Gluestick

[quote user="Just Katie "][quote user="Quillan"] I personally think that any form of investment incures a certain amount of risk it's just that the best you can do is to limit those risks as much as you can. If you realy are worried about the risk then perhaps you could stick with the old building society accounts back in the UK but thats my personal opinion. [/quote] Wrong, should these institutions go belly up, they are only liable to return a percentage or a disclosed amount of your cash.  Best bet is to spread your cash and do your homework on what the implications would be should the inevitable happen. [/quote] Not quite Katie. Building Societies have always enjoyed a special status as effectively Trustee Bodies, unlike banks, per se, which are chartered by the Bank of England.  Indeed, it was this special status which caused the banks to cry "Foul!" when they became envious of the BS's tax status. One of the reasons for this, is that Building Societies break the first golden rule of banking: they borrow short to lend long: i.e. they take in deposits which are "At call" and re-lend for many years. Deposits with Building Societies are accepted as Trustee Status investments, by for example, the Bank of England (for bank's reserve assets), start-up insurance companies (after the various crashes of the early 70s when insurers played naughty games with insured's premiums - remember Dr Emile Savundra?[6]), and Trustees, generally. Building Society deposits are pedestrian, low interest and considered to be amongst the lowest risk: gilts (Government long-dated securities) are also effectively zero risk, but carry capital risk in the secondary market. Thus Building Society deposits tend to be used as the benchmark of safe but very slow. In any case, both the Bank of England (who have a special responsibility here, in any case) and the Building Societies Association would work very hard to protect member's assets in the event of a liquidity crisis, as the knock on affects would trip a UK wide financial crisis.  

I became a sort of adoptive engineer, many years ago, mainly due to my love of motor cars, oily bits and above all else, motor racing (inherited from my late Dad: Castrol R and 104 octane in the veins instead of blood![:D]). As I became more and more involved, I used my physics, maths and chemistry to try and educate myself and understand much more of the technology. Still liked loud exhaust noises, though![I]    

Most gas cookers use bottles, anyway, although, of course, if you decide on gas and have a large storage tank fitted, you can run your cooker from this. Nothing preventing you from oil heating and bottled gas for cooking. Ours is pretty well adjustable and runs from a large butane bottle, which lasts for ever and costs circa € 24 for a refill. The once only deposit is also round about the same price. When you say "Big bottle" what size are you thinking? It is normal to operate heating from a very big storage tank, supplied and fitted by the gas supplier and you only pay an annual rental thereafter.  

I have read this thread with interest and would make the following observations. Perhaps at first, it is important to provide a sort of personal snapshot, in order that my own perspective can be viewed from a position of a little experience. I elected, early onto study professional exams and part from excursions into various business adventures -which still continue! - I currently practice as a public practice accountant and business strategic consultant, specialising in finance, which includes considerable experience of Venture Capital. In the 70s, I worked internationally, as an independant finance broker  on sovereign risk and project areas, prior to which I worked in the City as firstly a dealer and later, on Corporate Finance and Investment. Until late 2000, I was an external moderator and examiner at MBA level in Financial Strategy, as a Business School. In recent years not only have I been FD of an IFA operation, I have also provided consulting services to financial advisers as the business evolved from the first legislation (1986) to date. Much of this consulting work was on compliance issues as regulatory law evolved. With investments, a person has basically two choices: one is to take the time to study and consider capital markets and learn: considerably! Choice two, is to leave it to professional advisers. If you are really wealthy, then you hand over your affairs to a discrete investment bank, who handle your money for you. Unfortunately, most people aren't very wealthy (in relative terms of reference): additionally, they do not wish to spend the time boning up on markets and mechanisms: they have other things to do. So, you have your pile, what do you do? March into your bank and hand over the cash? Not wise. Stick it all in the stock market through a broker? Not wise either. Bung it in a mutual like a Building Society, if you can find one these days, at effective negative interest (i.e. rate less inflation means you are losing money). Financial Advisers are a relatively new animal: they have evolved from brokers selling a wide range of product from Insurance (i.e. Car, Home, Boats etc) through Assurance (life, pensions, annuity etc.) and, of course, the proverbial Man from the Pru. A good Financial Adviser is able to provide a mixture of professional experties, which should include taxation, residence, domicile and etc. Quite obviously, a bloke in an office in Scunthorpe is unlikely to be able to advise on french or spanish tax law and etc. Why use an IFA? (Hint: note the term "Independant"), well mainly because unlike a tied agent, the IFA should be able to provide a wide range of options from many different providers. With all respect to any IFA's professionalism and expertise, however, it behoves anyone endeavouring to secure their financial future, to do some grunt work and study the markets. Buying an ISA for example, can be a simple decision: mixing up the potential benefits and risks can help protect your investment and add significant capital, however, as many ISAs allow you to Mix and Match funds, thus you can elect to place part of the capital in a potential recovery position (e.g. Japan when it was down, but still achieving balance of trade surplus: a no brainer for capital increase.). As to the criticism of IFAs like "Why aren't you a zillionaire?", well most zillionaires are not very nice people. I have received the same cynical criticism here and there from potential consulting clients, the favoured smart comment being, "Huh! A consultant is a bloke who borrows your watch to tell you the time!" I tend to point out thereafter that I am not the one with the problem! Which I created! As with most professionals, there are good IFA, bad IFAs and excellent IFAs. You pays your money (literally in this case!) and you takes your choice. Investment law, tax law and pensions law are extremely complicated subjects, these days: when it comes to cross-border investments it just becomes more complex. No one with any brain would grant an architect carte blanche to design and build them a house without some minimal input from the client. You might, but then whilst your new house might win awards for innovation, it might as easily win the Turner prize and look like something Salvador Dali designed on an off day with an immense hangover! After all the bruahaha of mis-selling, poor advice, lost pensions, etc all financial advisers are now regulated and invariably indemnified like all practicing professionals. A financial adviser, however, is only as good as the client's instruction and game plan. IFAs are not magicians: they can only advise on what is, according to what they are told and what the market currently offers. And like all of use, their advice is subject to a highly fickle and currently volatile capital market, globally. So, do the research a bit firstly, since after all, it's your financial future or disaster, no one elses. Sorry to go on, but I sincerely hope this assists.  

