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RENOVATING
A HOUSE
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Howard Clements shares his experiences of refurbishing his house in the
Vendée with those who drop in on his
Vendée house website.
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D-I-Y SHOPS
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DIY was slow to take off in France, but now the French are into what they
call "bricolage" in a big way. Most hypermarkets stock paint
- including Hammerite, or equivalent metal paints - electrical fittings and
basics such as sandpaper, but sometimes you want something a bit more - well,
serious.
(As we are based towards the north-west Vendée, we are not going to be
much use to those of you who live over the other side of the département, so
I'd welcome some suggestions of other good sources of timber, building
materials, tools, and fixings.)
A book that is much recommended is David Everett's Buying
and Restoring Old Property in France.
LA ROCHE-SUR-YON
The aptly-named Monsieur Bricolage is a large DIY store at
Les Flâneries shopping centre, on the Nantes road, north of La Roche-sur-Yon
(not closed for lunch - yippee), and continues to be one of most useful
sources of bits and pieces generally. Also at Les Flâneries there's a rather
flashy decorating shop along the corridor from Monsieur B.
For the basic materials, you cannot do better than the nearby (and much
cheaper) Brico-Dépôt, a large
warehouse-type store on the east side of the Route de Nantes and a bit
farther north. Other branches are in Cholet, Angers and Nantes. (THANKS TO BERNARD FOR
THIS INFO)
CHALLANS
In Challans, the Leclerc has a DIY and gardening shop just
across the car park from the hypermarket building. Unlike the main store, it
closes at lunchtime.
July 2006: This DIY shop has
now become a Monsieur Bricolage.
THANKS
TO NEIL FOR THIS INFO
AIZENAY
If you want building materials, you can wander round and find some
good stuff at branches of Vendée Matériaux (there's one at Aizenay,
opposite Netto, on the St-Gilles road).
For quantitites of cement, sand, gravel etc (yes, we've been laying concrete
recently!) we were recommended Alain Legrand, at Palluau. The company
was charming and efficient, and delivered quantities of the above to us on
several occasions, in state-of-the-art vehicles that could drop the stuff
within a millimetre of where you wanted it.
There's a wonderful tool shop in Aizenay (Routhiau, on the Nantes
road, just north of the centre). You can buy such professional brands of
power tools as Makita, as well as Bosch and Black & Decker, and find
absolutely any nails, screws, mastics etc that you could dream of. And if
your French is not up to much, you can wander around peering into all the
boxes to see what would be most useful.
Also in Aizenay, if you're considering some really authentic hand-made
terracotta tiles for floor or roof, visit the Tuileries Gauvrit,
signposted off the dual carriageway La Roche road, just to the SE of Aizenay.
One of the major DIY chains in France is Castorama. Unfortunately
there is not yet a branch in the Vendée, but across the Loire, on the NW
section of the Nantes ring road, you will find one at Orvault.
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FITTING OUT A KITCHEN ?
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Kitchen layout
A quick word of warning for those using French workmen to install a kitchen: be
sure you have specified the heights of your cupboards and worktops!
We took over some UK-bought units for installation in our house some years
ago, but in the meantime had commissioned the plumber to fit a French sink
and washing machine etc. Great was our surprise to find that the sink had
been installed a good couple of inches lower than the height of our UK base
units! It's turned out fine, as we have made it a two-height worktop - which
works quite well as the lower level is great for carving, chopping,
pastry-making etc. But we had to have a special plinth made for the
French-purchased cooker, to jack it up level with the UK-height worktops on
either side of it.
Paradoxically, our carpenter was about to fix the wall cabinets higher
than they would have been in the UK. One can only conclude that French
housewives are deemed to have shorter legs than their British counterparts,
and longer arms...
A branch of Ikea
has now opened in Nantes in the Atlantis retail area, somewhere north of the
Cheviré bridge crossing, which is good news for those looking for
top-quality, low-cost kitchen units.
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Indispensable
reference books
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There is no substitute for a good French dictionary. It's a mistake to
think that if you don't speak good French, then you need only buy a pocket-sized
one. Once you get down to serious communication with builders and officials
you will find its lack of subtle differentiation between several translations
of the same word or phrase infuriating - if not expensive. The big Collins
Robert French-English dictionary has 350,000 references - including
modern expressions and computer jargon. If you'd like the reassurance of
pictures, then the Oxford Visual Dictionary has copious illustrations
of everything from the points of a horse to the parts of a yacht, from
plumbing systems to the mysterious underground world of the septic tank -
neatly labelled in English, French, German and Spanish.
