Araucaria

Can anyone suggest from personal experience a good wifi internet radio? A friend has the Orange version: it's designed to match the Livebox and it's called Liveradio. He finds that the volume just isn't enough: the speakers are pretty small, and although some stations give you an acceptable volume, others (including BBC World Service/Radio 4) just aren't loud enough. I've had a Revo Blik for a couple of years, and although as far as volume is concerned it's OK, I find it's very fiddly to use. It also has other irritating habits that I could list if anyone was interested.

We can (and do) drain the water out of all the supply pipes - yes, remembering to flush the loo and get as much water out of it as possible - but we leave the hot water cylinder as is, full, and turned on. The supply and flow pipes to/from the hot cylinder will be empty, so there's nothing to freeze. As the cylinder both fills from the top and supplies hot water from the top (and the heater element is at the bottom) I can't see that there will be any problems. There haven't be so far, and we've had some very cold winters.

[quote user="AnOther"]Secondly, if you are able to switch you will also be looking at replacing your tableau (fusebox for want of a better description) and an associated rewiring job so not a project to be taken on without understanding the full scope and costs. [/quote] I don't think changing from three-phase to single phase would require replacing the tableau (doing it the other way round would, though), or any re-wiring other than some minor additional connections in the tableau itself. But on the other hand I'm not an electrician, so what do I know? However it would be worth (a) asking an electrician what's involved, and (b) finding out from EDF if they think it would be possible. They probably wouldn't charge (no pun intended) if it can't be done. If it can, they will have to send someone to look at the current (ditto) set up before quoting for the cost of conversion.

[quote user="Jonzjob"] The system that I have is the Navitron one and the collector manifold is a 28mm tube with smaller, about 15mm, tubes braised across it to take the hot bulbs on the top end of the tubes. As Nick said, the hot bulbs at the top of those tubes are not in any kind of contact with the water. Another advantage of the tubes over any kind of flat plate is that there is a lot less water in the presurised hot side of the system. This is because the only water in the collector is the water in the 28mm manifold that runs along the top that the tubes are plugged into. With the flat plate the complete plate is full of water. This means that there is a lot less water to be heated and the response times are quicker. For water please read anti-freeze or any other liquid. [/quote] Jonzjob It's very hard to get sensible comparisons of the two types of systems, but the manufacturers of the flat plate collectors I am in the process of buying say they contain 0.6 litres of fluid for each square metre of aperture area. There is a Swiss solar testing outfit called SPF (www.spf.ch) who have tested a couple of Navitron EV systems - the SFB20 and the SFC10 - and the SPF report lets you work out that the fluid content of these two is 0.64 litres and 0.79 litres per square metre of aperture area. They give aperture area and fluid content and it's a fairly easy sum. I should add that I have no doubt at all that EV systems are generally more efficient than flat plate ones, but I don't think it's because of the different fluid contents.

I claim quite a lot of ignorance of all this (and would like to know more), but I did have a useful graph in an old book (courtesy of Messrs Pilkingtons) showing how much energy arrives at the earth's surface from difference frequencies of sunlight. It's not much in the UV end of the total spectrum, a very substantial peak indeed in the visible spectrum, and substantially declining amounts even before you get to the IR end, with three small peaks in the IR end. [edit] In fact,something rather like this graphic, from NASA: [IMG]http://i585.photobucket.com/albums/ss293/Vanman15/em_radiation_atmosph_depth_stsci.jpg[/IMG] which I found on this useful website: http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Atmosphere/earth_atmosph_radiation_budget.html where they also say by way of explanation of the graphic: A relatively narrow "window" of EM wavelengths around visible light reaches the ground. It includes some of the longer wavelength UV frequencies, some of the shorter wavelength IR frequencies, and all of the visble light region of the spectrum. Most of the longer wavelength IR waves, and many of the shorter radio waves, are absorbed by the stratosphere before reaching the ground. There is a sizeable "radio window" of radio wave frequencies that also reach terra firma. To me this suggests that although evacuated tubes can be more efficient at collecting solar energy in the IR and UV ends of the spectrum, they won't add such a very large amount to the energy that can be collected just from the visible spectrum, because that's where most of the energy is (and presumably it's why most animals, including us, evolved eyes which see in what we call the visible spectrum). And I'd be very surprised if the flat plate collectors didn't harvest any of the energy from the IR and UV ends of the spectrum. But I'm sure someone can post a link to say what the facts are as they relate to actual solar collectors of both types.

