letter slots vs boxes

heat loss - you replace a constant small draft with a full opening of the door whilst you retrieve the post from outside.

whether there's post in it or not......

Jim K

I suppose you could put a camera in the box...

We normally open the front door several times a day anyway. I didn't envisage making a special trip to check the box.

Soggy letters. I'm not prepared to go trekking through the weather to get my post any more than I would be prepared to go back to trekking through the weather to use the khazi. The postman is paid to go trekking through the snow, he/she can damn well deliver my post into my house.

Also, I have a long heavy curtain over my door, so any drafts that manage to fight past the spring on the letterbox are stopped from going any further.

JGH

We have a box on a pole at the top of our drive - to save the postie driving down down the drive to the house for just a few letters. Problems:

- Our box is fairly exposed so sometimes the lid flies open in the wind and stuff gets wet. I drilled holes in the bottom to mitigate somewhat. Sounds like you'll be alright. (Previous house I made my own box out of thick timber - that wasn't going to blow open!

- When we moved in there was no key for the box. Instead the lock had been broken and you used a coin or another key to open. I wondered why for a long time until a year or two after we replaced with a new box. Turns out the keys are flimsy things - one of the two we got with it has just disintegrated (plastic head crumbled off). When the second key disintergrates I expect I'll break the lock with a screwdriver and from then on use a coin or another key ?

He only gets his post in on warm wind free days?

Brian

I love it when the local free sheet is rammed in the letter box but not pushed all the way through

And the fourteen pizza flyers, two taxi cards, three curry special offers. Oh - and some real post.

In most, if not all, of France, boxes on the road frontage are the standard practice. The postman often doesn't even get out of his van. I never had any problems with mine when I had a house there, but the post boxes you can buy in France are a lot more substantial than the ones I see for sale in the UK. If I were going to fit one in the UK, I would buy it when next in France.

Colin Bignell

It wouldn't occur to me to go out specially to check for mail. I would simply check the box on the way past when returning to the house from having been out.

Colin Bignell

IIRC, the French postmen also have a master key which will open the box to let them put items which won't fit through the slot into the box.

That would make sense. As I never had anything but junk mail, I cannot confirm whether it is true.

Colin Bignell

And if you have no reason to go out? Or if you go out and return before the postie has been?

In article , polygonum writes

Royal Mail opt out:

Whenever I get my mail, I leave an ivy leaf under the flap.

John

of what I mentioned is delivered by others.

But they don't anyway. They shove it half-way through, probably crumpling up all your Christmas cards, and between the postie and the local newspaper/leaf-littering urchins letting the worst of British weather straight into your house. Also, letter-boxes are now a security hazard, as any anti-social yoof with whom you've had words may take it into his/her head to pour petrol through it followed by a lighted match.

That'll be the first thing to catch fire then ...

You might be surprised just how much crap they do deliver. The junk through our letterbox dropped dramatically when we opted out. Of course a lot depends on where you live but RM do deliver a lot of junk mail/flyers.

Tim