Tony Orsman

Sorry, this may be a blindly stupid question but the inference from the norms is that any of these measures is independent of the others. Thus for example if you have an alarm, then you don't need a fence. I had been given to believe that you had to have a physical barrier to provide passive protection. How does a cover help in this regard as it has to be removed in order to use the pool? Equally, if you protect your pool by an alarm, what measures do have to put in place to respond to the alarm? Given the lack of bystander response to house or car alarms, a pool alarm isn't going to help much. Like many people, I have a pool that is the wrong shape to easily fit an abri or sliding cover and it is very close to the house, which means a fence will divide the patio in two. All help gratefully received.

I've looked at some of the old threads on this and it seems problematic. I'd like to take a Neff (or similar) double oven to France. We have a new house with an 18KW single phase supply. There is a 30amp supply for the cooker in the yet to be fitted kitchen. This is the same as we have in the UK. Is the problem that the lower voltage requires more current for the same power. I believe the cooker is around 7KW. Tony

Having read through the thread on oil or gas heating, I'd be interested to know if anyone has experience with solar heating for either domestic hot water or a pool. We're building a house in Languedoc, so plenty of sunshine, but nobody in the village uses solar - why not? The data I have on costs shows that oil is cheapest with town gas about the same. Propane is about double and roughly the same price as EDF Tempo. EDF normal rate is about double Tempo. Please can someone give me typical costs for these per KWh. We're planning to use Propane for CH and the pool as we don't have natural gas in the village. We could use oil but want to cook with gas. It's also cleaner. The alternative for the pool is a heat pump but the installation cost means a 5-7 year pay back compared to Propane. For hot water we plan to use electricity plus solar. The reason being that for solar you need a large hot water reservoir so a gas combi isn't a suitable partner. Or does someone else know better? I believe the rigid glazed solar panels used for hot water are not suitable for heating pools because a pool requires so much greater volumes of warm water. Can anyone confirm this. Has anybody tried using the heat from the pool to warm the house in winter via a heat pump? Any information about almost any aspect of heating system selection gratefully received.

Am I correct in assuming that all usual appliances, washing machine, dishwasher etc work OK in France? I understand UK TVs don't, is that correct? Is the voltage 220v and if so does this cause any problems compared to the UK's 240v? I've had problems with a portable fridge before. Light fittings - are screw fitting bulbs the norm?

Please can somebody explain the difference between off peak rates on the EDF Blue tariff and the Tempo tariff.