friend of stouby

Thanks everyone...

Just what was needed James, thanks very much. Jamie  

I am in the UK for a couple of weeks and want to pre-plan some plumbing work. We will be installing a chauffe eau with a heating coil for boiler heating of the water on top of the usual immersion heater so in effect an indirect? hot water cylinder in English. I can't work out if all the various types of chauffe eau are all just termed 'chauffe eau' or are there different names? Thank you  

We have a 10kW rated stove in a room of about 55m3. There is a door off to another room of the same dimensions on one side which is always open and another to a smaller room on the other side which is open or closed. The stove is perfect whether burning oak/charme or coke (to suit the situation of the moment) as it has a manual and very basic air control. It is so easy to regulate down to a minimum output or to a high output at will it's almost, but not quite like having a gass fire. We are very pleased to have had the extra heat capacity when it's -12 oC outside as well as being able to leave the stove to idle on a couple of logs for an entire day. Have also heard of other people having a problem with thermostats not allowing a medium burn situation on some stoves and also of people converting thermostat control to manual too. Hope this helps    

  ... absolutely spot on! many thanks indeed. May I ask how well that worked for people in the UK and do you still use it now?   I discovered in the search for the above a company called      http://www.phonecheap.co.uk/rates.php    who by dialling a fairly long access number enable UK residents to call a French land line for 0.5p per minute plus a similar cost from BT. This works very well as I have tried it but I was looking for something simple as we have a number of very elderly relatives and a 22 or 23 digit phone number it just a little too much. Many thanks indeed, I was starting to think I had invented it! Jamie  

... thanks Clair, but the number is a 11 digit number dialled in the UK without adding any French number but rings straight into a French landline? I am pretty sure that the company is French and that the system allowed UK based relatives to use only a simple single phone number. I think also that the service allowed heavily discounted calls to the rest of the world from the French landline phone. I know it existed as I looked at their website and was recommended to me by someone I met only once!  

Hello I was given the name of I think French phone company that allowed relatives in the UK to call our French land line using a UK number starting 0844 ....... This wasn't a pre code to enable the usual French land line number to be dialled after the code number, but a dedicated number allotted to the French user. I believe the cost was about 2p per minute. This was about 2 years ago and as we were not in France for extanded periods didn't follow it up, but now we are in France for nearly 6 months a year it has become more important. Has anybody heard of such a thing? Thanks  

  Cast iron has always been the superior material for stoves as it absorbes heat slowly and also dissipates slowly too, although there are different qualities of cast iron. Cast can crack, even the quality manufacturers can have stoves that crack from time to time, but this is infrequent. Steel will not hold heat in the same way and dissipates heat quickly, but will not usually crack. But it can buckle and twist if not protected from the direct effects of the fire. The fact that cast iron is still used several hundred years after it's first use in stoves probably says it all. Jamie

Thanks Frederick... it sounds like just what I am after. Have you found these dripper kits only in the UK or have you seen them in France too? Jamie

Thanks for that Tony, and as you say it has been so wet that it shouldn't really matter, but have had to leave the house for a couple of times for a week a piece and due to rain being forecast left the pots where they were. First time nearly lost them all as there were 3 sunny days and we face south, it probably didn't rain for the other 4 days that week too! The second time put the pots in the shade but that created a rain shadow and they were pretty dry after a week. S-d's law says that the weather in France will be warm and sunny while we are away, and anyway we have to work in the UK from time to time so this is an ongoing problem. You mentioned the bag system, is this from a known manufacturer or made up from individual pieces? Thanks for taking the trouble to write, you have given me some ideas to persue. Jamie

Hello Trying to work out a system of automated watering for about 15 planters and tubs while we are in England. The off the shelf systems appear to rely on water pressure from a mains tap (minimum 1 bar) to operate the on/off valve although the timer is battery operated. As we will be away for about 6 weeks it is scary to think what would happen if the valve missfunctioned and allowed our 3 bar tap water to run for that period of time. Does anyone know of a valve sytem that will work off battery or mains electricity but doesn't require any water pressure to open and close the valve, or even an acurate drip feed valve that could be adjusted to a really low setting and left permanently on? On as a last resort anyone who has used a store bought system that worked reliably over a long period of time?   Thanks a lot Jamie

Hello Digger I bought a mini digger as there are an endless supply of jobs for it around our property, but thanks for asking. We are a long way from you in any case at the northern end of 03 - Allier. best wishes Jamie  

