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Gyn_Paul

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Everything posted by Gyn_Paul

  1. ...as a follow-up to this, when I got down to it, I put a rake down to the bottom to see how solid the sediment was and found that with a bit of agitation, it siphoned out, down to the proper level (phew!). So I assume it was just sediment occluding the outlet. Must now put a note on the callendar to inspect every 6 months !
  2. My callendar 'binged' at me this morning with a jolly reminder to inspect the bac de graise. On revealing it, I find it is weeping from the concrete lid which, to be fair, is not designed to be water-tight. I took the lid off expecting it to be confronted with a crust of solid grey fat, when in fact there were only a few clumps covering perhaps 30% of the surface area. Nevertheless it is clearly clogged somewhere. Before I embark on the joyful task of bucketing the contents out, has anyone any experience of this phenomina ? it is fed by 1 kitchen, comprising 2 sinks and a dishwasher.
  3. Anyone with a UK licence with less than 6 months on the clock managed to get a straight swap out of Nantes recently? I've just noticed I've only got 4 weeks left on mine Yikes!!
  4. I have acquired a 300 L tank for a solar heating system. I've taken the inspection panel off the top to try to identify the various 1" and 1 1/4" inlet and outlet pipes. inside is a coil which appears to be 1", which runs from the top (well as near as is practical after the dome) to about a third of the way down. This has a centre tapping. There is a direct tapping right at the top, and another right at the bottom (plus a drain tapping underneath, and an anode set into the dome) Given that the coil is at the top, I deduce it is for drawing heat from the body of tank water rather than for supplying heat to it, therefore the top and bottom must be the pumped flow/return to the panel. Q1 - Which way does the DHW in the coil flow - top in or top out? Q2 - What is the coil's centre tapping for? (it seems to have a non-return valve in line with it) Q3 - peering into the tank from the top, there is a hollow square-section steel thingy running vertically from top to (I presume) the bottom, surrounding it, a little lower than halfway down, is a sort of bell-shaped structure about the size of a small dinner plate. This is the reason I can't see to determine if the square section steel goes to the bottom or not, or indeed of the bell thing is actually a bell or a ball shape. What on earth is this for? Some sort of layering device perhaps? It's entirely separate from the anode. No usable information label remains on the tank exterior, so looking for a manufacturer is out of the question. Anyone with a similar sort of setup able to tell me how their plumber fitted it?
  5. Does anyone know where the brain of a Peugeot 308's wiper/rain detection system live? I'm assuming it in the nacelle on the windscreen, but I've no real idea. My 308 has taken it into its head to spontaneously turn on its wipers sometime during the night, while both off and locked. All the more alarming because it normally needs both the ignition on, and and the stick moved to prime the detection circuit. From a cursory poke around the web, it doesn't seem to be a common problem. (just my luck!) p
  6. So I'm confused now... will we immigrants from that 19th century island off the coast of Europe need, at some stage to upgrade to the new i.d card, or will our CdS's (when we finally get them) be sufficient? And while you're all here... My friend who doesn't speak a lot of French recently went to the S/Prefecture for the fingerprinting etc. and signed her MAIDEN name. Quite apart from the fact that it won't now serve to confirm her identity alongside her driver's licence/bank card/cheque book/passport etc, it's not actually her legal name! Has she just misunderstood the process or is this some mad French Bureaucratic quirk?
  7. My usual cri du cœur in the 2nd week in May: In which box on 2047 do I put UK shares dividends (which are gross, of course) ? It seems less obvious each year, or maybe* I'm just getting dimmer and dimmer each year! * not much 'maybe' about it actually
  8. [quote user="Robson"]Replying to my above post. I just got through, and was told a rate of 1.14.[/quote] I'm fairly certain that's the rate I used last year. If your tax office is anything like ours, I wouldn't put it past them to be giving out 2019 for 20 data. Belvins Franks website is saying £1 : €1.125 which is what I propose to use.
  9. Yes!!!, those are the very things.... Thanks.
  10. Can anyone tell me the name of those metal spikes which builder's use to temporarily support something like a beam against a wall. They are usually about 20-30 cms long, with a loose, captured bar at right-angles to the spike. The spike is hammered into the wall, the bean (or whatever) is offered up to the wall, the bar it then hammered into place and wedges the beam against the wall. I don't know what they are called in English, let alone French! I've had about half a dozen of them gathering dust in a corner of the barn for about 10 years, and - typically the moment I need them (to mount 10, 4-metre lengths of 50x150) They are nowhere to be seen, but I bet I can order them online. Or at least I could if I know what they were called!
  11. Does anyone have a manufacturer website for PV 13 Tuiles mechanique? I need to know the minimum acceptable slope for a roof I'm replacing on a conservatory. It's 8 m wide and 4 m deep, and currently is half-and-half metal sheets and polycarbonate. Because it's directly west facing and glass on three side walls even with only half of the roof transparent it's too hot to use for most of the summer, so I'm planning to take off the polycarbonate. Plan 1 was to replace this with more of the cream-coloured Bacacier sheets. However they seem to have stopped making the cream (beige, they call it) version, and mix-and-match colours would look awful, so plan 2 is to replace the lot with PV 13 to match the house and barn. they have the traditional 30 - 45 degree slope, but because of window openings on the attached wall I can't achieve anything like that for the conservatory. I haven't measured it properly, but it's probably only about 10 or 15 degrees which intuitively feel too slight for a roof looking at the prevailing wind (and rain) direction. Now if only I had a spec sheet.....