Love the Freudian slip, Ian! [;-)] I am supposing that the chicken was "Fired" 'cos the only thing it was suitable for was covering up with goo and glurk to prevent the fishmeal taste when it was cooked!  

Dunno, Steve? [8-)] Unfortunately, as France only has one sort of resource, which is very flaky - Sonotrac - to rely on, they seem to be on the rack of global market exploitation more than most? At least with crude, there are a mass of global markets to provide a degree of competition. I have thought for some time that with only Elf and Total, at least France could better regulate its energy markets more easily: however, the past couple of years has shown that all french product based on crude has suffered from the same insane greed as everyone else. Funny, for example how British Gas is still increasing its prices: when gas prices on the global markets have dropped so much![6]  

In 90% of all comparisons I researched, oil was cheaper. Obviously, both oil and gas at present have suffered from short-term profit greed by oil companies. Over time, this ought to settle down. In a commodity sense, gas is now an increasingly rarer product, with the two main significant sources left now being Russia and Qatar. I am betting that gas prices will increase far more than oil (which should shortly stabilise and demonstrate price falls: oil companies and suppliers always rip people off in the Winter, as they know users have no real choice!).  

Well, Jc, then all these guys got it wrong, too![;-)] http://www.worcester-bosch.co.uk/index.php?fuseaction=site.articleDetail2&con_id=130817 http://www.nef.org.uk/energyadvice/boilers.htm http://www.worcester-bosch.co.uk/index.php?fuseaction=site.articleDetail2&con_id=125860 http://www.viessmann.co.uk/downloads/Vitodens.pdf http://www.muswell-hill.com/foxandco/pages/boilertypes.htm  

I believe that your controller is probably amongst the first of the new breed of CH programmers, which has been "Mapped", in the same way as a modern car's ECU. The Mapped ECU has a huge stored variety of settings for ignition timing, advance curves and mixture settings/compensation and guesses the optimal set of values according to the various detectors which are feeding data in. The latest mapped systems are car-specific; and the new generation of CH programmers are believe it or not, house-specific! They learn! Thus in say January, the programmer "knows" how to adjust the temperature of the rooms, zones and boiler etc. To achieve this, needs a host of detectors, which include flowmeters, thermostats and etc. Additionally, other controls are fitted to avoid "Dead Cycling", which wastes fuel. Boilers cycle, needlessly, when the jacket (and thus surrounding water) temp drops past the point where the boiler stat kicks in; despite the fact that none of the demand systems is calling for heat. Condensing combi-type boilers solve this problem, as again, they are a demand based system. The old High-Hysteresis Bi-Metal stats have mainly now, thankfully, been replaced with low-hysteresis electronic types: another cause of unnecessary boiler cycling and heat waste. Ther are many of the old type about, still however. Hope you find someone who can work it out.  

No harm done. In truth I couldn't resist the play on words with your user name! [6]    

[quote user="Gluestick"] A  working replacement could be economically made from oxy-cut/plasma cut plate and decorated to synthesise cast decorative effects. Any competent metal shop should be able to assist. [/quote] Sorry to bug you Mr Bear, but. err.........that's what I said earlier.[8-)]  

Why stop posting? Other members can hopefully glean (free![:-))]) quite valuable info herein. Whilst I urgently wish to retire, ASAP (*Sigh*) and since my practice manager is a Spainophile, we are sort of tossing round the concept of a UK/France/Spain mixed practice to assist ex-pats in France and Spain with their tax affairs, on the basis that whilst some make a clean break, many retain certain UK assets and thereby are necessarily obligated to create an effective cross-border investment and tax strategy. The temptation is to run as far away as fast as possible as quickly as I can! *Big Sighs* Leasing.............hmmm.............. reminds of Atlantic Leasing and the BIG stumble!  

