limoges and back.
thanks everyone
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whoever said procrastinating doesnt pay? While i asked for advice here, and occasionally pondered what a decorative feature my honey-combs were in the kitchen, un-beknown to me the honey had started to leak out into bottom of dish. Well, i helped it along by dumping all in a metal seive and sticking a bowl under it, and a day later - voila ! - not a huge amount of honey but sufficient to add to some ice cream etc !
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We have only lived here a few months, so i hope everyone will forgive my intrusion here, as i fully accept that i dont know much about living here yet.
I appreciate what you are asking, and the other posts are I am sure correct in what they say. However, from the perspective of a new-comer i would say, yes there is a level of bartering going on (i wouldnt even call it bartering really to be honest, more good-will amongst neighbours if you like). I am sure that if you came to france and developed your life here a lot of both of your skills would be appreciated by your neighbours and you would receive compensation (for want of a better word) with the willing loan of their own skills. So, in some ways what you are asking may well be possible, in an informal way. However, in order to really keep this situation as one of good-will and assistance, which would presumably not incur a tax liability, you would also have to (I suggest) be here for quite some time before you were likely to build up your relationship with locals/neighbours before even a limited example of what you are considering may occur.
As i said we have been here for 4 months, and i would say out of 6 neighbours, know 1 well, 1 passably well (chat about gardens and local things), 2 to say hello and pass odd comment with, and 2 who have just about brought themselves to nod at us in last few weeks ! It does take time to build up relationships.
Hope it works out for you and you make right decisions for you about coming here or not anyway.
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I am in 87 ... 87500 ?
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thanks both - much appreciated.
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thank you very much for responding. i am sorry to be dense on this one, try to put it down to a female lack of knowledge on all things building if you can manage (!)
when you say use the heaviest figure you can find - could you explain what the bracketted section means ? i can bear a little public humiliation to get the right answer !!
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about to undertake process of registering car in france. information on site great, but one thing i still cant find, and i know there is another thread about this but still not sure. where on earth can i find our 'local' prefecture. i have tried googling etc but get some very strange results. i would have thought there would be one in our nearest town but getting a blank. if all else fails i will go to ask mairie but they mysteriously never seem to be open whenever i go there! is there another name for prefecture by chance that i should be searching for?
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yes, its nice to know i am not the only one suffering the horrendous noise! feel a bit foolish that i have left it so long, when solution seems (hopefully) to be quite straight-forward, but perhaps at least this thread will assist other people not to have their nerves worn thin for months with that awful noise!
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sorry i should add that our estate agent arranged electricity and water, not phone, which seemed to be quite traumatic - even now my french deserts me on phone also - face to face i can muster it, but there is something about phone which is guaranteed to make me total unable to even say hello ! in french
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me again. i have found this number, but as ever (try not to make this mistake!) its on a nasty scrap of paper, so hopefully it is actually the number for france telecom english speaking helpline. if not apologies in advance and at least you can learn a valuable lesson, eg make sure all your information is properly documented!
00 33 1 55 78 60 56
oh i also found the one i found when we got here - as we spent hours and a fortune in call boxes trying to sort out. this is a free-phone uk helpline number also (I think! - ditto poor documentation again) but can be used from france. 08 00 36 47 75
buy yourself the largest phone card they do when you get here and locate your nearest call box which actually has a door is my further rather trite advice - i spent quite some time on a main road in a box with no door getting rained on in howling wind struggling with language to various companies before we managed to get phone on ourselves.
good luck; if any of above incorrect then sincere apologies but you can try the top number from uk and see if its correct anyway.
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Our estate agent arranged all that for us very kindly. Might be worth asking your estate agent if they can help you out?
otherwise i think its just go on web-site for EDF for electricity anyway and give them a call. Electricity name can be changed as soon as you have purchased the property, ditto i am sure water. i am sure someone else can give more concrete information on that front though.
for the phone, i just called france telecom when i got here, but if you have language difficulties (ie french!) there is an english help-line as i recall (or that might be wanadoo actually). I will have a look through papers today and see if i still have the number, if no-one gets there ahead of me!
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apologies if this seems a really daft question, but to put into context we have two large beams (6.5 metres x 230 x 220) to be hoisted up to our barn roof.
i have been trying to guesstimate the weight of each beam. I have looked on internet and am aware of course that different wood types have considerably different properties, including weight.
our wood is douglas fir,and i have found a site which estimates that douglas fir weighs 530 kg per cubic metre. So far so good, the site then goes into quite ghastly detail about the differences in wet wood, kiln dried, air dried, every other way you can think of dried, and gives a mathematical formula which made me almost require a drink at 0700 to get my head around it. problem is that our wood has come direct from wood-yard, so therefore assume that no drying process per se will have been undertaken. Does this sound correct?
Does anyone have an idea please of a ROUGH percentage increase which could be applied to give us an idea of weight of each beam when wet(ish). sorry to sound so vague, and i accept that people in the know may well say that what i am asking is not feasible, but thought it was worth a try?
Front Doors
in Shopping
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They seem to be quite expensive here. Our architect has indicated four doors on our stable conversion and at the time of course it all looked lovely because we hadnt actually researched the price of doors. Now its not looking quite so exciting ! Any views on the best place to buy? Tried Brico depot, not particularly keen on them. Lapeyre seem to have identical but 20 euros dearer. Any other outlets (cheap of course !) which might have front doors please, which i have not yet discovered?