Another smaller, but no less vital reference work is the pocket-sized English-French,
French-English Dictionary of Building, Property and Gardening
(£6.95+p&p). Another book that is much recommended is David Everett's Buying
and Restoring Old Property in France
There is a series of excellent booklets produced by Hadley-Pager on
specialised French-English, English-French vocabulary of various sorts -
including the legal terms involved in house purchase, and the essential
vocabulary of DIY. You do not seem to find them in many mainstream bookshops,
but the "France" magazine shops - located in Stow-on-the-Wold and
in the French Tourist Office in London (Piccadilly) - stock several of the
titles. You can enquire about the full range from Hadley-Pager (email: hpinfo@aol.com ; UK tel/fax: 01372 458550),
and also order a couple in the series through Amazon:
Glossary of House Purchase and Renovation Terms, and
Hadley's
French Motoring Phrase Book and Dictionary
Another vital area is maps. For actually getting to France, you need the Michelin
Touring and Motoring Atlas (scale: 1:200,000 - 1cm=2km), or the
folding, red-covered, Michelin map of France. And change them frequently,
because new roads and motorways are completed all the time so you might miss
out on some vital, time-saving new route! In the yellow Michelin series, Map
67 (Nantes, Les Sables, Poitiers) covers the county down to Les
Sables-d'Olonne; with Map 71 covering from Les Sables down to La Rochelle and
beyond.
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Keeping that
septic tank sweet
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I'm not setting myself up as the greatest expert here, but somebody asked
me for advice the other day so I thought I would lay out our 30 years'
experience of all three types of fosse here for all to see. Needless
to say, I disclaim any liability whatsoever... If you have problems call your
friendly local builder.
There are three sorts of fosse:
- une fosse étanche, or cess-pit – which is simply an underground
chamber that collects all the outflow from your WC, and has to be emptied
several times a year, depending on its size and how often the house is used.
This usually leaves waste from the sink, washbasins etc to exit to a soakaway
or to a convenient ditch. There is no biological activity in a fosse étanche,
so it doesn’t matter what products you put down the loo (except that you
don’t want anyone to block it up with nappies etc, obviously).
- une fosse septique, or septic tank – a mini-sewage system, with a
double chamber and filters buried under the ground. The action of bacteria
turns the WC waste to liquid, which gets pushed out through the filter bed,
and thence (as, hopefully, clean water), into a ditch. Often these takes just
the outflow from the WC, leaving the sink, washbasins etc to exit to a
soakaway or to a ditch, as above. The biological process can be halted by
unsuitable cleaning materials, or even perhaps from being used by someone on
heavy doses of antibiotics.
- une fosse toutes-eaux (I don’t know the English for this, but it
means an “all water” system) – which takes all waste water from inside the
house, and processes it in the same way as the septic tank, above. This is
becoming compulsory for all rural
homes that are not connected to mains drainage (tout à l’égout). The clean water at the end is supposed to
filter down into the ground, leaving nothing to pollute the ditches.
Precautions as for fosse septique, above.
1. Make sure you know exactly where your fosse is! We were
fortunate to have photographed the installation before it was covered over
with earth 10 years ago. Lucky we did, because the builder's plan was very
hazy...
Then ensure you don't drive a 10-ton truck over any fragile parts of it;
don't lay concrete on top of it (or you can't get to it if necessary); and be
sure you know where the access hole is (you will need to uncover this if you
ever have to get it emptied).
It will probably be beneath a dinner-plate-sized cover, and is often hidden
under a layer of earth - no bad thing, as it keeps any unpleasant whiffs from
seeping out around the edge. But you will have to uncover it to be ready for
the vidangeur (see below) if you ever need him.
2. For a fosse septique, or for a fosse toutes-eaux,
put the contents of a couple of packets of Eparcyl (a brand of biological
activator) down it when you arrive after several weeks' absence to kick-start
it; thereafter, give it a single dose once a week while you're in residence,
to keep it all going nicely. You can buy Eparcyl in the local French
supermarket - or if not, then go to a droguerie (a sort of ironmonger's).
It's usually with all the loo cleaners etc.
3. Don't put bleach down the loo, and only use cleaners that are
biological (i.e. Clarcyl, also available from supermarkets, in a green
plastic bottle). The system depends on bacteria to work properly, so if you
kill them off then it won't. Also, if anybody is taking antibiotics, then
somebody told us you ought to put a bit of extra Eparcyl down the loo. In new
installations, the sink outflow, bath etc all goes into it too. I have to
admit, however, that I just use ordinary dishwasher and washing-machine
powder (don't even know if there *is* anything special).
4. Don't let people using it put anything but loo paper down
the lavatory. No tampons, condoms, disposable nappies etc. (I read somewhere
that you shouldn’t put anything down the loo that you haven’t eaten
first!) The foregoing items won't
biodegrade properly, and will eventually get stuck in your filter bed, and
cleaning it out is Not A Nice Experience. Believe us.
5. Avoid putting coffee grounds down the sink. Somebody told us that
they can settle into an immovable lump - well, you know how they do when you
try and pour them out of a jug... Maybe best to avoid tea leaves too. Put
them on the compost heap instead.
6. The outflow, even in what we hoped 10 years ago was a
state-of-the-art system, still pongs a bit - more some days than others - out
in the lane where the "purified" water drains off. If it's a day
when I have done two loads of washing *and* run the dishwasher, and it's a
bit whiffy in the ditch, I might put an extra packet of Eparcyl down the loo.
