Araucaria

Thanks Ron - but what's the two-letter code?

My OH receives a very small amount of PLR income - that's Public Lending Rights, a few pence whenever one of her books is taken out of a UK public library (she doesn't get any royalties on sales). Does anyone know where this goes on the 2047 and 2042? I'd be most grateful for advice.

Thanks Sunday Driver - the lady at the tax office did say that the paper forms would be available on 5 May, as I asked specifically. She also said that this was a later date than ever before (which I think is right - the FAQs section above says "usually April"). But as far as filing on-line is concerned, clearly she was talking through her hat.

My local bureau des impots assured me that I could file online, even though it was the first French tax return I would be making (I became resident in 2008). I feel fairly sure this is wrong, as filing on line seems to require various identifying numbers that come from the previous year's paper return or tax payments statement - but can anyone confirm or deny this? I am aware that the FAQs above say that the first ever filing has to be done on paper, but the lady at the tax office was so sure that this wasn't so that she wouldn't even take my name and address to send me the paper forms.

We bought some of the Dulux Valentine paint from Mr Bric yesterday, and were a bit surprised to find that the large plastic oblong tin was only half full (though it did contain the promised 2.5 litres of paint). Possibly this is to make it easier to use a roller straight from the tin. But when using it we found that the large amount of air space in the tin had let annoying quantities of the paint set hard, so it couldn't all be used and was distinctly lumpy on the brush. Apart from that the coverage was good, and colour - white! - OK. But even on special offer, as it was, it was quite expensive: €34 reduced to €29.90 for 2.5 litres. The Corona acrilique on the next shelf - which I am now kicking myself for NOT buying - was (I think) €43 for 5 litres.

Isn't there a risk that a bona fide professional insurance broker will simply be annoyed by getting a "letter+envelope" like that - implying that he's not entirely to be trusted? Or do they all get so many in that form that it's water off a ducks back?

When we asked the plumber/electrician who installed our electric hot water cylinder about turning down the thermostat, he said it was a factory pre-set (at I think 58 degrees - very hot, anyway) and could not be changed - that is, there was no way of changing it. This might, of course, be incorrect, but it it is probably worth asking before trying to alter something that is fixed. Our pressure relief valve only drips occasionally - every week or so. We were told to open it to let a little water out on a regular basis - every month - to make sure it doesn't seize up. A subsequent plumber said that was the correct advice to give but no-one normally does it!

I am not wholly convinced by the printers mistake explanation: have a look at this very respectable web-page which gives some alternative and - you may think - equally convincing derivations. The forum wouldn't allow me to print them here I'm afraid.

I hope no-one will mind my two-penn'orth of pedantry, probably not all of it right: It's diphthong with two "h's" not one - it's from a greek word combination simply meaning "two sounds". The second greek word was phtho(n)ggos, meaning "voice", though how that initial "phth" was actually pronounced is a matter for speculation. Try it! And I believe the word diphthong has two quite different meanings: either two printed characters that are pronounced as a single sound (in this sense diphthongs can be part of a wider class of  "vocalic digraphs": consonantal ones such as "ch" and vowel ones such as "ee"), or alternatively as a vowel sound that starts with one sound and slips into another - like the "ou" in the English "sour". The linked vowels when they are printed are called diphthong ligatures: see this article . Diphthong refers to the sound, not the printed appearance of the letters. What would be helpful to know would be how to pronounce them. Saying it's a diphthong doesn't help much if you don't know which meaning of diphthong is being used. So is "soeur" or "boeuf" pronounced as one vowel sound sliding into another, or is it just one vowel sound? My French pronunciation is pretty poor and I don't know, but my feeling is it's a single sound. French doesn't have a lot of the double-sound diphthongs, but English has lots, and that's one of the things which makes trouble for us when learning to speak French.

Glad you like the H-Type, Dog: and that's the barn in question behind it. Oh, and thanks for the advice too. Though the builders seem to be spinning it out quite long enough for me.......

OP said it was HMCS (the Court Service?) not HMRC. It would be the former rather than the latter who would have the job of chasing up an unpaid French tax debt in the UK.

Judie sorry, you're quite right, not a new build but a conversion of a farm building. It's just that EVERYTHING had to be done - about the only original bits left are the walls! and it would have been a good deal cheaper to start with a cleared site (but not so pretty). And as you say we started with a CU and then got the Permis de Construire. I'd imagined the rules work the same way for a barn conversion as for a new house: the standard letter I've received with the form H1 starts by listing what's affected, and it's: "travaux affectant les immeubles batis (constructions nouvelles, additions de construction, demolitions, etc)". Again, it would be helpful to hear from someone who has had a similar project.

