lancashirelass11

My friends up near Blaye have started getting English paint from some English shopkeepers up near COgnac who appear to make regular trips to the UK to collect the stuff.  Not sure of the prices or what's available, but if you are interested, I can get the details from them. Louise

Hi there Just reviewing my Barclays France account charges this year, and wondering if I would be better off moving to another bank - but which one? We have a house in 33 which we use 5-6 weeks a year at most.  Only monthly expenditure from the account is a DD to EDF and the monthly account fee of 9 euro. Periodically, automated debits come out for the water rates and tax fonciere\habitation, plus we use our carte bleu for shopping etc when we are in France. Am I getting a deal that is fairly standard across FRance, or could I get a cheaper account elsewhere.  Would need to be accessible by internet and have an english speaking account manager. thanks louise

Just trying to save myself a bit of cash on the way down from Calais to Bordeaux on the A28\N10.  Am expecting to need to refuel around Abbeville and Poitiers, and usually just end up paying the prices at autoroute service stations.  However, am looking up cheaper options just off the autoroute, but getting confused about the peages.  I know there are a few sections where there are no tolls to pay, but I can't remember which sections.  I think the section around Alencon is toll, and am wondering about getting off the autoroute at sortie 19 (as suggested above) and using the Leclerc fuel station nearby.  But what happens when I get off the autoroute & get back on again?  I'm guessing there will be a peage at sortie 19 for me to pay my dues, and a station to take another ticket as I get back on again.  Am I right, and is it therefore a sensible option to do this, or better to find filling stations close to the areas where there are no tolls?   thanks louise 

Thanks - I just got a similar price for 30mm calcaire, but it's been suggested that I will be forever walking white dust into the house, so wondering what I can get that doesn't shed dust, but is not too much more expensive.   Also, I am laying the stuff onto a mixture of scruffy concrete and tarmac, I was going to just lay a couple of inches of 20mm gravel straight on top, no messing with anything bigger underneath.  Presume that is OK?

Anton, I'm on here researching gravel for my drive in 33 (not far from you in Bourg sur Gironde).  I need around 2 tonnes, and was hoping I could get a local merchant to deliver.  I'm expecting to pay around £100 a tonne for 10-20mm limestone - am I about right?   Also, off topic a bit - I need to shift around a tonne of rubble left over from earlier renovations - probably too much for the back of the estate, but I've been told skips are expensive.  Any idea how much I might pay in 33?  Beginning to wonder if it might be worth buying a trailer off ebay and bringing it down with us.   thanks  

Thanks Anton, We are arriving in France with the new cooker on Sunday, so if you hear of any incidents involving gas bottles near Bourg you'll know it's us!   louise

I had thought that bringing our Cannon gas cooker (with jets converted to LPG) to our holiday home would be easy, but am beginning to wonder if I am missing a trick here.  The previous (French) owner left us an old but serviceable cooker, connected to a flexible hose that ran through the back of 2 kitchen cupboards to a smallish butane gas tank in the corner of the kitchen. I naievely assumed that we would bring the cooker over, unscrew the hose from the back of the old cooker and screw it back onto the new cooker.  Know next to nothing about gas and less about plumbing, but unscrewing a pipe from one place and screwing it into another was more like putting a plug in the wall. However, we are having a few wobbles about whether the fittings we have bought, or already have in France are suitable (see my earlier posts), and now I am wondering if we do need a registered gas fitter to do this for us.  Plus my man in the (very good) hardware store thought that no cookers would run off butane as "it doesn't get hot enough" and that it was illegal to have an LPG (butane or propane) indoors.  He also said it was necessary to run the cooker hose to a wall mounted fitting which led onto the gas tank. I'm getting the idea that it is legal to have butane indoors in FRance, but for some reason only one tank (but I will have two in total if you include the gas heater tank) and that butane will get hot enough ('cos that's what we are using now), and surely our French guy would have had the cooker fitted legally????    Grateful for any advice about what the regs are in France so I can decide whether we need a plombier or not. Thanks

