Old Water Heater

Old Water Heater With Mound of Limescale

As part of the upgrade to our electrics and plumbing we removed our old 3 phase water heater, which will now become another water butt near one of the outbuildings.


With the old plumbing there wasn't a water softener, so when I turned the water heater upside down to empty out the last of the water this pile of limescale tumbled out, accompanied by filthy brown water.  To think that we used this for washing and occasionally for cooking - YUK.

It's not surprising that the water here is so hard as it all comes from bore holes drilled into the soft limestone.

Register an Imported Trailer in France - Part Four

The saga still continues, but it is now looking much better than it did a couple of months ago.

DREAL, the French government agency responsible for testing HGVs, has sent me a examplar dossier showing the required information.  The main requirement is that the manufacturer supplies on headed notepaper a list of the components and their CE numbers.

After some discussion, Towability provided this and I took it to DREAL last week.  I have the stamp to prove that this has been accepted so yet another bridge crossed.  However, this did create another requirement; the weight of the trailer when empty and the weight on the tow hook.

So, hitch up the trailer and head off to the gravel and tarmac works at Tours where they have a weighbridge.  I now have what I hope is the last piece of the puzzle; now it's just a case of taking the complete dossier, including photographs of the trailer, into DREAL and waiting for them to invite me for a test.

Assuming that I pass, it's then down to the prefecture to queue for three hours to get its registration number. 

It's a bit late for us, but this process won't be required in the future as regulations are being harmonised across Europe by 2013, so all trailers sold in the UK by then will be legal across all of the EU countries ...... perhaps we should have waited!

Lightning Kills Livebox

The clap of the thunder and the flash of the lightning woke us up at just after 2 in the morning.  It was a violent storm, but as there were quite a few seconds between the lightning and thunder we weren't that worried as these storms (orages) are not uncommon.  

But, as time went on, the gap between lighting and thunder steadily reduced, until there was only a short delay between the two.  We both shot out of bed and unplugged all the computers and the Livebox.The only things left plugged in to the electrics were the fridge and a printer, which was on a surge protector.  Oh, and we left the telephone wire plugged into the Livebox.

A short while later the whole house shook as a bolt of lightning and a clap of thunder arrived at exactly the same time.  The surge caused the main EDF circuit breaker to trip but not before it had cooked the printer!

After this, the storm rapidly moved away so we went back to sleep with the power still off just in case it returned.  When we got up I plugged the Livebox in, but no broadband connection.  The surge must have come along the phone line and cooked the modem.

So, off to Tours with it under my arm, to join the queue of people swapping their dead Liveboxes at the Orange shop. It seems the death of Liveboxes is not uncommon either.

Changing from 3 phase to single phase

Our electricity supply here has always been a problem, with the main circuit breaker regularly tripping if we decide to put on an electric fire and a kettle at the same time.  This is mainly because we have a three phase supply of only 9kw, which means that each of the three circuits in the house needs only 3kw to trip the circuit breaker.

Not knowing how the house is wired means that we don't know which sockets are on which phase, so overloading (it's hard to think of 3kw being an overload, but there we are!) it is not difficult, especially in the winter.

However, we've not been able to change to a single phase 9kw supply because we had a three phase water heater.  This, along with all of the old plumbing, has now been removed, and ERDF will be arriving in two weeks to change us to a single phase supply. Yippeeee!


We'll still have to count the number of electric fires that we have on, but having 9kw will still be massively easier than being restricted to 3kw.