No, indeed not. I can see the point of having a restrictive definition - they don't want people living in a new house and refusing to pay the tax on the basis it's "not finished". But on the other hand we'll happily fill in the forms and pay the extra tax, as soon as we're in the house, finished or not. It's just that right now it's uninhabitable - tricky going up to bed up a ladder, and no water anywhere except at the end of a hosepipe. Or lights. Etc But it was that French definition that worried me. Has anyone any actual experience of filling in the H1 for a new build? If so, when did they do it?

We're in the process of doing a barn conversion (and it's taking a long time) and I've received a letter from the bureau d'impots inviting me to fill in a form H1 when it's finished. What concerns me is the covering letter, which explains that there is a fiscal sense of "finished": "La notion d'achevement des travaux au sens fiscal s'etend de locaux utilisables, c'est a dire, notamment, pour lesquels le gros oeuvre, la maconnerie, la couverture, les fermetures exterieures et les branchements sur les reseaux exterieures sont termines." (please excuse the lack of accents!) In our case the barn is nowhere near habitable (no staircase, the floors aren't down, the plumbing isn't finished - no water in the internal pipes - and there are no celings in the upper rooms) but all the exterior work is done, roofs, windows etc. But it sounds a bit like it might actually be "finished" in the fiscal sense! In one case maybe not - there's only a temporary single-phase electricity supply, and we're still waiting for the electrician to put the three-phase supply in (right now the three-phase supply only runs to the old farmhouse, and hasn't yet been pulled through the underground gaines the next 30 meters to the barn). That's needed for the central heating boiler - it won't run without it. Can anyone advise whether now is the time to fill the form in and send it off? We're supervising the work ourselves (and doing some of it) so we don't have a professional adviser for this. I'd really appreciate help. Otherwise it's down to the Hotel des Impots to ask in my not very good French.

Yes, yes, I know I'm paranoid ....... ......  but am I paranoid ENOUGH?

If you want to see the flights to Rodez continue, make a point of filling in that little questionnaire you're often offered. The important bit is to remember to put in just how much money you have spent in hotels/restaurants/shops in the Aveyron. It really was quite a lot wasn't it? And that'll cheer up the Aveyron tourist board no end. Making them wish to see the flights come in every day.......

Six weeks after handing in the E121 papers we'd heard nothing, so we went along to the CPAM rep (in our case, once a week at the "Maison des Services") and asked. She logged on to the network, found that everything was going forward properly, and printed off an attestation on the spot. And then photocopied it, so we'd have a copy after giving one to the mutuelle. As an aside, I'm not quite 60 but my wife is a little older, so I'm piggybacking on her for E121 purposes. When we first took the two sets of forms in to the CPAM 25 miles away at the prefecture (I mean the departmental head office) the unhelpful chap behind the counter accepted my wife's application but rejected mine - said it wasn't in my own name. This was of course true but quite irrelevant. So the following week we took it along to the CPAM rep - who I'd dealt with before - in the Maison des Services (5 miles away) who accepted the papers quite happily. I'm afraid once someone behind a desk decides your papers aren't in order, there's little you can do to change his mind (England or France).

Clarks - it's not quite that much concrete, as it'll only be 35cm thick at one point on the downhill end - it should taper off to about a 10cm depth both at the uphill end, and towards the building. This is difficult to explain, but the ground slopes away from the building both at right angles to the walls, and also along the wall from one end to the other. As a result there's only one external corner of the slab where the thickness will need to be as much as 35cm. The uphill corner will be at ground level. My own arithmetic was an average depth of somewhere between 15cm and 20cm, making it about the 4 cu meters I said. But you can certainly see why I can't do it all at once! And as I find it hard to estimate the quantity with any degree of accuracy, getting it as a readymix and getting the quantity wrong would be a problem - particularly if it was too little. Thanks again.

Thanks very much everyone - this is all very practical advice, encouraging too, and I should be able to start tackling it with confidence as soon as the sun starts shining (that'll be mid-May, then).

Thanks guys - I'll have some help later in the year when the visitors start arriving, but this is one job I'd like to get done earlier rather than later. I do already have a mixer, but from past experience and at my age (60 but my back says it's a lot more) it's still too much to do all at once. We're talking a good 3 or 4 cubic meters of concrete (or concrete and hardcore). I have some reinforcement I could use in it, but the ground is very solid - bits of it are bedrock - and even if there's some movement eventually it won't be the end of the world. It's only an outside terrace! Is the accepted view that if I lay it in sections, each section is pretty sure to move separately from the others? I'd hoped the separate bits of concrete would bond to each other, at least to some degree. If not, would it maybe be an idea to try to make the joins in the concrete coincide with joints in the tiling (30cm square tiles)? I can't think of a way of using reinforcing mesh and doing it in sections, though with the second and third options that should be just about possible.