Can anyone offer any advice about the kind of gas pipe we need to connect our new English-bought gas cooker to our French bottled gas? Our cooker has a female screw in fitting, whereas our current French cooker has a male screw in 15mm fitting, to which we have attached a female fitting, with a pipe running to the gas bottle. All the UK hoses seem to have the fitting we need at the cooker end, but they all have a bayonet fitting at the gas end, with various bits of adaptors supplied as part of the LPG hose kit.  At the gas end, our French hose just has a female screw in fitting to join to the regulator - but the fitting is not suitable at the cooker end.  If you see what I mean. Can we buy an adapter to turn our French gas pipe into a  male fitting (at the cooker end), and can we buy it in the UK or only in France?  Or should we buy one of the UK kits that will fit the cooker end, in the hope that the gas end will fit into our French regulator?  

Not sure if this is the right place to post this. We've had our first year as french property owners, and have had our electricity bill for the period, which comes to 227euros.  We've been there for about 4 weeks in total, much of it in the cooler months, admittedly, and we have had some workmen in too for about 3 months.  I'm trying to make sense of the bill, and trawl the edf website to work out whether we are on the best deal, but could do with some help.   We are on "heures creuses code 024", and I know our cheap rate (creuses) is overnight and at lunchtime - but I can't find anything on the edf site that tells me what code 024 is.  Am I right in thinking that this tariff runs 365 days with no red, blue days etc.? Where does it tell me about the tariffs on edf? Next, we have a huge hot water tank that I cannot fathom.  It is modern, no more than 4 or 5 years old at most, I would say. There is no switch, like our UK immersion heater, so it seems to be permanently on as soon as we turn on the electriciy.  However, it only seems to heat the water now and again, but I can't worl out the times.  Last time we were there, it didn't heat up for about 24 hours.  But once it does heat up it is boiling hot, and I can't seem to find the thermostat to turn it down - Im sure it must be somewhere on the tank. Is it common for the hot water tanks not to have an on\off switch, or do you think I jst haven't found it yet? thanks louise

Just a quick update to say that I phoned SKy in the UK from my mobile (in France) and was set up in no time.  Easy peasy. It's the thin end of the wedge though.  When we first bought, we vowed no Sky, no internet, we want some peace.......less than 12 months in, we are already glued to the box and thinking about getting dial up!

I am off to France next week and taking my new freesat from sky card, which I have not yet registered with Sky.  When I got my last card (which I have now given to a friend), both digibox and card were in the UK when I registered them.  Now both will be in France, and I have to call up SKy to register the new card.  Sky have told me I can insert the card, take some details from the set up screen (box serial no, etc) and as long as I leave the box on standby, I can call to register the card any time.  Can anyone tell me whether Sky will be able to tell that the box and card are in France, and not in the UK?  Thanks

It's working!  Thanks for all your posts.  Our friends in France have got a picture!  It seems that one rather significant factor was that the lead from the dish wasn't working! Anyway, hope to be in France in the next week or so to try it out.  

Not had chance to have a go yet - am only back in France on 15th April.  For now, my friends are having another go before GALMI! Will report back as soon as I have any news. Thanks for asking

Looks like the stuff for me! How to we get the rails to disappear though - do we skim over the plasterboard? louise

Can anyone offer any advice?  We are in 33, 30 mins nortyh of Bordeaux on the right bank, and have spent several hours tryingto get a signal from the satellite dish we have just put up.  The digiobx works fine, checked it at a friends, and the dish is a new 80cm on from Leroy Merlin.  We just can get any signal at all. The old lady next door keeps saying that they have a booster box because of the "hills", but she doesn't appear to have a satellite dish!  Anyway, there are no hills around us, just gentle, small slopes.  Other neighbours all have dishes, although they are all French. We are using a cable that the previous owner used to link his satellite to the TV, and we have tried other shorter bits of cable in an attempt to discount it being a cable problem. Kind of run out of ideas now, and am about to get the experts in.  However, can anyone suggest anything else I could try, and\or confirm whether there is such a thing as a booster box for a satellite? thanks