billy10

Thanks Theiere,                        I have looked at the arrangement in the pumphouse and it is not practical to dis connect the skimmer line, also my skimmers do not have any point where I could drain from, however I could probably dig a trench from the back of the skimmer and connect a 40 mm pipe so it could drain into a ditch if it got too high although that seems a bit extreme. Alternatively I could set up a spare well pump and ask my mate up the road to pop in and check it and all he would have to do is switch the pump on for an hour or two. Regards Bill

Hi Forum,               does anyone know how much water I can drain out of my pool when I go away for the winter (november thro til end March) My pool is in ground resin, 9.3 metres long 4.5 metres wide and slopes from 1 metre at the shallow end to 2 metres at the deep end. I need to drain a fair bit out as I dont want it to overflow when we have bad rain during the winter. Any ideas as I have heard all sorts of horror stories about pools imploding etc. Regards Billy10

Hi Forum, Got a problem with satellite reception, I have a digi Sky box , a 80 cm dish on roof and I get perfect reception of all freesat programmes,Recently I bought another dish ( 100 cm) and a universal lmb to use with my campervan,so I got the sky box connected it up to the new dish ( which is on a tripod on the patio) switched on the tv and sure enough after I had roughly aligned it with a meter the setup screen said I had a signal both bars were about 75 percent, however I cannot get any channels as sometimes it says no default transponder and other times it says no signal being received although the setup screen shows a signal, also I notice that there is no network id (000)and also no transport stream ??? What am I doing wrong !! Any help would be greatly appreciated. Regards   Billy10[

Hi Forum,                 I have finally got my camping car, it is a new Roller team garage p, 2.3 multijet etc etc , which I pick up in one months time. As I am totally new to this area of leisure I am appealing to all the experienced campers on the forum to give me some hints , First off my biggest fear is that when I go to show it off in December/ January in the UK it is going to be extrememly cold and I have a fear that the boiler / water system will freeze up and damage it.  The system on the van is a Truma combi 4 which I aam fairly sure heats the water for the heating and for the shower, sink etc. Am I being concerned over nothing , I would have thought that on a new van it would be taken care of in the design , but I dont know that. Is there a formula to prevent this happening, ( I dont even know where the boiler is located or the water tank that feeds it, but surely this would be insulated or something ???) When in the uk I will be staying at proper sites with hook up etc, however the Truma 4 only works with gas so I cant leave it on while the van is empty for maybe up to 10 hours whilst visiting family. Any help would be really appreciated.

Hi Forum,                  I am about to buy a camping car and I will be trekking up to Le Mans going via poitiers and Tours so that I can have a look at AZUR 37, 72 AND 86, who seem to have a reasonable range, my question is does anyone know of any other camping car sales sites on or nearto my intended route , I have tried searching the net but they do not seem to exist although they must do given that every other vehicle I see is a camping car !!, it is really frustrating knowing that they must be out there but ca\nnot be unearthed. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks Guys for your replies, since I posted the question I have spoken to several owners and as you have said it is very difficult importing a motorhome from the UK, albeit much cheaper, so I am going to bite the bullet and buy a vehicle in France where it will be registered, have a control technique and will be easy to insure, all I have to do is print a few more Euros and I am home and dry ( only kidding your honour ) Regards Billy10

I am considering buying a Motorhome and will probably purchase a left hand drive version in the UK because they are better priced than the French equivelant. I am sure this question has been asked before so here goes !! The way I would do it is as follows , two of us would drive over to the UK in our car, we would then buy the motorhome , ring our French insurance company to get it insured, book a one way ticket on the ferry and drive the motorhome back to France. So now I end up with a motorhome in France , left hand drive but registered in the UK, does anyone know the procedure I need to follow to make it all legal and above board and what are the approximate costs as part of the attraction of buying in the UK is the lower purchase price of the Van , It will probably be 3500 Kg or less and be maybe 6 or 7 years old. I live in department 36. Thanks Billy10

Hi Kodge, for what its worth , when I came to live in France I went along to Citroen London West (just off the Chiswick Flyover) and spoke to the Sales Manager Mark Zeola, not only did he take my rhd vehicle in part exchange but he also ordered me a brand new lhd citroen picassa to French standard complete with certification, also he let me take advantage of the current discount deals that where available at the time so I paid no more than a normal deal in the UK, The whole process took ten weeks from signing the order to me fdriving the new car home, all I had to do when I arrived in France was to register the new car at the local prefecture which got me a set of french plates, no hassle at all.

Hi Rowan,                  I also have a Humax PVR and had a similar problem when I first installed it , perhaps you need to do a manual retune via the humax menu. If this does not do the trick then check your signal strength it should be at least 70 percent, if it is not then you need to re align your dish , which is not such an onerous task, all I did was move the dish fractionally left and right and up and down until I got the best signal, once I set it on the strongest signal I had no problem at all, occassionally I will now do an automatic retune just incase some channels have changed frequencies , but I am fairly sure that the frequecies of channels do not change at night, incidentally I live in the very south of the Indre dept 36 Regards Billy10

Hi Ricandjo, Depends what sort of floor you are laying , in my case the wood was 25 mm thick, 150 mm wide and 2metres long with aq purpose made tongue and groove, I used a standard pneumatic brad nailgun with 50 mm brads which I attached to my compressor, I bought my brad nailer in the UK but they have almost Identical items in Leroy Merlin, I found it was by far the best method as you can "secret nail" thro the groove and on each end so that you cannot see a nail (or brad) anywhere. I have also laid a floor using standard planks without tongues or grooves and it works just the same.