Not sure it makes much difference, but it makes me feel better about it.
7. If you want to get the fosse emptied, you call a vidangeur
(look in the Yellow Pages of the phone book), who arrives in a great tanker
and sets up pipes ready to suck up and cart away your unmentionable debris.
You are supposed to have the sludge pumped out every 5 years, though I think
this may be a counsel of perfection. If you don't live there permanently, then
I don't suppose you're filling it up at the rate that permanent residents
would do. We had it done at our current house after 10 years. The septic tank
of the next-door cottage was emptied at the same time (first time for about
25 years!), and the total cost was about £100 for the two (in 2000).
It is up to you to uncover the access point before the vidangeur
arrives. Take photographs, relating the access hole to some immovable
structure like a recognisable part of your house, and measure how far it is from
a couple of fixed points. You'll be glad you did, next time!
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WINTERISING YOUR
HOUSE
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Although intense snow and frost are uncommon in the Vendée, before you close the
shutters of your holiday home and head north for the winter it is worth
bearing a few things in mind.
Security
Bring all garden furniture etc indoors. Lock doors, windows and
shutters of house. Arrange to leave a key with a neighbour or other trustworthy
person, and ask them to visit the house at least once a month, checking it
inside as well as out. We recommend having a checklist near the front door,
so that before you leave you can run through "Is gas turned off? Iron
unplugged?" etc before turning the key and leaving.
Electricity
Obviously turn off the electricity at the mains before leaving for home
(although make sure there is nothing left in the fridge or freezer that might
decompose into a soggy mass in your absence). It's also wise to unplug things
in the house, just in case anybody (workman or neighbour) needs to turn the
power on for some reason, and then inadvertently leaves your electric
radiator running...
Water
You should turns off the water at the mains tap, probably in a hole on
the perimeter of your property. This means that should you have any burst
pipes indoors during the winter, at least there will be no gallons of
expensively-metred water pumping frantically out of it for four months during
your absence. It is your responsibility to protect the meter that is also in
the hole from frost etc, so pack around it something like bubble-wrap, or at
least some plastic bags stuffed with straw.
Once you have turned off the water, give all loos a final flush to empty the
cisterns. We once had a porcelain cistern crack into several pieces during a
particularly fierce frost.
Furniture
Your lovely cool summer cottage is likely to become somewhat damp
during the winter, so keep soft furnishings off the ground, and leave
internal doors of the house open to allow air to circulate as much as
possible. Recently on the market are electric de-humidifiers that might be
worth considering. These would of course have to be left running all winter,
positioned on a draining-board or on boards over a bath so that their
drainage tube can carry the water away. We have not tried them ourselves, so
I cannot comment on the possibility of drips of water freezing in the waste
pipes etc.
Another inconvenient fact of country life is that, by October, the little
creatures of the fields that seem so charming at a distance will be searching
for somewhere cosy to spend the winter. To make it more difficult for them to
create comfortable nests from your possessions, we suggest the following:
- shut pillows and cushions in mouse-proof drawers or cupboards;
- lift rugs and put them on tables or in cupboards;
- pile larger soft furnishings on something with legs, that keeps them a bit
off the damp ground, and drape everything loosely with polythene sheets.
- hang bedding - duvets, blankets, eiderdowns etc - up from some sort of rail
or line. Then lay a polythene sheet on top. At least if mice or rats trot
along the rail this will ensure they will get less of a foothold!
Vermin
If you think there may be a problem with rats, mice or dormice, it's
worth putting down some poison before you shut up for the winter. Mice go for
specially-treated (i.e. poisoned) grains, that you can put down in little
piles - note that mice tend to run around the edge of a room rather than
across the middle. Be sure to remember where you put it, though, as you will
want to remove any leftovers in the spring before children or animals find
them. In our experience, rats and dormice prefer the bait in paper-wrapped
blocks (boxes of this are available from supermarkets). In fact they like it
so much that they have on occasion eaten into the cardboard box and helped
themselves before we have thought to put it out for them...
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DOING UP A
HISTORIC HOUSE
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If you are keen to do an authentic restoration job on an old property,
it's worth getting in touch with the Vendée branch of an association called Maisons Paysannes de France
before you bash any holes in the wall or ruin some piece of priceless
heritage. They offer leaflets on different techniques - such as
lime-rendering walls instead of concreting them - to help retain the genuine
features of rural cottages, logis, bourrines, in fact any nice
old vernacular building. They also have a list of specialists - from
tile-makers to builders, carpenters to roofers - in different parts of the
Vendée who will give advice to members on how to proceed. The association
organises visits, talks and courses on practical techniques, and publishes a
quarterly magazine. Annual subscription is about 270F.
The Vendée branch - an enthusiastic bunch of people, passionate about
architectural heritage - is headed by Madame Claudine Schnepf, Fief Mignoux,
85120 St-Maurice-des-Noues (tel: 02 51 00 81 42) and Madame Janine Duème, 8
rue Jean Charron, 85200 Fontenay-le-Comte (tel: 02 51 69 31 85).
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