Goodlife

Trying to bring my 1997 Honda Blackbird into France and hit a snag with the Certificate of Conformity.  It was originally a German bike, imported new into the UK as a personal import back in the grey-import heyday when UK bike prices were sky high above the rest of Europe.  I bought it years ago from the chap that originally imported it. I thought I'd try calling Honda Europe (based in UK) for the CoC but they said call Honda Germany.  Honda Germany are saying that no European COC is available due to the age of the bike. However, they could provide a technical data table (60 EUR).  Does anyone know if this will be accepted by French authorities? Thanks

Brilliant.  Many Thanks

Bonjour We have been resident and employed in France for 18 months and pay our taxes.  For various reasons we need to fill in a form called "Declaration De Ressources - Anneé 2007" and are looking for advice from the collective knowledge on here.  My previous UK employer never sent payslips since they were posted online on the company intranet, so I have no proof of monthly income and taxes from 2007.  I do have UK income tax returns and P60's, but obviously these run from April to March so cross over a French tax year.  I therefore have no way to determine the exact income and tax paid from Jan 2007 to Dec 2007. Is there an official way to calculate this? Perhaps we should take 3/12ths of the 2006-2007 UK tax return values and add 9/12ths of the 2007-2008 UK tax return values? Also, the form wants amounts in Euros.  Would we calculate using FX rates from 2007 or today's rates? Thanks for any assistance.

[quote user="BIG MAC"]Presumably for French Fiscal residents only?[/quote]Not sure, I heard it's for anyone doing work on a house in France.  Irrelevant for us as we are fiscale en France.

Thanks Clair.  So by the sounds of that, we could take an interest free loan to pay for all the work associated with the roof insulation, new windows, heating/plumbing and even a wood burning heater.  Other things like floors, inner walls, electrical work, bathroom, etc will not be permitted within the interest free loan.  Is this right?

With Sarko funding EUR 30k interest free loans for "green" renovations, where can we find the official list of renovations that fall into this "green" category?  We have a part of our house currently uninhabitable that we were looking to renovate during 2009, so wondered how much we could profit from this new interest free loan.

Brilliant, thanks!

We'd like to install some lights along our drive and I've search this forum for the relevant information without success. What are the regulations for burying electrical cable underground?  It will be a cable run underground of around 25-30 meters in total, with 3 lights popping up along it's length, plus a switch.  It will also be installed onto it's own individual circuit breaker.  For example, does the gaine need to be red?  Does that fact it's going underground mean the gaine and cable need to conform to a specific standard?

We've decided to take the plunge ([:)]) and have a pool installed.  As complete newbies to the world of Piscines it seems the more we read, the more we realise how little we know.  Is there a good website that can give us an idiots guide to what we need to know?  Is there a glossary of terms somewhere (e.g. what on earth is an abri - apart from being a shed). We'd like an in gound pool around 10m x 4m.  Key criteria for us is long life, minimal maintenance and low ongoing costs.  We'd rather spend more up front to ensure it's done right first time than continually be spending money on maintenance, heating, leaks, etc.  We visited a local pool shop yesterday and came away with some shiny brochures, but they are all kits including filters, etc - then having read on here that French kits lack the necessary filtering power, it doesn't give confidence that they would be any good. Finally, can anyone recommend a good installer who uses high quality products in the Le Mans/Alencon area?  

Thanks Sam.  Excellent to know.  Hi Deborah!  Leg getting much better now thanks [:)]

I need to catch a flight to Malaga in Spain in a couple of weeks and will be near Le Mans at the start of the trip.  I'm guessing that getting on a TGV at Le Mans gare heading towards Paris is a good place to start the journey [:)].  CDG and ORY airports are both OK for flights to Malaga, so would appreciate anyones thoughts on which airport is easiest to get to from a Train/Metro perspective coming into Montparnasse?   Or is there an altogether better alternative way to Spain?

Our car passed it's CT today.  We were discussing the 2 years in France vs each year in UK with the Garage owner, who told us that France is moving to annual CT's in 2010.  We'll all be safer after 2010, since as has been said, a lot more can go wrong in 2 years than one year [:)]

Does anyone know what the octane rating of French "Super" petrol is?  Also, is Super still leaded, or unleaded? We're running our 1966 MGB GT over here (no unleaded conversion) so currently use unleaded 98 fuel, plus octane booster + lead additives, but just wondering whether using Super would remove the need for these additives.  The car needs 100 Octane leaded fuel to run correctly.  

[quote user="Ron Avery"]You will find that the insurance for " foreign" cars is dear as the parts are expensive for repairs, even BMW and Mercedes are more expensive than a comparable French car.  What sort of discount are you getting for NCB?  If you get 50% that is a good price for a gas guzzler.  I hope its diesel because with the price of petrol going up and up it ain't going to do your bank balance much good using that here.[/quote]The €1800 is including a 50% discount.  It's simply staggering the insurance prices over here.  I'm surprised there isn't a stike somewhere to complain about it [;-)].  Might need to re-think the choice of vehicle, but the problem is that modern French cars have a habit of falling to bits after a few years...

[quote user="Sunday Driver"] Try [url=http://www.assurland.com/]www.assurland.com[/url] for insurance comparisons.   [/quote]Thanks SD.  We did!  That's what gave us €1800 as the cheapest quote.