Hello virginia.c The advice from the builder was to dig the trench to the same depth of the footings, and obviously the further up the hill the trench is dug the deeper the trench. The reason for the 5 meter behind the rear wall was down to us as we will in around 2 years have an extension bulit across the rear of the house and therefore to allow clearance for this. One piece of advice from a UK website re French Drains near to old buildings with no or shallow footings, was that the trench is dug away from the wall at a 45o  angle to allow for support to remain under the the existing footings, and that 1m away from the wall would be better/ideal. I am not an expert but prefer to ask/research a job before tackling it and with all the info available make I hope the correct decisions. We currently have a soil/ballast/rubble mix against the rear wall to a depth of 1m. The walls are only ever damp inside after extreme weather so this mixture does work to an extent. We may have a spring that runs from one position at the rear to the front of the house, but until it is excavated we are not sure on this. The front and rear wall at these points have a little cracking plus a couple of floor tiles have cracked in the same area. I have read that it was fairly common for drainage channels to run from the rear to the front of buildings under the floor and this may also be a conduit for ground water to run under the house. After excavating against the rear wall I'm sure we will know more detail, and then the plan is to remove all soil against the rear wall down to a depth of just above the footings. Then dig the drain trench to channel the surface and sub surface water running down hill away from the house. The expectation is for the wall to remain drier but not dried out, and for the possible flow of sub surface water running under the house to be either stopped or greatly reduced. Last, when we returned to the house after a month or two away, the house smelt a little damp and in places felt it. We now use a large wood burner to create a superb air change when we are at home and have fitted simple ventilation ducts to front and rear walls to help maintain ventilation when the stove isn't lit. These two features have made a massive difference to the humidity in the walls and floors, plus have created fresher and drier atmosphere inside the house. I don't know if any of the above is of help but do hope there is something there for you. The reasoning for the drain is to simply prevent surface and sub surface water reaching the building either at all, or greatly reducing it. The logic is that if water doesn't make contact with the building on most of the surfaces it will not be as damp, and usually French Drains are easy to install, and I try to always keep it simple!  There are of course other factors involved in this and if you want to ask other questions please do so either through here or with a pm. I'm very interested to hear of anything that you come up with and on which direction you will take. Hope it all works out for you and that it gives you as much pleasure owning a French home as it does us. Jamie

hope this is ok but have posted this on an older thread but it didn't appear to work, so have started a new thread here Had a look at quite a few websites re field drains recently and most were advocating using solid pipe with holes only at the bottom rather than the flexible convoluted pipe as the ridges create friction to water flow. Was in a Big Mat and took the oportunity to look at the field drain pipework and was surprised at how thin the wall of the rigid pipe was ( this is the pipe used for fosse septiques ) the convoluted pipe was also semi flexible. The question is, is there another type of solid field drain pipe that is used only for field drains but with a thicker wall thickness, maybe a similar thickness to standard drainage pipes, or in France is the fosse septique pipe used for all these applications. I don't want to use the old style ceramic or clay pipes but prefer to work in plastic. I need to install a field drain behind our house across the uphill slope, and a local builder has mentioned that the drain must have the depth of the rear wall foundations. The drain will be dug about 5m uphill of the rear wall and will need to go to a depth of approximately 1.2m, so therefore quite a weight of gravillion ?(spelling) above the pipe, and it occurrs that the pipe may be crushed? Thanks in advance to anyone who has any experience of this depth of field drain. Jamie

Just to revive this subject, and in particular field or French drain pipework. Had a look at quite a few websites re field drains recently and most were advocating using solid pipe with holes only at the bottom rather than the flexible convoluted pipe as the ridges create friction to water flow. Was in a Big Mat and took the oportunity to look at the field drain pipework and was surprised at how thin the wall of the rigid pipe was ( this is the pipe used for fosse septiques ) the convoluted pipe was also semi flexible. The question is, is there another type of solid field drain pipe that is used only for field drains but with a thicker wall thickness, maybe a similar thickness to standard drainage pipes, or in France is the fosse septique pipe used for all these applications. I don't want to use the old style ceramic or clay pipes but prefer to work in plastic. I need to install a field drain behind our house across the uphill slope, and a local builder has mentioned that the drain must have the depth of the rear wall foundations. The drain will be dug about 5m uphill of the rear wall and will need to go to a depth of approximately 1.2m, so therefore quite a weight of gravillion ?(spelling) above the pipe, and it occurrs that the pipe may be crushed? Thanks in advance to anyone who has any experience of this depth of field drain. Jamie  

