Fillide's activity

Questions Asked

In the Italian tax system you are allowed to instruct the taxman to direct a very small proportion of your tax to one of a number of charities/organisations of your chouce.

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 17:44

For anybody (or anybody you know!) who wants to experiment with living in Italy before taking the plunge of buying something, a friend of mine has a rather nice ancient tower to rent - 75 square metres on three floors, with as much outside space a

Tue, 05/14/2013 - 16:57

Occasionally, when I feel a bit passionate, or I hear idiot stuff from - let me just describe them as interested parties - I feel the need to defend Beppe Grillo.

Sun, 03/31/2013 - 21:01

I have just posted instructions on how to make a photo appear on this site.

Tue, 01/29/2013 - 08:45

Tomorrow, Sunday, we have the equivalent of primaries - public opportunities to endorse one particular candidate to lead the PD, a centre left party in Italian politics.

Sat, 11/24/2012 - 18:45

I have just come upon this blog, which is written in plain English, and seems to be a reasonably sensible, fairly neutral, overview of what is going on in Italian politics.

Tue, 11/06/2012 - 06:51

I am terminally pissed off with this forum, but it would be polite for me to say goodbye to some virtual friends - so, goodnight Gala, Sagraisolar, Badger, Angie, and apologies to those who I have forgotten to mention.

Fri, 09/07/2012 - 20:59

Medici Villas in Tuscany Rather a useful site (in English) talking about all the Medici villas in Tuscany, with a map and links to the individual websites of the buildings.

Tue, 09/04/2012 - 03:50

There was a thread about inheriting a property in Sicily, which was quite interesting. It has fallen off my screen. Why? There was nothing contentious at all in this thread.

Wed, 08/29/2012 - 20:10

There is a long article in la Repubblica today about how the various organised crime syndicates get involved in the food which you buy everyday. You might have thought that only cheapo no-label stuff could be involved, but it isn't so.

Mon, 07/23/2012 - 13:02

Comments posted

Answer to: Geometra charges
Thu, 06/06/2013 - 17:53

Here is a page from Emilia Romagna where you can download pdfs of various 'standard' charges (for 'standard' works). http://www.geometrire.it/news_home.php?id=1728If you wanted something local to you then google search on onorario geometri and you will probably find something similar for your provincia.

Fri, 05/24/2013 - 16:38

Nor me (and for this site I use an e-mail shared with only one other site)

Fri, 05/24/2013 - 11:53

I find it easiest just to call such marks 'patina' coolAcid won't help, possibly a substance termed decerante - wax remover - which is designed to strip old wax polish off floors might help with the candlewax. Other housewifely solutions involve kitchen paper and a hot iron, but I doubt you'll make the marks invisible. White spirit gets candlewax out of oriental carpets rather effectively...

Answer to: avatar
Wed, 05/22/2013 - 16:13

Go to my account - link next to your Ciao greeting top right - edit - about the fourth item is picture, choose file (or scegli file) and upload something.

Wed, 05/22/2013 - 16:09

No. It is quite posssible for a foreigner to have a prima casa. If it is the house in which the person is registered with the local comune as a resident, it is their prima casa.If the foreigner (or Italian). registered as resident in Italy, has other houses outside Italy they are subject to another tax, called IVIE.If the foreigner (or Italian) has other houses in Italy (where they are not registered as resident) then they pay the higher rate of IMU on those second houses.

Wed, 05/22/2013 - 06:50

The requirement to comply with current anti-seismic requirements depends on the extent of the work being done (and, as fabbriche points out, if there is a change of use, or if the house has been declared inagibili). I vaguely recall that when you bought your house there was some catastal inadequacy, which just possibly would put it into one of those categories.However, hopefully not!In a normal house case, if you are totally replacing roof timbers, or floor timbers, you will probbly have to bring the whole structure up to current anti-seismic standards. If you are just relaying floors and redoing the roof covering, and not significantly enlarging any openings in the walls, you should be okay.It's a difficult area, because it is basically down to the geometra (or his engineer) to make the decision - and if you get one who you think is being hyper-cautious it is not a bad idea to get a second opinion. If your roof timbers are sound, and strong enough to take a thinnish concrete reinforced slab on top to consolidate the roof, then it is just a repair. If you are obliged to reinforce the house to comply with anti-seismic regs it isn't such a huge deal. The option of using steel - creating a welded ring of steel angle or channel buried in the floor or roof construction, often at both first floor and roof level, anchored into the stonework - is quite discreet: the only visible signs may be a few steel plates showing on the outside of the building, and these can be quite decorative. It isn't cheap, (probably it is more costly than the commonly used concrete ring beam which has difficult to overcome aesthetic implications), but it isn't prohibitive.Extensions are not an issue - the norm is to build these entirely independent structurally, (connected only by a bit of mortar) which means only the new work has to comply.

Mon, 05/20/2013 - 08:09

This site is now miles better than the last version!That says more about how completely dire the previous one was, but on this one you are able to add attachments from your own computer - which is a godsend, that gallery rubbish was difficult and badly implemented, and we all know a picture is worth a thousand words.Another feature (very rare on other forum formats) is that an edited post appears at the top of the posts list. I can see that this might annoy regular visitors to the site if you happen to spot a typo when the post has alredy been up a week and choose to edit it - but it is a feature I very much like.The search facility roughly works - you can just type in (e.g.) roof or floors and get a lot of suggestions including entries from the original Italymag forum (though these have lost their authors), but unfortunately the search term initially returns the thread header, rather than the post body, and I haven''t found out whether you can refine the search (on a time period etc.)I think that anybody who went through the previous version experience will appreciate this one after a couple of visits - however for an utter newbie it is pretty impenetrable: I can't imagine them getting past the ''headline" post, and if that doesn't grab their attention they'll click out.  I think the first screen of the community section does need a "taster" of other recent posts.However - nobody is going to arrive here because there is no indication on the magazine home page that all of us founts of knowledge exist. There is the community button, but who would guess what that conceals - maybe it would be better to change the label to Answers.But I'll give the current site quite a lot of marks for techno, and quite a lot for aesthetic, but nul points for having an intuitive interface.

Thu, 05/16/2013 - 12:51

Since the instruction to send me a private message isn't going to work, if you are interested in knowing more about the house etc e-mail me on charlie.ph at hotmail.com

Thu, 05/16/2013 - 08:13

It will be interesting to see who this post is credited to, since at the tope of the page it says "ciao, casa del campanile" - but I'm Fillide! I congratulated myself tghis morning for having ignored the big red register now button, and ferreted out the log in link - but I wonder who I will be tomorrow.....

Sat, 05/11/2013 - 15:29

It's interesting: I've only experienced Vod SIMs in Vod badged Huawei mifis, and the charging plan has been as expected. However, at one point I had a Vod SIM in the smartphone (on a deal which meant connecting to the internet cost me €1 per day if I paid them €5 a month, otherwise it would cost me €4 per day) and discovered Vod were actually charging me €4 per day.  The helpful assistant on 190 explained that this was because my phone was set to connect using (as I recall) web.omnitel.it, whereas for the €1 deal I needed to connect using mobile.omnitel.it. Don't quote me on those adresses, but they were something like that, and setting the phone up to use the alternate server fixed the problem. (The original configuration of the phone came from Vod, and when they sent this to the phone they had no idea which plan I was on, and my guess is they just sent the 'default'. So - and I'm just guessing - your unbadged mifi may be connecting to the 'wrong' server. I don't know if you can instruct the mifi to use the right server, (or if you would do this via your device?) - I think it would have to be the modem. I know nothing about restricting speed - but at 1GB per month you'd only get a couple of hours of youtube!