jamesg

That sounds like normal evaporation to me.   Try filling a bucket with water, putting it near the pool and see how much that drops.   If it is similar you cannot have a problem. The filtering all depends on how much rubbish is going into it.   We rarely need to clean ours as we have an abri and clean the bottom with a robot.

[quote user="Russethouse"]jamesg- have you ever been to Dorset ?[/quote] I love the south coast, but I have never had to wait 10 years to take over.   I don't suppose he has got bored with it all yet, so any holiday would seem like a waste of time.

Sounds like you need to move further south!   We have no water heater but our pool has never been below 28°C since 1st May.  (but we do have an abri) Now we are keeping it below 34 by leaving the sliding door open all day. It has always been well above average air temperature, I wonder if being built of concrete filled polystyrene blocks is anything to do with it.

[quote user="ErnieY"][quote user="jc"]There are other cards than Nationwide that charge no commission and give good rates.[/quote]Pray do elaborate on that on please JC, I'm sure others would be interested too [:D] CA have never charged me for receiving funds sent via HiFX BTW. EDIT: Comparison charts here - http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/overseas-card-charges#credit     [/quote] The trouble with all these is that you have to be UK resident to obtain one. I had a Liverpool Victoria Visa card, the Caravan Club one, even registered to my French address, but they withdrew it with no real notice following a 'policy' change.   I offered them a UK address but they said that if I was not registered to vote there they would still cancel the card and they would be checking that. No way to treat a loyal customer.

I use Moneybookers for smallish amounts and the rate and costs are very competitive: http://www.moneybookers.com/app/ However at the moment I am unable to log in to the site, which won't recognise it's own turing number for some strange reason.   Anyone else have this problem? I have emailed them and am waiting for their reply.

[quote user="Frederick"]Tough on Gordon  Brown having to leave Dorset at the start of his hols to attend a meeting today ......havent they heard of video conferencing in No 10 yet ?.... he is not having much luck since he got the job is he ? .......[/quote] I expect he is still so excited about finally having succeeded in pushing Blair out, that he won't be worried about missing a boring looking holiday.   He was probably delighted to have an excuse to go back to hear them all saying 'yes prime minister' He will be looking forward to taking delivery of the PMs plane he 'gave' the money for when he was the Chancellor.

Here is a website with French camping cars for sale privately, a few down to about 2000€: http://www.lacaravane.com/annonces/annonces.php?idcat=9&nbr_results=77

[quote user="tenniswitch"] OT, but not entirely unrelated.  I recently got the "we want you to change your wanadoo account to an orange account letter".  Did I understand correctly that one of the options is to keep the wanadoo suffix and Orange will continue to download it into my inbox? [/quote] Yes, I changed over to the Orange, but they do download a lot of junk you probably don't want such as an Orange browser and a messenger.   I uninstalled those without problems.   I do wish these ISPs would stick to providing internet access and not install other things that spy on you. I still use my wanadoo email addresses and haven't bothered to set up any Orange ones.

If it is still on the server you still have to look in case they make a mistake, so you can be shown the porn rubbish if they are crafty about the subject.   I wouldn't think there was a virus problem unless you were to open an attachment and your antivirus should scan the messages anyway.   If you have an av with hips it would stop a virus from executing even if you were to open an attachment by mistake containing a new virus that the av had missed, so I do not think downloading mail is dangerous. Unless you answer yes to the hips query that is.

Thankyou Tim, I stopped getting spam too but didn't realise that Orange had kept it.   I don't bother with their website usually, but your advice has allowed me to get some legit mail which they blocked and turn the thing off. They did email to say they were providing free antispam, but I didn't realise it was optional. With Thunderbird it goes into a junk folder anyway where it is much easier to check if you have a few addresses, so I don't see the point of it really.

Hi Paul, I doubt if a radiator would make much difference, although maybe a solar type system running at night may do something. I had thought that we would leave some of the abri open overnight, but we do get a fair amount of wind here, so not sure about that.  When we tried that the water loss through evaporation was very high. Some shade would certainly help and we could look into that thanks.   It hasn't been a problem owing to the changeable weather this year and the extended season and clean water make it very well worthwhile.   The abri itself does give some shade, as it is polycarbonate, not clear glass.