I think that it is a personal decision re sleeping in your vehicle overnight and how comfortable you feel doing it.  We have travelled with a camper van and now sometimes with our 'works' van regularly all over Europe (and beyond) for more than 9 years, and probably are on the road for at least 3 months in every 12. We have been broken into twice, once in northern Spain on Boxing Day in the middle of the afternoon after we had left our camper along side a public park with many families playing in the sunshine. We visited a museum for about 2 hours and returned to find quite a lot stolen and some damage done to our then home. We were very angry and upset but after a couple of days decided to uprate a little of the security in a practical way (which still wouldn't have prevented the break in but would have taken the thieves longer to break in), and for it to not stop us doing what had been a lifetime ambition of just travelling where we wanted, when we wanted. We did feel somewhat nervous for about a year after but decided that the campervan life with risks was better than not. The second time was in a panel van just outside Strasbourg at about 08:30 in the morning on a bright summer's day. I was parked at a major service area between the car parking and the trucks, and the place was really busy. I had travelled through the night  and was still alseep at 08:30 when a smartly dressed young man forced open the side loading door, at which point both of us were very surprised indeed. As I had very little on, the best I could do as he had the presence of mind to slam the door in my face, was to look out the the window to see where he went while I was dressing. He very calmly walked away until a car picked him up and off they cruised! A truck was parked along side me maybe 4 meters away, the engine was running and the driver watching all that went on. The point is it can happen to anyone, anywhere and at any time, and in my view you accept the risk or if not go to a camp site or a hotel. There are a number of things you can do to minimise the risks but not eliminate them, and I have to say that on more than one occassion have moved on after either noticing something after stopping or a car has arrived with people who may not wish you well. Hope this helps someone and puts the risks into perspective. ps: What work well for us is to either park off the motorways on an N or D road as the professionals appear not to operate as often there, or on a motorway to park near to a caravan(s) or camper(s) as often the occupants appear to sleep a little lighter than truck drivers. Maybe the very best deterrent is a dog!! Jamie  

Have just today come across a new thing (for me), an Auchan fuel pump that accepted a UK debit card when the kiosk was closed. This Auchan hypermarche is at Dunkerque so not sure if this applies anywhere else at all, but have never heard of UK cards being accepted for fuel anywhere. Jamie

Thanks SD, but no it was not registered before leaving Paris as the intention was to register the car in the UK. At Dover the car was declared and all duties paid (as was required at the time). The next day an MoT was carried out, but later that day a misfortune happened to it on our drive and at that point was driven into the garage and left there, we were very busy people at the time etc etc. The seller apparently carried out his duties as we had to wait in Paris an extra day for him to do some official paperwork? and now here we are. On the positive side, as it has stood for 17 years in a dry garage, the mileage for a 29 year old car is very low !!   Thanks again Jamie  

Don't intend to hijack this thread and not sure if I have asked this before, but I am returning to France a car that I bought in Paris 17 years ago. On purchase, it was driven to the UK and parked in a garage until now. Next week it returns to France and I want to put it back on the road before the end of the year. Have the Carte Grise and a reciept for monies paid, but that's all. After reading all the above and knowing that I can't produce some of the above documents, does anybody have an opinion on whether the French system is flexible enough to adjust their requirements if some of the documents are missing? Thanks  

Since we moved from Burgundy to the Allier we do this half a dozen times a year. We come from Dunkerque through Paris then down to Nevers and on to Moulins. Have to say that unless you pick the known rush hours or get really unlucky it is usually only fast flowing multi lane traffic that is extremely well signed. Our trick when driving south is to follow signs for Bordeaux when approaching northern Paris, this will take you to the southern edge of Paris to where the signs for Lyon are also prominent. We follow the Lyon signs when the road splits Bordeaux/Lyon and then Nevers when the A77 meets with the A6. So in effect to get through Paris from the northern outskirts to the A6 going south we only look for Bordeaux followed by Lyon, keeps it simple. If you are going south west of Paris you will continue to follow the Bordeaux signs, even simpler. Have to say that sometimes it appears as though they route us mainly via the Peripherique but sometimes via bits of the Francilienne, maybe due to road works or traffic flow? but whichever way it is usually very little trouble considering it's a major city. Hope this helps Jamie

Godfather, serious wood heating boilers are made by Tarm plus others, here's a link to the USA website which explains about current ones   http://www.woodboilers.com/default.asp  . They are Danish I believe, very efficient and sold in France, plus often are for sale as used (I assume in most cases town gas arrives and all these systems are then obsolete). Have friends in Lorraine where they know about cold weather, who bought a used very old German boiler but similar in function to Tarm and others. Last winter they would leave the boiler alight for about 3-4 hours a day to heat water for partial central heating and domestic hot water. It used very little in the way of wood to achieve that but looked as though it had come out of a  WW1 battleship. In their sitting room they used a wood burning insert that appeared very efficient too and they didn't appear too pre-occupied with having to stoke either stove. Just some alternative food for thought. Jamie    