Sorted it this morning at the tax office. They said they thought we had simply improved the existing farmhouse, rather than converted the barn. Possibly "improved" was a euphemism for "suddenly become honest about the size of", as previously the farmhouse was - correctly - recorded as 84m2 and the barn is 209m2 .... Anyway, they apologised and said they'd put it right before the payment is taken in mid-October.

[quote user="Bino"]Good morning Théière, To cut to the chase, I would never personally use EV tubes, I sell them but do not recommend them for all sort of reasons, I personally use and sell Flat plate Solar Thermal, I also sell and install PV, We also are heat pump specialists. All I am trying to say is a simple cost effective way to heat a pool / DHW is using EPDM mats installed correctly connected to a heat pump will work 365 days a year 24 hours a a day. There is a care home using EPDM mats on the roof which produce 4000lts hot water (yes 4000) daily providing ALL the hot water needs for the home all year. You can all argue all day about Uv a and B if you want. only trying to help. regards Roy G[/quote] Roy - I have sent you a PM

Well I didn't find out if it was a mistake today - there was a huge demonstration in Aurillac, streets full of umbrellas and banners, and just about every single government employee was on strike. Particularly the tax office, where there was just a nice receptionist who suggested I should come back tomorrow.

[quote user="Clarkkent"]I think that there are some misconceptions here. My understanding is that when a pension is not funded and paid straight out of HM Treasury resources (as is the case with, for instance civil servants and teachers), HM Treasury - in accordance with the double taxation agreement between UK and France - reserves the right to tax at source. Hence people who receive unfunded Government pensions find they are taxed in the UK. I do not know whether NHS pensions are funded or not. For any other sources of income you can decide where you want them to be taxed. [/quote] I think there are some more misconceptions in the reply (and I see AnOther has made a similar comment) ..... The laws in the two countries, and the double tax treaty, determine where income is taxed, whether in one country exclusively, or in both with a credit for the first country's tax. It is never a matter of the taxpayer deciding where he pays tax, except in the very broadest sense that he can take a decision to live permanently in one country or the other, and so make himself a resident of France or the UK (or both, yes, that's possible too). Taxing income at source isn't necessarily an indication of the effect of the tax treaty. The income might not be taxed at source in the UK, but UK tax law and the treaty might make it taxable in the UK just the same. However, there is one interesting point that Daft Doctor might like to consider. He describes himself as likely to become a sleeping partner in the former practice partnership. He might be able to simplify his tax affairs by arranging for the income he gets to come to him in the form of a partnership annuity (talk to a UK accountant/lawyer about this). This is because I don't think the French fiscal authorities are terribly comfortable with the idea that you can have ceased entirely to participate in a partnership but that you are still entitled to a share of that partnership's profits. HMRC in the UK wouldn't mind and would continue to tax your profit share as if it were income from an activity conducted in the UK. But an equivalent amount paid as a partnership annuity would leave your other partners in the UK in just the same position, but you would not have to pay UK tax on it if you were not resident in the UK - you'd pay French tax instead. You might also pay a little less tax overall. Some of the luckiest UK ex-pats in France are those who manage to have income that is substantially split between a part that is taxable only in the UK and a part that is taxable only in France, though it will depend to a degree on how big the income is and on what your family circumstances might be.