We decided to get an abri this year, mainly because we didn't think the alarm we had was any use and the child security thing was a worry when we were away. It does seem to act rather like a solar panel and we could swim in 25° C water in late April, whereas it was only up to that in early June before using a bubble cover. The main problem is that we are now trying to stop the water from going over 34°, but without losing too much through evaporation.

When the Dauphines were new they had a reputation for rolling over if you cornered too fast, so keen drivers avoided them.

It all depends on how quickly you learn to operate it.   These things need quite a lot of coordination of hand controls.   An experienced operator should manage that in a day easily enough but even then it all depends on how quickly he works. You will have to pay a fair amount for transporting it and I would have thought that a local with a JCB he is used to would probably be cheaper anyway, as they can run on the road.   I used to hire out such things, but a long time ago now, so I don't know current costings. In my day these mini kubotas were considered a toy, but that was nearly 30 years ago, so I guess they are much improved now.   The only advantage really is if the 360° swing allows you to place the spoil where you want it without having to move the machine.

Matt, it's probably just a tap but may take a hose but the fittings can vary.   We always just used supermarché water containers and a funnel with a flexible nozzle for filling the tank.   I would suggest always using the container for drinks as old tanks can taste bad or worse.   The purifying solutions like milton can leave a taste. Make sure you don't take fresh water from a tap used for toilet cleaning!

Hi Matt, Most of the camping car bornes are free to use, but occasionally you need a token from the Mairie or it will have a notice saying where to buy one. Look for one of the guides in most newsagents, they are published by the CC magazines and should give all the details you need.   They Normally say whether you can stay overnight and for how long.

Hi, If you go to all programs, accessories, you should find a compatability assistant which reckons to configure XP to run your older program.

As long as you are a UK resident of course.   Otherwise nothing extra.

If this really happens, you could change to this one: http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html Not much to choose between them. Maybe the new Comodo free anti virus will be better when the final version is ready and well tested, their free firewall is excellent and runs without problems unlike some others I have tried.

Good morning Sunday Driver, The link above goes to C-169/98 for some reason, repeating my previous mix up

I now have the judgement from the European court in english, but I cannot paste it as before, hopefully SD will come to the rescue again.

Thanks for that SD, I am still quite new to the internet as we used to live on a boat with no phone line. When I try to right click to paste here it doesn't seem to work. The email exchange was with infosouthwest, not Paris.

Hi Ron, If they were to do that, you could make a successful appeal. The point about the E121 is that the guidance notes for box TL say that you are liable if you are 'à la charge de' the French health service.  The E121 means that the UK pays an annual figure to France for your health care, so it does not apply. Local tax offices do not have the power to make rules to suit their own opinion of the law surely. My email quotes a 'jurisprudence of the Europeen court of justice (15 Fevrier 2000)' as the basis.

[quote user="cooperlola"][quote user="jamesg"][quote user="cooperlola"]having got completly confused over this I asked an expert.  This is what I was told "CSG is calclulated as10,5% on UNearned income; CRDS is calculated as 0,5% on all income taxable in France." [/quote] I have received information from the English language email service of the French taxation department, stating that CRDS is definitely not payable on foreign old age or private pensions provided the person has submitted Form E121.   In order to prevent this happening in error, they should NOT be entered into box TL of the tax return. [/quote]Interesting.  Can you provide a link to this?[/quote] This is in an email which I don't seem to be able to paste into here.  

[quote user="cooperlola"]having got completly confused over this I asked an expert.  This is what I was told "CSG is calclulated as10,5% on UNearned income; CRDS is calculated as 0,5% on all income taxable in France." [/quote] I have received information from the English language email service of the French taxation department, stating that CRDS is definitely not payable on foreign old age or private pensions provided the person has submitted Form E121.   In order to prevent this happening in error, they should NOT be entered into box TL of the tax return.