Does anyone know what the current Tempo tarriff is for 2010 Billy10

 I have a Georgin Moderato0r fitted to the flue pipe on my wood burner , all it seems to be is an adjustable flap valve stuck on the side of the pipe, the actual flap has 4 radial positions each one from 1 to 4 makes it harder for the flap to open , does anyone have any idea how to set this thing , I notice that on position 1 the flap is very loose and pivots quite a bit when the fire is lit but in this open position the fire damps down ????? any help would be appreciated Regards Billy10

Hi Parsnips , would appreciate any info you have , I tried to PM you last night with my situ but I dont know if the PM system was working. Regards Billy10

Hi Dragonrouge,                          lets hope you both live long and properous lifes , but if you were left as the surviving member surely you could sell up at a minimal cost , put the money where ever and rent a place or go to another country , that way your money stays with you Billy10

HI Forum,                 I expect this question has been asked more than once but I cant find it in any thread, The situation is that my wife and i have had our house in France for six years, and actually been resident for two years. We have both been married before and each have children from those previous marriages ( we have no children together), When we bought the house it was En Tontine, can someone correct me if I am wrong, I beleive that shoul;d one of us die then the house is inherited by the surviver who then is deemed to have owned it from day one. I understand that at this point there is a charge for changing the house into the survivors name and that if the house is worth more than 252,000 euros that there is a sliding scale of taxes to be paid from 5 % to 40%.on anything over this amount. Once all this takes place it is my understanding that the surviver can then sell the house without having to consult or pay the children from the previous marriage , in other words sell up and move either to another country or buy in france. The property we own is our only house as we have nothing in the UK therefore it is our primary residence. Can anyone confirm (or not as the case may be) Regards Billy10

Managed to connect PC to television using a super video cable and an audio cable , works ok but if I play a film it plays in extreme wide screnn i.e 6 inch,s high and full width screen, so using about a third of the screen height, I have tried changing the aspect of the tele but it does not make a lot of difference. Anyone out there got any ideas of why ??? Thanks Billy 10

Another question and it all evolves around my wife being able to watch all of her recorded programs on the tv in the kitchen while she is washing up, baking , cooking dinner (you know the sort of thing,) But the problem is how do you connect another tv to the box to show the recorded content assuming the master tv is connected to the hdr with a hdmi cable . Billy10

Another point I am not sure of as this will be my first experience of HDMI, if I connect the Humax HDR to the tele with the hdmi cable will it only pick up hd broadcasts or will it pick up everything that is available and should one of those broadcasts be HD then automatically play it as such ???? Billy10

Thanks John Ross and Maricopa for the replies. John Ross you mention losing a couple of channels but my intention is to do it like this (cant be sure yet because I am awaiting delivery of the Humax), however, my existing setup is from a sky box with my old defuncked card in it which enables channel four, 5 etc, and I have routed every TV in the house through an RF Amplifier connected to the 'live' rf output on the skybox ( there are two of them one has voltage on it the other has not. The reason I chose the live one is so that I could fit series link magic eyes to each tele (via the aerial socket) and get remote controls to work all over the house. This system is totally on one channel on my tv (my big tele has the ability to be able to change the source of the incoming broadcast) So with that in mind I thought I would leave that system as it is and connect the Humax thro the hdmi channel so all I would have to do if we wanted channel 4 or 5 etc we would just have to switch between the two channels by switching the source on the TV. Sounds great but so did the Sinclair C5, Will let you know how it works out , unless someone out there has alraedy done it ??? Regards Billy 10

Hi Forum,                   I have just ordered a humax HDR so with any luck I should get a rest fron Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Eastenders etc etc very soon. My problem is this , on setup it asks you for a UK postcode which obviously I dont have now because I live in Central France, I think the postcode is used so that the box can scan for regional variations, I would like to have Welsh variatins. Has anyone out there installed a Humax HDR and if so how did you get over the problem, it might be as simple as entering a Cardiff postcode but I dont know if the satellite detects where your equipment is geographically and wont proceed , I cant try it yet as I am awaiting delivery next week , but you know what they say about being forearmed. Thanks Billy10

Not sure if this is the right forum but here goes, does anyone know the rules for claiming a 200 euro allowance for central heating oil  purchased between certain dates each year ??

I have just read some comments regarding Andrew  (poolguy) and all I want to say is yes he will get some sales from contact on the forum, but just look back at some of the advice given over the years about pool maintenance etc , I would say pretty cheap eh !!! Billy 10

Hi Forum,                   To save me trying to some waterbed conditioner shipped from the UK , does anyone know of a supplier in France , I live at the southern most tip of department36 (the Indre) close to La Chatre Thanks Billy10

I  installed the teleconnect update on Friday night, my internet is fine if not better than before , incoming calls are fine , but outgoing calls are ok for the first 15 seconds and then they totally crack up as if the person on the other end is either Norman Collier or they are under water, I have emailed teleconnect three times but have not had an answer which is really annoyimng as I do not want to use FT for calls to the uk, Teleconnect have been good in the past when minor problems have occurred , but this time something tells me that they have a serious problem , maybe tehy have released the software to soon and now the bugs are coming in to roost, I just hope they can sort it out soon otherwise Im will have to sign up with Orange who have a similar deal as Anglopack. Regards Billy10

Hi Forum,                  I am getting earache from the ayatulah to open the pool next week in time for my daughters visit, In my case it is not a lot of work and would mean topping up , switching on the heat pump which would heat the pool in about 4-5 days to around 27-28 degrees, getting the chemical balance right and bobs your uncle, My biggest fear is that it ios too early and I dont want to damage any of the fittings or pumps etc , my pool is 10 metres by 5 metres in ground, I live in the southern most part of the Indre  (dept36) close to La Chatre, what does the forum think is it a bit early as yet ??? Thanks Billy10