Anne what is the garage floor made of? If it is coarse concrete you are unlikely to remove the stain completely with anything at all short of a cold chisel. If you cannot easily get hold of paraffin, diesel is an alternative. I don't think I would try petrol: it is too volatile and a bit dangerous to work with. Have you tried neat washing up liquid? Leave it on for a while, and see what comes up when you add hot water a few hours later. Good luck anyway!

When an older car changes hands to a new owner outside the previous owner's department, on re-registration the car will get new-style plates. The bit I thought bizarre about the new system is that (according to the Cantal prefecture website) if you register a sufficiently old car (over 30 years) as a vehicule de collection, you get a new-style number plate but if you wish you can have it in white (or silver) on a black background. Do the plate makers have the facility to do this I wonder?

We sent in an H1 after finally finishing our barn conversion in October 2009, and I've had an increased taxe fonciere bill for 2010. I thought I was told at the tax office that I'd get a three year holiday before I had to pay at the higher rate, but perhaps that was just for the taxe d'habitation. Does anyone know how the arrangements are supposed to work for the taxe fonciere?

Our builder and our heating engineer said that the twin walled terra-cotta blocks cannot be used directly as a flue: they must be lined, though I gather a single-skinned flexible stainless steel flue is OK as a lining inside these. I don't see how you'll fill the small cavities in the blocks with vermiculite: at each of the mortared joints you'll have a potential blockage, though perhaps if you fill each block before mortaring the next one up you might succeed. Sorry to post a contrary view, but this quite definitely what we've been told by the local professionals. And what we have had to do, too. Last thing: the blocks are marked with a small arrow showing which way is up. Our not very competent builders put all ours in upside down, but the heating chap said it didn't matter much.

I am certainly now much better informed (if none the wiser, as they say), but there are a couple of points I still don't understand. The first is that I think one of the wiring arrangements we tried was exactly as it should be. But it didn't work. So maybe the master filter is faulty. The second is that there's nothing very odd, or old fashioned, about the coffret, though modern norms would seem to have it filled up with RJ45 sockets which I can't quite see the use of. At least not with the set up we have. This is what we've got: [URL=http://s585.photobucket.com/albums/ss293/Vanman15/?action=view&current=coffret001.jpg][IMG]http://i585.photobucket.com/albums/ss293/Vanman15/th_coffret001.jpg[/IMG][/URL] I've taken all the covers off so the internals are visible. As far as I understand it (which is not very far), in the left-hand, DTI box, the FT cable arrives at the lower left corner. All the other punch-down connectors round the edge are for the separate phone connections, but they are all connected in parallel - if I've had the DTI's internals explained properly. To the left of the RJ45 socket (which is under the slide/flap marked test) there is a pull-out connector which I believe isolates all the phone lines. Does it also isolate the "test" socket, or does that one remain live? In view of that, then the only way to continue to use the DTI box is to take from it just one pair of wires which will go to the entry block of the ADSL filter on the right. Then all the phone lines would have to come from the phone exit of the filter, and the ADSL line would come from either the modem RJ45 socket on the top right of the filter, OR from the same entry block that the wires enter the filter through. That's because, AFAIK, the ADSL line isn't actually filtered, only the phone lines. Well, we tried that and got nowhere! At present the filter is there but it's effectively bypassed. And we've got a filter in one of the phone sockets, though it's the Heath Robinson affair I've previously described. As a result for the first time in months our FT line is working. I suppose we could forget about the FT line and its number, and stick with the VOIP phone we have from the Livebox. But the other number is listed in the local annuaire, and when people tried to phone it, they heard the ringing tone, but we never answered it. Does it matter which of the two wires goes into the correct part of the RJ45 sockets we have all round the house? Or can they happily be swapped around? Because I have a feeling now that our electrician doesn't really have much experience rewiring phone circuits.