No names no breach of client confidentiality, but one of the best, were the clients who announced, after they had signed of course, who bought a very expensive 8 berth cruiser, twin turbo-diesel and then threw me the wonderful line, "It is tax claimable, isn't it?" I set up a marine chartering business, toute suite and the fun thing was that they then, correctly claimed the VAT Input tax against their Output tax and not surprisingly, received an audit! I was then cheeky enough to write off 40% of the capital value Year One under the enhanced allowances![blink]- which created an overall loss......................... We only got away with it since they were already deeply involved in aligned business activities. No wonder I've lost so much hair!  

Until a few years ago, I was an External Moderator and Examiner for a university Business School, mainly at MBA level. One of the things I very much enjoyed was delivering lectures on Financial and Strategic Planning to part-time students in business themselves. One of my Powerpoint slides is a guy in a desert, with a palmtree (so you know it's a desert!) looking lost and confused. The caption is: "A business without a Business Plan is like a man lost in the desert without a map and a compass!" Nuff said. Yes, would be nice to meet up and trade war stories: our place in France is right up in the Pas de Calais, though: a long journey, sadly.  

Funny true story much to my personal discomfort at the time. Ignoring the safety rules I insisted my employees worked too (!![:$]) I was "Mopping" - i.e. machine polishing with a vitrifier - a car in the main workshop, which had been brought round from the panel shop and was urgently needed by the customer. Being Winter - and very cold as the workshop doors were nearly always open -  I was wearing jeans, a shirt, a roll neck and an old cardigan with nice leather buttons, with a white "Machine Shop" coat on top. Machine shop coat was flapping in the breeze............. Now a vitrifier is the same - or was then! - as a nine inch angle grinder, but with different gearing: instead of galloping away at nearly 3,000 revs, they rotated at circa 760: with the same grunt. Huge torque and thus resistance to stalling. We used foam heads to avoid "Burning" the paint. Suddenly, the foam head caught the flapping white coat, tied it in round knots, collected my cardigan with leather buttons pinging off like shrapnel all over the workshop, caught my roll-neck and my shirt, and the mains lead and thereafter, the deadly device tried its best to choke me and sort of sat there stalled, moaning with a loud 50 cycle humming noise. I knew that if I let go, the handle would rotate at speed and with immense power and smash all my teeth out as it unwound from my clothes! Or something equally dire............. Eventually, my screams for help were noticed above the general workshop noise and when they had finished laughing their socks off, someone unplugged the vitirifier! My safety pep talks were greeted with a fair level of derision for some time after that little incident.[Www]  

Had a rapid whiz through the tech spec (above) and I now have a sneaky feeling that this programmer requires matching sensors and valves etc. if it is to provide the very complex and multi-variable performance specified. Additionally, it apparently needs certain boiler-specific devices, too. Just a thought...............  

As I am often reminding my clients, "I am excellent at tax planning: but not very good at Post Event Tax Planning!" It constantly amazes me how apparently shrewd people, despite being implored to seek advice prior to making significant decisions, don't. Much of my work these days, is in Risk Management, if one considers it rationally. There are viable structures and methodologies to both overcome hurdles and optimise income and wealth: all provided they are rationally planned and any reasonably complex financial situation, reduced to a series of fairly basic and simple steps. Warranties can often be a real problem, in run offs, since it is very difficult to estimate the potential worst case downside position, and allow for it. We had one group of clients in the early 90s insanity (estate agency) where they had gaily sold endowment mortgages to all and sundry, as a tied representative, with all the sweeteners  and over-rides then being offered. When the economy went South, as expected, mortgagers swapped for repayment options and the commission clawbacks virtually bankrupted the clients. They had no contingency plans in place for this!  

If the system is correctly zoned, then any sensor (e.g. room stat) should be controlling a motorised valve which permits- prevents circulation in that zone: only.  

I am a great fan of Neville Shute Norway and have recently re-read - for the umpteenth time - his novels. Shute captures the grace of an easier time, socially and, as a very clever engineer, encapsulates personal integrity and ability and expresses these as virtues. Wonderful books to curl up with in front of the prototypical log fire or early to bed on nasty Winter days! If there is a criticism, it can only be that Shute, like most of his contemporaries of the 1920s and 30s writes mainly about middle class people and effectively ignores the trials and turbulent problems of the working class: with certain exceptions. This focus changed after Shute first visited Australia, where he settled prior to his untimely death. Perhaps, in a story, but not a literary sense, his social tour de force was Ruined City, the story about a Northern shipbuilding town decimated post WW I and the 30s depression, by the closure of the yard, the plate mill, mines etc, as the grasping owners naffed off to Bierittz or Monte Carlo with their ill gotten gains. Good to read this after his autobiography, Slide Rule, wherein his various comments about bankers and financiers chime splendidly with today! For those of us who take pride in making things with our own hands, his engaging novel, Trustee From the Toolroom, is a wondrous epitaph to the man and his ethos.  

