Nearly Retired (I am now)

Your second tank could be a solar heated one, maybe.

It's good to hear a real second home owner's experiences of a pool - thank you. If possible could you enlarge on what you need to do before you leave the house and return to UK and what, if anything, happens when you are away. Simply put, the second home owner's ideal situation is to turn up one day in mid-summer, take the cover off and dive in to a perfectly clean pool. Then, when leaving, just pull on the cover and go home. I'm sure it isn't quite like that though !

Not much immediate help to you, but I used this (http://performancebatteries.co.uk/) UK site last week to get a battery for our own Peugeot 306 diesel. They do next day UK delivery and taking a guess at what you may need the cost comes out at £38.95. This is not totally useless information as it gives you an idea of a good UK price.

Thanks for giving me the extra confidence SD. It's not so much a deal breaker as we've already had the house in 17 for 5+ years. It's just that a new condition has affected one of us, there's been recent urgent need of A&E in UK and unfortunately there may be again. So, .....do you wrap yourself in cotton wool, do nothing and go nowhere or try and live a bit ?

Thanks - I know that Urgences 24h/24 means what an English speaker would call Accident and Emergency. No problem there. I then read "Tous nos services.........+" My eyes followed down the page to a "+" sign when I saw that the hospital proudly offered a shop and car park. A perusal of the other services didn't mention Urgences 24h/24 again and I wondered if indeed they were available and so asked here again. I needed to be absolutely sure and to have no doubts in my mind as a local lack of Urgences 24h/24 would possibly prevent our return to France. Also, a year or so back when someone I know had a heart attack in Matha I learned he was helicoptered to La Rochelle which again put some doubts in my mind.

Thanks SD. This still leaves me confused. My french is passable (well I think so !) but my understanding is it does not offer an A & E service.

I'll start here and if my question is too specific I'll move it the regional section. We have a house in the St Jean D'Angely, Aulnay, Matha area and have always presumed (but never needed it) that the nearest 24 hour A&E department was at the hospital in St Jean D'Angely. Soon we'll be returning and need the comfort of this knowledge. Is any local person able to kindly confirm or give other advice.

For starters, I guess a near vertical reinforced concrete wall would set you back more than you paid for your house. A steel sheet pile wall - a bit less, but access for the big crane may be difficult. A completely off-the-wall suggestion: If you want to better define your boundary, how about 5 or 6 vertical well braced steel sections each about 5 metres high and embedded in concrete holes at the foot of your slope just inside the boundary line. Span across from your main garden level to a capping beam across the top of the steel columns and build a wooden deck on top which would extend outwards right up to your boundary. You might want to get some sort of deep rooted plants or other restraint to keep the slope in place under your deck.  

I copied this passage from the web site: Warning, FX brokers are unregulated … Unlike banks, currency exchange businesses don't have to be regulated by the FSA so there’s always the possibility of problems. Yet the big established businesses tend to have good reputations and as they pay better rates they should be the best bet, though there are NO guarantees. Knowing this, these companies work hard to prove their stability, and a little research should bear that out. HiFX, for example, stores your money in a Barclays account while it’s in transit before it hits your account overseas, to ensure it is safe.

This site is worth a look - it gives a good summary about who does what:  http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/foreign-currency-exchange

In the past I have used a couple of these types of firms to transfer the house buying funds (in two tranches) and then something like a €30,000 top up for refurbishment expenses. What I didn't know then is that they are all unregulated. If they go bust with your money or the directors just disappear - so does your money. Quite a few lesser known firms have already caused anguish for poor souls transferring money to places like Iran and Kuwait. Taking into account today's uncertain world I might just stick with a regulated bank next time and pay the premium for peace of mind - I've lost too much money elsewhere already!.

I have no idea about availability in France but I have succesfully used this liquid ( it looks a bit like thick milk) in screed mixes. http://www.ronacrete.co.uk/ProductFiles/IS/ronafix.12.mixc.pdf It allowed me to have a 5mm thick screed with no problems - you can even feather it out down to the size of the sand grains in the mix. You have to wash it off your tools within an hour or half an hour or so - otherwise they have to be binned.    

My view..... It's your house and you just go ahead and do whatever you want inside it. If you are the sort of person who doesn't report himself to the police everytime he drives over the speed limit you should be quite comfortable with this. My tin hat is now strapped on, goggles on and the flak jacket belted up.........

I'll tell you what - it won't happen by 31st March if ever. The booking system was due to start on 16th March but hasn't. A bunch of clowns in my opinion. I still mourn the sad passing of Speedferries.

In 17 we converted the end of a corridor to a 2.0m x 2.0m shower room / WC last year. The supply pipe runs were 30m long and insulated all the way. The firm supplied and installed a WC, basin, and cabin de douche at first floor level. At the ground floor they connected the first floor new WC waste to the ground floor with a 110mm pipe. They then renewed the ground floor WC pan and installed a tiny wash hand basin too. All supply and waste pipes were suppled and fitted. Cost €3200 + €500 for a wobbly cabin. - 5.5% TVA inc. I built the partitions myself and will (one day) tile the walls and floor too. I decided to pay for what would take me forever and test my plumbing skills to the limit. But I'm happy as Larry with partitions, tiling and electrics. Do I think your quote is expensive? Probably yes .