[quote user="Quillan"]You do need a 'punch down' tool if you are going to hard wire but there is no need as they are showing you how to connect with the old style 'T' sockets and you have the new RJ11 one. Go to your local shops and you can buy a cable with RJ11 plugs on both ends. Plug one end in to the FT phone socket and the other end in to the 'line in' socket on the filter. You can get two wires in to the punch down block but you need the tool (known as a Krone tool). You can buy a professional one or you can get cheap plastic ones that will do about 100 connections before you bin it for a couple of Euros. By the way it does not 'strip' the cable as such and there is no need to strip the cable either, just place over the connector and press down with the tool. [/quote] Thanks Quillan. The only RJ11 socket on the FT "entry" box is the one marked "test", but I agree there's no reason why I shouldn't use one of the many RJ11/RJ11 cables I've bought to connect from it as you suggest - mind you my shortest cable is a meter long and the distance from the France Telecom "entry" box to the filter is about 10cm. There would then be only one set of wires in the punch-down block for the "line in" to the filter (they would be the ones going to my modem). I do know that the block doesn't actually strip the wires, just cuts into the insulation - it's like those dreadful connectors you could buy in the old days for installing a car radio. It often severed the wire! Right now it's all domino connectors, and a lot of spaghetti everywhere. Trouble is, even with everything connected the way the diagrams say, the filter didn't/doesn't work. Does PPP have a working master filter I wonder? If so which one? I also wonder whether it matters which way round each pair of wires is connected. Neither I nor the electrician troubled about that. As the RJ11 plugs aren't symmetrical (there's only one way you can put them into the socket) I wonder whether this might not be the root of the problem.

I'd say it wasn't just a good idea to tell your insurer before you go, it could be essential. Some English friends driving a UK registered car had a nasty experience in fog on an autoroute, left the road and wrecked the car (no-one else involved, driver unhurt). But the UK insurance was the one that Joanna Lumley advertises. They hadn't told the insurers they were going to France, so the cover they had was the basic minimum, and they lost a lot of money as a result. Some insurers, such as Saga, give you the same cover in Europe as they do in the UK, without you having to tell them. Others require you to tell them but don't charge extra unless the stay is a long one, and others make you pay. As reading the small print is often a waste of time, making a quick phone call could save you a lot of money. And I wonder if the OP's "some parts of France" where you need a green card might not be the DOM/TOM? Anyone know what's needed in St Pierre & Miquelon?

I think the really traditional pilgrimage from England started at Canterbury rather than Calais. Though at one time I believe the pilgrims then took ship from Hythe to Bordeaux, as France wasn't exactly safe for walking through.

Oh well, here's the diagram (it's a clickable thumbnail, on the basis that most people will be too bored to wait for a large image to load!) [URL=http://s585.photobucket.com/albums/ss293/Vanman15/?action=view&current=masterfilter.jpg][IMG]http://i585.photobucket.com/albums/ss293/Vanman15/th_masterfilter.jpg[/IMG][/URL] We tried to do the wiring as shown in the third picture.

Thanks Dave and PPP. For what it's worth, we weren't quite able to cable as shown in the diagram PPP posted (much the same as the one I have), because it's not possible to plug the modem into the RJ11 socket on the filter. The phone wires arrive downstairs in the room with the washing machine (where all the services arrive, water, electricity & phoine), but the computer and modem are upstairs where they won't accidentally get spin-dried. So we've used one of the internal phone cables. We could have put an RJ11 plug on the end (if I knew how - and it needs a special tool I think), but the wiring diagram suggests you simply add the modem pair of wires to the filter inlet for the France Telecom service: ie in the diagram, going into the same place as the "arrivee telephonique". In fact that's not possible, the "bornier" is of a type that you can only put a single pair of wires into, because it's one of those self-stripping, gripping ones. If you put two wires in, one always falls back out. But we joined the wires and put them in, and it didn't work. I could post a scan of the diagram but it's really tiny, an A5 sheet with three different suggested configurations. One thing I do see as different in my diagram is that the modem port on the filter is described as an RJ11 port, rather than a RJ45 one as shown on PPP's diagram. But as far as I remember, the modem (Livebox) cable is RJ45 at the modem end, and RJ11 at the wall socket end (but I could be wrong - I couldn't swear I'm still using the original cable). PPP, do you in fact have a master filter and does it work? I'm beginning to feel, with Dave, that life's too short!