  12. I *did* manage to locate the steering wheel, but not before my right knee had 'located' the lever to raise/lower the steering column. My much shorter wife pulls the seat so far forward I think even our cocker spaniel could reach the pedals. One night last year, my friend and fellow chorister was stopped by the Gendames, while travelling home in his Freelander. A Breathalyzer was insisted upon when he admitted that he had been drinking, and in all probability was well over the limit. However it's never a good idea to wind up police when they're armed, so before they made a complete a*se of themselves, his (French) wife switched on the interior light and leaned over and suggested that they'd be better employed brethalizing her. She was, after all, the one sitting behind the wheel of this French-registered right-hand drive vehicle! She - designated driver - hadn't been drinking, of course
  13. There isn't a 'set units' anywhere in the system menu: time/date, language, keyboard, and a lot of cosmeticy things like the light levels etc. I don't think we are comparing the same ver. software. I'm convinced what I need is an 'under the bonnet' thing It's quite possible that these aren't even key combinations any more. The search continues !
  14. Alas no. It's the old version. That particular key combination has no effect on the 2020 ZE version. But thanks for trying...
  15. I'll happily keep you posted as we go along. The Zoe was bought as a replacement for a C1, basically for local pottering. We live in the top of the department so everywhere is about 30 kms to go shopping, or 100 or so to Chateauroux or Guret, or Limoges. It says it has 352kms range on it when @ 100%: I'm off to Limoges on Wednesday, I'll see how accurate that is! We have a Peugeot 308 for the long voyages: which we'll hang on to. I'm less concerned about getting to the coast from La Creuse, than the lack of recharge sites once we get off the boat in Plymouth. (Actually, I think I'd need to do a bit more research about how to get to Roscoff first!) I really don't think EV's will be that viable until every Campanille (say) has points you can book with the room, or indeed every E.LeClerc or Carrefour has a line of recharge bornes as routinely as they have filling stations.
  16. ...also it was the only car I've ever had with a tan (well, light-coloured anyway) dashboard. The windscreen was so near vertical in those days, they could fit them without there being a problem with reflection. Impossible these days. It's any colour you like as long as it's black. And another thing.... Why would a company like TomTom, seemingly full of intelligent people, sit around a table and say, "here's a really good idea: let's make the rear case of our GPS units which are going to be sat behind a pane of glass in the blazing sun out of nice BLACK plastic, and then watch them get too hot to touch let alone charge." Brains the size of a planet, and yet they seem never to have heard of the greenhouse effect!
  17. Yeah, all this refers to the multimedia screen, which does have some duties other than multimedia (like charging settings and time delay etc) but is not the main dashboard. I already have this part in English, but the dash seems to be entirely separate. It shows things like the charge, kms left, hand brake on, kw used, door open etc.. Also this link is to the 2015 Zoe handbook, the 2020 is quite a substantial revision so again different. I would be surprised if there was different software for different territories: I'll bet selecting language is part of the pre-delivery routine. Need to see a real person in a real dealership: but that may be a couple of week off yet. You can have your R4, Me? I'll take a cream-coloured R6 with tan upholstery and a front bench seat. That was the only other car I've bought new. I'm SO not a petrol-head, but I don't think I've ever loved anything more in my life!
  18. Hi Pomme, I'd love to say that works, but that the old version of the car. Doesn't work for the 2020 one. (indeed there's every chance that trying variations on this was how I buggered up the dash in the first place!) The multi media and - I suspect - the EMC have been revamped for the current version. Thanks anyway...
  19. I don't imagine anyone can help directly, but you might be able to point me in the right direction... New Renault Zoe ZE 110 bought (but not delivered) just before lockdown. Eventually got it from regional dealer rather than my local which is still closed. I'm convinced when I drove it away from the dealer the dash was configured for English, but in messing around trying to see a way of changing the KPH to MPH (in the fond hope that one day we'll get to visit the UK again), I seem to have reset it to French. The UK Renault dealers are no help,(with either of these) neither is the (UK) Zoe owner's club...It's hardly a matter of life and death, but will continue to bug me. any ideas? (I don't have to say that the owner's manual was written with the assumption that no Frenchman in their right mind would ever want to go to the UK - a view I find I'm aligning with more and more every time I turn on the news!)
  20. Ah, got it now. I was misreading, mis-attributing place of residence and ownership. Makes sense now! thanks!
  21. ...surely you just ask your insurer for a green card?
  22. Thank you all, that now makes sense.I had been putting them into 2047, Good to know I've been doing it wrong for years now! So all that remains to do it re-declare 4 UK banks. I added a fifth one in last year's submission, and this year they seem to have lost the four from the previous year. Bloody tedious. especially as not one of them generates a penny in interest!
  23. I've done our tax on line for about 8 or 9 years now, and I've never come across this glitch before. Boring, straight-forward UK pensions (private final salary + state pension, paid gross in euros) has ALWAYs gone into 1AS/1BA without problem. Now these are grey'd out, and the next possible box is !AM/1BM. Anyone else encountered this problem. Bit unnerving to fall at the first fence! paul
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