Nearly Retired (I am now)

Ladies and Gentlemen, please, please all calm down. And what a miserable lot some of you can be. Initially I asked a question about the probable legality of my neighbour's firm request, and to show no bias and so as not to influence any later answers I deliberately omitted the fuller details of my discussion with the chap. I simply wondered if he was right and was there perhaps a way around the problem. I have shown no irritation directly with the chap at all - I have smiled at him through gritted teeth all along as I know full well what disputes with neighbours can lead to. And yes, to have put up with it for over 20 years before my arrival does suggest he's taking a bit of advantage of me, is being a miserable old fart etc. and I don't like it much - would you? Surely the place to blow off a bit of steam is a chat site like this and maybe getting advice, a little sympathy and understanding from others who have experienced something in the same vein and not by kicking the cat or playing loud rock music through the party wall! Yes, I am irritated because installing a gutter in the middle of this roof will be costly and has not been budgeted for. It means a big deep gutter say 30cm x 30cm and 8m long, a new roof beam (or two) and an internal rainwater waste pipe because he won't allow the waste pipe on his land either. The job will likely be postponed - the roofer wants to do a new devis and depending on his timing I may have missed our slot this year. As for getting even - I'm not planning a hate campaign, it's just that at some time in the future I will get a little bit of pleasure when I can employ a situation to my own advantage when he needs my co-operation.    

J.R. - I can assure there was no misunderstanding about the meaning of the instruction nor the venomous way in which it was said. Even allowing for my relatively poor grasp of the spoken language, the words after much slow and repeated french which followed in accented English  - "it's the law, it's the law" - leave little room for doubt.   Hamlets_shrink - how very right you are! I wanted to say just that in my first post here, but I thought I'd be diplomatic and see the responses first.   My motto: Don't get mad - get even.

Tony F D, reading your post makes me think you've personal knowledge of real neighbour trouble. If so, please let us know - forewarned is forearmed.  

Saving the water didn't occur to me at all. But, to be honest I was expecting answers on the lines of  -.... just get on with the gutter ... it'll be cheaper in the long run. It's just strange that 20 or more years of rainwater off a frenchman's roof was OK, but now we're in the house it's somehow different. 

The suggestions about employing locals instead are all fine and dandy. What if you can't get any? I'm at the stage of wanting to look for British "friends". I'm getting a tad tired of artisans who don't pick up the phone, don't answer messages, ignore letters, never turn up to give a devis unless chased 4 or 5 times, never ever give a starting date - and that's all before looking at a devis price! I say go for it and import some Poles (er, I mean friends) from Hammersmith.

Our proposed new roof is postponed until we can resolve a tricky issue. The house is semi-detached in the typical (?) french way, i.e. odd bits of wall are shared in different places. One pitched roof extends down from our house over a shared (party wall - I presume) wall and continues over to my neighbour's side. About two thirds of the roof is mine and one third is his. I was about to renew my roof when he told me I must have a gutter at the party wall because he doesn't want my rainwater on his roof. He's probably right from a legal point of view but I'd be interested in comments. This situation has existed for at least 20 years. Does this set a precadent? Is he taking advantage of me as a new owner? Can I get him to back down?  One thing I do know - it'll always be cheaper to give him his gutter than for me to get properly and expensively legal about this.

Thanks and especially a big thanks to BJSLIV - the links look just the business. Now to navigate them, understand and convey the message.    

Thanks all for the OPINIONS which follow my thinking - I just don't think pointing my french plumber at these pages will be quite enough to change his mind. Is there some piece of legislation, some official words I can find (in french) to convince the chap - and maybe the roofers too. If I'm not careful I could be unneccesarily giving the government the thick end of €2500.    

"There was a lot of talk about this on here not long ago."  Thanks Blanche Neige - I was sure I'd seen some discussion somewhere but couldn't find it. Now I know I didn't imagine it. The proposed shower room is internal at the end of a corridor (what a waste of space some of these long dark corridors can be!) Hopefully someone will be along in a minute with the definitive answers.      

A plumber who is about to install a shower room for us is very firm in his view that TVA for work to our 200+ year old house is at the normal 19.6% rate. He says the lower rate does not apply to a maison secondaire. The guys who fixed the boiler last year were happy enough to charge 5.5% with a signed attestation. I am pretty sure the 5.5% rate applies to a new shower room in my case - does anyone know an authorative piece on this  - preferably in french? I want to show him. Also, the roofers say 5.5% TVA applies to the main house only and it's 19.6% TVA for the (non-attached) barns and sheds. Confirmation anyone?  