Perhaps the clue here was "Close" company. Our client was one of three directors. The company was sold to a larger company. I came into this later on, as the other two directors (who had earlier taken over my client's original company) despite the three directors holding a 30%, 30%, 30% equity holding, were in the driving seat and had instructed the auditors over the sale of the business and the tax planning. My eventual role was to advise all three directors on the sale - which had stalled at that point - and the tax planning. All three directors were to be employed, full time by the acquiring company, with no equity holding. The contract of sale (which was cumbersome, originally) was eventually reduced to a straight sale of shares. The MD of the acquired company took early advice, paid the fees and then de-instructed us. After, of course, I had carried out further investigative research. What's new. My old client stuck. After a freak accident and a short period of sickness - with an agreed contract of employment - he was terminated: unfortunately, the three had already passed over all the shares against a forward promise to pay; against my earlier advice! By this time the old company had been wound up. Bottom line was that my client was faced with a CGT liability, for which he had not been paid as then the value: loss of office and etc. He sued; they settled, out of court, for less consideration, but ahead of the agreed payment schedule. A very nice guy: too nice. A very significant sum was involved here, BTW. Yes, principally, a transaction, for UK tax purposes crystalises when the contract is signed. Employment is obviously different, although compensation for loss of office, redundancy etc also means an arising tax liability on the date of the agreement. In practice, of course, one has until the January following the end of the tax year, April 5th preceding, to report and file the event and settle, although the Revenue are entitled to charge interest from the arising date less the grace period, in certain circumstances. In the case above, I would have re-written the Mem and Arts to cede voting rights to the acquiring company - which they demanded - and retained the shares but sold them parcel by parcel against the buyer's payment schedule, for example. They didn't.  

If you look here: http://www.burnham.com/pdfs/htghelper.pdf You will find one of the most valuable CH resources on the web. Look at page 42. Good sand blasting equipment is quite expensive. Needs large compressor. Better probably to find either a mobile blaster who can do this in your garden or can take away and return. The earlier comment about powder coating is very sensible! Good advice. Paint pongs when it becomes hot! For quite some time.  

Remembering, of course, that if you buy (or have) a number of identical rads of the modular type, you can take them apart and build one good one up from two, e.g. On that basis, even one which leaks, can act as spares for others, so don't bin it.  

No chance. Wouldn't know how to. Sure my nieces could explain, however. [blink] However, I will be imbibing some bottled sunshine from the Rhone, later on! [:D]  

From your description, what is perhaps needed is the following: 1.    A room thermostat to regulate the internal temp, plus Thermostatic Radiator Valves if not already fitted: 2.    A modern programmer which allows the choice of DHW and CH or DHW only, or CH only. (DHW=Domestic Hot Water: CH=Central Heating). 3.    Motorised "Demand" valve/s to  control and regulate DHW and CH functions. The programmer will allow the regulation of hot water to a Nil state, via the motorised valve. A frost stat will keep the boiler working, unless it is interrupted by another control device (e.g. room stat), if the external temp drops beneath the "on" value of the frost stat. The idea is to prevent pipework inside from freezing up, during a cold snap. If there is no internal stat, however, then control of the boiler is predicated by the frost stat, only: and as long as it's cold outside, then the boiler will simply keep going! There should be a boiler stat inside the boiler housing. Try turning this down. If one of those awful French plumber's delights is fitted which regulates (or is meant to!) water flow and temperature of water returning to the boiler ( Vannes melangeuses 3 ou 4 voles) try adjusting this or better, bin it and fit the motorised valves!  

Sorry: trying to be helpful, as usual! Agree about the house sale: tax point is date of completion (contract). Own home, = Zero CGT. The rest was just a Heads Up, as some people might be selling their business interests and be relying on some future payments and calculate being taxed in France on (e.g.) income and to their horror find that the UK taxman holds his hand out! The tax liability is incurred on the date of contract: not the date of payment. Had a client (and also old friend) caught by this as he sold his shares in a UK limited close company and then the buyer didn't pay! (Stage payments for the shares). However the CGT was due in the tax year of the sale. Unfortunately, the sale took place just before the end of the tax year! Like late March. In the end, we successfully managed to shift the tax liability to the next tax year and as client received less than agreed,  agreed a far lower CGT payment owing, just before the case went to trial for breach of contract. Nasty. Hope that's clear now.