OK, another day another problem! With the help of tenniswitch have sorted out the the hotmail and OE problems but............ Tried to send some business mail today and received the following message   - The message could not be sent because one of the recipients was rejected by the server. The rejected e-mail address was '[email protected]'. Subject 't', Account: 'mail.stovefinders.com', Server: 'mail.stovefinders.com', Protocol: SMTP, Server Response: '550 RCPT TO:<[email protected]> Relaying not allowed - please use SMTP AUTH', Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 550, Error Number: 0x800CCC79 Have tried a half a dozen times to various addresses and have exactly the same message. Am using SMTP Port 25 so that's not the problem, so has anyone else had this type of problem ? OE or Orange also automatically changed my default email accout (the business one) to the Wanadoo email account that had to be set up when taking Wanadoo. I don't use theWanadoo email account at all, it just exists and I didn't enter it in OE. This happened this afternoon along with the error on the business email account. Have since removed the Wanadoo email from OE but hasn't made any difference.   Many thanks again Jamie 

Don't know how or why you knew to re-install with the paid account first tw, but it worked like a dream. Removed the paid hotmail account, reinstalled using all the settings that were previously used for the self same account, and working smoothly without any problems at all. More interesting was re-installing the second (free) hotmail account was easy again using all the same settings. So now back to where I started with 4 email accounts, but with them all working here in France, and all thanks to you. In hindsight, I feel the only change from all the email accounts working originally in the UK and not working here, is, I installed Orange as an ISP and their software has altered the OE settings and therefore had to start again, but I still don't understand how you knew to install the paid account first? Hope I can help you too one day Thanks Jamie  

Thanks tw I believe that the hotmail accounts are configured correctly as they worked on the new computer in the UK and the only change to the computer was using wanadoo as the ISP. A few days ago did try to remove the free account and re-install, but it wasn't possible to configure the account at all due to non acceptance of server detail. So now I have 3 email accounts still showing in OE although as stated the hotmail one doesn't operate. I will bite the bullet and remove and try to reinstall the paid hotmail account over the weekend and come back to the forum. We are due back in the UK at the end of next week, and I am bothered that for whatever reason that I'll be able to reload the hotmail accounts there but they still will not function when we return to France, therefore want to try to resolve this while still in France. Thanks very much for taking the interest and I will try what you have suggested. Jamie      

Have tried a search for this problem but haven't found a similar situation so here goes. Live in both France and the UK and use computers in both. We are currently in France and have brought 2 laptops with us, old one running Windows 2000 Pro SP4 and the later one using XP Pro SP2. The idea is to phase the old one out and transfer bit by bit all the data etc to the new computer. In March this year when in the UK I set up the new computer with Outlook Express and then added 2 hotmail.com accounts (1 is a paying account and 1 free) plus 2 business email accounts. These worked fine through Outlook Express as expected, and have been used on and off in the UK up until end of May this year. The email accounts are an exact duplicate of the Outlook Express accounts on the old computer. In the UK we use Pipex as the ISP, and in France Wanadoo/Orange. On arriving in France we have only used the old computer (as it has all the data stored on it) but decided to load Wanadoo on to the new computer so we can start to use that only as the older one is painfully slow now (HD is nearly full). Sorry this is so long but trying to give all the info.... when using Outlook Express for the first time I thought that the new computer ran through the email addresses really fast and thought this is great, but then realised that although the hotmail accounts are shown in Outlook, they were not being checked for mail. Also can't send mail via hotmail either. The business email accounts still function normally through Outlook Express. It's possible to access the hotmail accounts individually through hotmail.com, but this is too long winded and doesn't answer why Outlook Express has stopped working with hotmail.   Looked at the account settings and cross checked them with the old computer but were still the same as when set in the UK. So, the old computer has a fully working Outlook Express with all email accounts being serviced. The new computer has a partial Outlook Express without the hotmail accounts working although loaded into it, and one of the hotmail accounts is a paid for account. Will the problem lie with hotmail, wanadoo or the different windows sytems that we are using on each computer?  I have now spent around 8 hours on this and haven't found a solution, is there some kind soul that can make sense of this for me please? Many thanks for taking the time to read this far Jamie