If you are aged somewhere in the mid-fifties and are considering an early retirement then give some thought to the Government's proposed pension reforms. I thought I might make voluntary National Insurance contributions (of I guess £400 ish per year for around 5 years or so) up to 60 years old, so I would get entitlement to the full UK State Pension. This might not be necessary. Take a look at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/nic/vc3-important.htm It seems those of us of a certain age may be better off than we expected.    

We are in 17 and hope to renew 3 roofs - but who knows how long it will take the artisans to turn up and do the job? Christmas? If you can wait until our guys start then be my guest.

I plan to leave a diesel Peugeot 306 parked up over the winter. As well as jacking it up so the tyres stay round, I will get a solar powered battery trickle charger. One costs around £20 in UK and you leave it on the dashboard in full view of the sun. The idea is that the battery gets a tiny charge during daylight hours and so keeps topped up. I'll let you know how I get on in  year or so. 

Thank you for the regional slant - it hadn't occured to me. I think I've sorted out most of it. "Mouchettes" for example has been translated as "snuffers". What's a snuffer? Well, I don't know; but I've worked out that a mouchette is the lowermost tile on the roof (the one nearest the gutter) which has its end filled with sand and cement.   I think so anyway.

Devis 1 - Barn - 61m2 - All new roof timbers & beams & canal tiles -  €9100 Devis 2 - Barn 2 / outhouses - 77m2 - All new roof timbers & beams & canal tiles -  €6400 Devis 3 - Main House - 94m2 (rear part only) - new battens & canal tiles, Overhaul only main roof (about 90m2). Supply and install 2 x velux, 2 x glass tiles, 2 x vents - €5400 Total - €20900 Quotes from local (all french) firm.  

Well, this wasn't one of these sloppy questions which are often asked without any research. I consulted an A level student, a 3rd year French undergraduate, 2 dictionaries, babel-fish and reverso. Even "Renovating & Maintaining Your French Home" - Joe Laredo drew a blank. I forgot about google.fr. I gave it a go, read a bit between the lines and got my answers. Thanks for reading anyway.    

We have a devis, well 3 to be precise, for work to our house roof (Charente Maritime) and also to the stone barns. I get most of the drift, but I am stumped by some of the words/expressions used: Fourniture et pose de lambourde Fourniture et pose de pannes 13 x 28 couverture en tuiles canal stop mouchettes tuilles a  douille  (a accent aigu - can't type it) rive saintogeaise   The prices seem pretty good, but I don't really know what I'm getting - so could some kind soul translate these words so I can make sense of 20,000 euros of quotations.  

When we bought our house a couple of years ago we chose another notaire from the seller's chosen one and the fee was split - so it was at no extra cost to us. We just thought that by sharing the responsibilities then one notaire might pick up errors / fiddling / or simple lack of thoroughness of the other one. It didn't seem to do us any harm.

Trust me - I do not habitually drive in a manner to cause others inconvenience. I always avoid bus lanes during the set times. However, The London Borough Of Croydon caught me on a camera a few years ago when I was seriously confused about a left hand turn - BANG  - £60 fine. It was grossly unfair, the signs were very confusing and I obstructed no-one. That's why I mentioned bus lanes.  

Do I understand correctly from this that if I properly register a car in France for use at my maison secondaire that I can then bring it back to the UK for a maximum 6 months and use it in Uk legally - (and possibly, purely as a side issue, avoid parking fines, bus lane camere penalties etc. too??).

Does anybody know? Do I have to be french resident to register a car in France or do I only need an address of a maison secondaire?

I am part of the way there - but I don't know much at all. Agreed - the second hand prices in France look a bit steep and I am buying a cheap RHD french car here in England with the plan of exporting it to France where it will one day die! The registration process seems complicated but do-able. One BIG QUESTION I have is do you have to be a french resident to register a car in France? I believe owning a maison secondaire and having an address is enough. It would be good if someone could give an authoratative answer.  

Instead, you could try to download the anti-virus software from avg. It's completely free for private / home users. It updates itself every day and is much more friendly than Norton for example. I've now used it for a while and have nothing but praise. With the anti-virus sorted you'll want a firewall - get a free firewall from zonealarm too. All at a cost of zero.

Curmudgeon mode ON! Why do so many people go to a forum site and lazily ask for very general advice? If you really want to go through with your plan my recommendation is to firstly spend hours, hours and hours trawling this site and others to get a feel of what's going on. Then get of your bottom, get looking on site so to speak, do plenty of driving, walking and talking. Then come back and ask specifics. Curmudgeon mode OFF! 

I'm too CIVIL to say you probably don't need a structural engineer, I reckon you could just talk to someone who knows about buildings, foundations, slopes, ground water levels and the like. Give us a bit more information please: age of property, size, ground slope, local watercourses, clay or chalk sub-soil, water mains or sewers in the vicinity even tides.