The financial pages of the papers are talking about a glut of LNG (Liquid Natural Gas), so much so, that it might even bring about the closure of coal mines as power stations increasingly turn to LNG. Summer is coming and it's a time of lower demand in Europe. The € is pretty much overvalued in the eyes of most commentators ( I hesitate to call them experts -  we all now have absoloute proof that experts in finance do not exist !) and will soon drop against the $ in which oil and gas are priced. It's even good for us UK resident maison secondaire owners, as we just need to wait unitil the € drops and catch gas deliveries on the price lag - we'd better be quick about it though. There is however a possible flaw in the above argument - do French LPG prices bear any relation to world gas prices, or is it simply a case of what the market will bear? I need to spend about €1000 euros soon, so I'd be interested in any views or facts on LPG prices in France.

Our wooden shutters were originally varnished but showing signs of wear and some rot too. SWMBO really wanted painted shutters but I wasn't too keen knowing that fettling up varnished ones in good order would simply mean a light sanding and a coat of varnish before the lunchtime drink about once every five years maybe. We compromised by starting only on a west facing wooden door which I filled, primed, undercoated and applied two coats of gloss Dulux paint. It cracked within weeks, or more accurately the existing cracks re-opened. I filled them, undercoated and again applied two coats of gloss. A few months later I did the same again. I've now given up, accept the appearance and know I need to tart it up once a year. Since the above experience I have sanded down, filled and repaired more shutters than I want to remember. I then gave them two coats of branded french varnish / lasure / whatever, which supposedly gave an 8 year guarantee. It was a long job. The varnish was treacle thick and 3 years on, after a rain fall to clean-off the dust, they look as good as the day I did them. I will never paint another bit of external joinery in France again - life's too short..

With no specific regs preventing the placing of a socket close to a pool I'd make sure it was well out of "normal" reach of young people - maybe even in a little box, like a bird nesting box. I'm surprised though, as I thought there would be some regulation because I've been doing all sorts of pencil marks on walls and measuring to keep on the right side of Zones 1, 2 & 3 in a new bathroom when planning lights, illuminated mirror, towel rail and the like..

Our swimming pool looks lovely in my mind's eye, but at present its proposed corners are only marked out by 4 up-turned flower pots on the old vegetable patch. One day we will have a pool..........one day...... Just now, I want an electricity socket outside, have power in the barn and plan to drill through a 2 foot thickness of stone wall and fit a proper external socket at about shoulder height. If......er..... I mean when the pool is built this socket will be on the back wall of an outside, but roofed over, lounging area where we'll have the beds and chairs to keep out of the sun, a small table with the cold beers - you know the kind of dream. If this area, say 3 metres away from the edge of an inground pool has an electricity socket on a wall is it OK for French regs ? Note: The regs are certain to change by the time we get the pool, but I like to plan ahead. 

tj   - "....there are more bad ones than good. Especially if he is not english, since europe thrives on the most abysmal customer service and absence of any sense of 'doing a job well'. Please tell me that observation was tongue in cheek. I have had experience of 3 plumbers (including firms - not one man bands) in the UK and of 2 plumbers (4 occasions) in France in the last 5 years or so. My small survey suggests the English ones (all Corgi) were wasters who couldn't get the job done properly and I needed to finish them off myself. My gas connection didn't leak - his did! In France however, the quality and attention to detail has been spot on. This is only my own experience of course.  

Bugbear - keep your back straight as well as your friend Winston in the corner - we can see you you know. As you are fully aware we are at war with Oceania or is it Eurasia this month; who knows, who cares, let's just call them terrorists - we need to protect you - it's all for your safety, you know it makes sense. Scarey or what ?    

Lisleoise - maybe you should check the batteries in your calculator: "Yesterday at Auchan in Périgueux it was .939€ so by my calculation it would be cheaper in the UK" I reckon your Auchan is around 15p cheaper per litre.

I never use the autoroutes for a fuel fill-up unless I can possibly help it - I'm a cheapskate supermarche man myself. Even with the drop in value of the £ against the €, in my case last week, a French fill-up vs a UK one saved around £7. Nowhere near as good as saving between £15 - £18 as once was, but still worth it.

I think you're really needing some heavy / dense material to give you best soundproofing. I'm still in the planning stage for soundproofing my WC waste pipe, but so far my thoughts are to wrap the pipe in carpet underlay (the heavy corrugated / lumpy rubber material with hessian backing) and then fill any remaining space with rockwool insulation before boxing-out. I'm also thinking of gluing the box-out material (MDF probably) to the walls and to itself with bathroom mastic to give a flexible fixing and maybe help avoid sound transmission.

Stan said: "I may just decide to buy a small car in France." I thought about this option too, but the lottery numbers didn't come up - have you seen the prices of second hand cars in France ?. I'm still working on Plan B which is to take a cheap RHD but French manufactured car from England to France and register it there. I've got the car - now for the more difficult bit.