We had completely new wiring, electricity and phone in our barn conversion, all done by a proper electrician. The France Telecom phone line arrives downstairs, goes into a little box marked DTI, and then from there we have four separate internal phone cables, each one going through a conduit to a separate phone socket in different places in the house. Where the line arrives, is, naturally, nowhere near where we keep the computers and livebox: those are on the next floor up and some way away. All the phone sockets are RJ11 ones - ie the little square ones, not the big "T" shaped ones. This type of system is supposed to be wired with an ADSL master filter. As far as I know you cannot buy off the shelf the individual phone filters wired through an RJ11 socket (but see below...). As I understand it, this is the way the master filter is supposed to work: the phone line comes into the house and goes into the master filter box immediately. There are two exits from the ADSL master filter: one goes to all the RJ11 sockets that are being used for phones, the other to the RJ11 socket which the livebox is plugged into. Getting slightly more technical, and I hope someone will correct me if I am wrong, the "ADSL" exit from the master filter isn't filtered at all: it's only the voice telephone lines that get filtered. The master filter we bought - off the shelf in Mr Bricolage but it was this one - has an RJ11 socket for the arriving phone line, a second next to it for the house voice telephone lines, and a third on the side for the modem. It also has two internal block connectors, one for the arriving phone line, and the other for the house voice telephones: there isn't a block connector for the adsl line - instead the instructions say you simply connect this straight to the incoming line from France Telecom (because it isn't filtered). We have tried connecting this ourselves. The original electrician didn't fit a filter when the rest of the installation was finished (all the outgoing wires from the box downstairs were simply connected together), and he was hard to get hold of after we'd paid him (quel surprise!). I thought, this really can't be hard. But it had me cursing for a couple of hours, as it simply didn't work. We finally managed to call in the electrician, and he spent another afternoon going over what we'd done, but with the same results (though without the cursing). With the filter wired as shown in the very simple diagram that came with the master filter, and with the modem in operation, the phone doesn't work at all. If the modem is unplugged it will work. We've been reduced to chaining phone connections: an RJ11 in the wall socket going to an old style floating "T" shaped socket, an ADSL filter in that, and an old style "T" shaped plug to an RJ11 plugged into the phone. That's ugly and cluttered (but it works), but we hardly want to do that for each of the phone connections (there are extensions on each of three floors). Has anyone had any success with an ADSL master filter like the one we've used, or with a different type?  How would we know if ours is faulty? Any suggestions what might be wrong? France Telecom - needless to say - disclaim any responsibility. It's our problem they say. And our electrician (like us) is baffled.  

[quote user="PeterG"]Rubbish..............I posted this at 6:42am[/quote] From which I can deduce that you should be living in either Yakutsk or Brisbane (I think Brisbane is a bit nicer).

Thanks Will, I hadn't realised I could change the time myself. Obvious really, but not to the impenetrably stupid like me. It's now the same time inside the forum as out.

Thanks Coops In the end I went to Maxauto in Figeac who (usually) stock fuel pipe in various sizes, but they were out of most of them: they sent me on to Flauraud, a proper motor-factor, about a half-kilometer away and they had everything I might need in fuel pipe sizes. Flauraud have shops in most parts of France. So the H-van will be going out for a trip today.

Is it my imagination, or do the times shown for posts on the forum all need to have an hour added to them? Perhaps the forum doesn't know it's summer.

Does anyone know what type of retailer might sell me 8mm internal diameter automobile fuel pipe (7.5mm would be better)? Is it something Feu Vert stock, or are there common but more specialised outlets? Or maybe I should just try the local garage. I live in the southern Cantal near the Aveyron/Lot border.