AFP2

I suppose the playground humour had to come out and play.

I make very regular trips to the UK on business. This costs money. Any "suggestions" by enterprising individuals to help offset these costs welcomed. If you get my drift...  

Leclerc fioul this monday, 500L was Eur 308, which is a little over 61c/L

We know that the boiler can run on biodiesel - up to B20. The question was where to get it. We look forward to popcorn tainted fumes. 

Hi, we don't know whether Biodiesel for Heating is cheaper than Petrodiesel without the same duty levy. We can't find it to compare.   

We have noticed B10 and B20 Biodiesel for sale in several garages locally. And we use it, as it is "morally" superior and cheaper than straight mineral Gazole. However, since the cost of oil for central heating has gone through the roof, we have been trying to source bulk Biodiesel for our boiler. Without much success. Anyone help? 

Charbon is coal. Charbon de bois is charcoal. There is coal in France, as well as anthracite. The French burn coal in some regions, wood in others.

All the remedial work has now been done at a cost of almost 1000 Euros. This seems to be due to the previous owner and his mate. The gaine problem was due to the gaine used in parts being slit lengthwise, presumably because someone had not fitted it and had slit it to get it over the black 3 wire cable. The earth rod had been cut down to half its length because it wouldn't go any deeper into the ground, so it looked right but wasn't. The electrician drilled a proper hole and fitted a new one.The earth and neutral were deliberately connected in our workshop. We don;t fully understand why, but it seems the place used to have 3 phased and now isn't and the neutral was missing - our poor translation. A whole day was spent putting a new cable to the workshop. All the new light fitting roses had to be replaced because they were the wrong make or something. The fuse box fell off the wall while the electrricain was here.

We had to provide a copy of the Cert de Rammonage, a copy of the wood treatment guarantee, we have just provided a copy of the Consuel certificate (having had nearly 1000 Euros of remedial work done due to the half-baked previous owner's MATE), and the warranty for the roof done last year. All before they would insure us.

Sorry we were vague, it was more for some indication of whether the failure sheet made sense to anyone. It turns out that the wiring was done by some friends of the previous owner and it is a bit poor. We await a local electrician to give us a quote for putting the faults right.

We have only had the house for a few weeks, and the woodburner is nearly new. It was the first and only time we have tried it. We have the shop Facture from the previous UK owner.  We are going to let the local company do any work necessary and provide us with a warranty.

We have asked for a quote. There is no way we would attempt this ourselves. Too dangerous.

Any ideas?

The fire is a Deville poele a bois? If that means anything to anyone. Managed to get a small local Chimney/Fire expert company round this afternoon and he agrees that the fire has been fitted very wrongly. The flue pipe doesn't go far enough into the old chimney, there should be a damper fitted because of the strong draught/draft???? Apparently the fire shield? is a home made thing and is not right either. There are also tar leaks in the bricks in the chimney on the first floor. We think the builder who fitted it didn't know what he was doing. We have been told not to use the fire.

Hi, we had to get a rammonage certificate for Groupama, the Insurance company. We had to take it in for them to photocopy. It cost 70 Euros for a sweep and the certificate.

Thanks, it did worry us. We don't know who installed it, so we will contact someone local to put things right. It is very hard to get the fire to run gently. It looks like someone installed it themselves because the flue at the back is propped up on bricks and there is a metal plate where the pipe goes into the chimney that falls down a lot. The roof man who took the fire out to clean trhe chimney didn't say anything about it.

After removing the large aerial that acted as a bird perch, we are left with huge streaks of white mess. Is it a case of getting someone to jetspray or is there some other way?

Have had the rammonage done and got the certificate. Have tried the woodburner with well seasoned dry oak bought locally and with the air inlets fully open (no flue damper fitted) the fire roars like hell and the flue pipe glows cherry red before it goes into the chimney, are we doing something wrong? The fire is not too full of wood and it needed several Zip thingys to get it lit. It has to be filled evry hour or so and won't stay in for long.

If only. we only have about 10mm each side of the clamp and there is no way of replacing this wihtout taking the whole pipe out. I have started to try and get the clamp  off and it is snapping off in bits slowly.

Before a new Compteur Unit was fitted in one of our properties, we had to have a Consuel Inspection. There are several points of failure on a fairly recent previous owner wiring job, and a couple of these have us slightly baffled. One is 'insufficient Gaine' used. We have seen the seperate wires run in this, but there are some black 3-core cables which seem to be in Gaine in places and not others. We need to work out if this is something that can be corrected easily, so what does need to be in Gaine? The other was 'neutre et terre connecté'. This seems to mean that the neutral wire and the earth wire are connected. Help! We have already changed a lot of the fuses because there were some that were the wrong value. And the earthrod thingy failed at first until it rained.  

  Seems there is a proverb issue here: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/desiderius161329.html  

I might try to get the strap off first, and if it seems too difficult or nigh impossible, try the Silicone means. Thanks for now.

The quote is: "In the Kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is King"  

The spigot from the 32mm pipe is also glued in, so one cannot remove this readily. I will attempt to cut the strap free, although this seems very difficult. It wraps round about 2/3rd of the soil pipe and is about 4" wide. Sounds like blisterville! Cheers 

A slash-and-dash "builder" working for the previous owner has made a town-halls of a soil pipe installation in the bathroom. Basically, he fitted a collar to the 100mm soil pipe to accept an additional 32mm drain from an extra sink. This collar was obviously not fitted properly, and there is a leak from it when the added sink is used. So, is it possible to repair these? Clearly the collar is well stuck, but is there a means of getting it off? It would be difficult to replace the soil pipe due to its fitting into the screed. Cheers