I plan to lay a concrete slab for an outside terrace. I'd like to mix the concrete myself rather than buy it ready-mixed, as there isn't any sensible access for a heavy lorry that won't wreck the garden. We've had it wrecked several times before - funny how the delivery always arrives during a week of heavy rain. It's not an enormous area - about 5 meters each way - but as the ground slopes it will need be fairly thick, maybe 35cm at one edge, to provide a reasonable thickness at the upslope end. I'll be doing it single-handed and it would be more than I could mix in one day, so I hope to be able to do it a bit at a time. That's where I need advice. I'd considered three possibilities, but if anyone could suggest a "best way" I'd appreciate it. One option was to lay it in strips, about half a meter wide (and 5 meters long). Wait till each one is reasonably solid, and then put the next one in, just moving the shuttering along each time. This has the advantage of avoiding doing my back in, as it would spread the work over a couple of weeks. The second was to cast the three outer edges first (the fourth edge is against the building), let that harden, infill the centre with a quantity of hardcore, and just pour (all in one go) a 10cm slab over the centre. This has the advantage of saving on concrete, but the shuttering for the outside edges is a bit complicated. The third was to cast it all once, having dumped a mound of hardcore in the centre, thus reducing the amount of concrete to be mixed. In all three options, the three outer edges have got to be concrete all the way down - the slab will eventually be tiled both on top and on the edges where they show above ground level. I've laid concrete before so I'm not a complete beginner, but I haven't tried a large area previously (or not without help, anyway). Any suggestions/advice?

Teapot Yes, I'd agree that someone who owns one (as in that thread about swimming pools) has a moderate financial interest in the pool they have bought, in the sense that it would cost them money to change it. Most posters who are looking for information do their best to say what the problem is, and in doing so usually describe the type of pool they have. And yes, it's human nature to defend the product you've bought, particularly when it's a very costly purchase - as pools usually are. But having a commercial interest isn't something I'd describe as an "allegation". If someone is in the business of selling pools or pool machinery/supplies then s/he has a commercial interest in the products s/he sells. That's what I mean by a commercial interest anyway. What you seem to be describing is (I think) more like market rigging which, as you say, is nowadays pretty difficult unless you happen to be a very large multinational. But we aren't very likely to be taken by Michelin saying that it's now a good idea to change your tyres once a month rather than when they wear out, or to use square ones (which just happen to be their latest product). But in most cases we can (and if we have the time, should) be able to inform ourselves about the products that other posters sell, by visiting their websites. We'd then see their commercial interests.  I think if I had done so earlier I might have been less irritated by the relentless criticisms of rival products, presented as impartial advice.

I can help with identifying the 1991 European Union Directive. It's this one: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-urbanwaste/directiv.html that's to say, the "Council Directive of 21 May 1991 concerning urban waste water treatment (91/271/EEC)". And it's in English, too. But I'd be grateful if PoolGuy could say which part of it applies to privately-owned swimming pools in rural areas. However, since EU Directives don't have any force at all in member states until each one puts it into effect by introducing its own laws, I'd also be grateful if could point us to the French law that introduces the directive into the French legal system. I couldn't find that one.

I start from the position of knowing absolutely nothing at all about good electrical practice. Lightfittings in the past didn't have any earth at all (even French ones) and it's quite common to see wiring installations in France without an earth to the ceiling light (you can tell without getting up on a ladder, as you can quite often see the cable the light hangs from, and it's clearly just two cores). Now it is probably a good idea for the light fitting to be earthed. But light fittings don't get handled very often, particularly now we all have these long-life energy saving bulbs. Switches, however, are handled all the time, sometimes with wet/damp/sweaty/clammy (take your pick) hands. I haven't seen any switches with an earth. Can anyone explain why the difference in protection? Is it just that when the bulb has been removed, it's easy to poke your fingers into a live terminal? But if that is the case, how would an earth help you?

As a new member, I find the forum both gripping and informative. But I do wonder whether the Forum Code of Conduct goes to far in both banning advertising (a laudable aim) and also asking members not to post personal details, products or services on the message boards. My feeling is that it would be better in most cases if members did what elected officials are obliged to do - declare when they have a financial interest in a product or in particular services which are the subject of the discussion. If members told us which products they sold, or what services they supplied, we would be better able to evaluate the advice they give, and could take it with a bigger or smaller pinch of salt (or of chlorine, as appropriate). Members who have no financial interests might also find it easier understand the sometimes intemperate responses from those who have.