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  Marcus Dwyer

  🇺🇸

  American vehicles and hybrids: diagnostics and battery health

  Twenty-two years under the hood in Detroit. Twelve of them at a Ford dealership, where I made Senior Master technician, and the last ten on my own shop floor working almost entirely on hybrids and EVs. Most calls I take fall into three buckets. Manufacturer-specific trouble codes that generic scanners read wrong or not at all. The real state of health of a traction battery on a used car somebody is about to buy. And the electrical gremlins that show up after a US vehicle gets imported and put on 230-volt shore power. On a hybrid pack I will not quote you a replacement. I will tell you which cell-group voltages and internal-resistance readings to pull, how to read them, and whether a module-level repair gets you three more years for a fraction of the price. Bring the scan data if you have it, or we pull it together on the call.

  $16.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Danielle Ortega

  🇺🇸

  Residential plumbing to US code, and desert-climate systems

  I am a licensed plumbing contractor in Arizona and I run a six-person shop in Phoenix. I came to TalkXp because of a pattern I kept seeing: Europeans who buy or renovate property in the States, and discover that nothing here matches what they know. Pipe sizing, materials, venting rules, where the water heater is allowed to sit - all of it is different. I walk you through reading a US plumbing plan, what an inspector will actually look at, and which European habits will fail inspection every single time. Trap arm lengths and venting are where most owner-led remodels get red-tagged. The other half of my work is hard-water country: water heaters that die in six years instead of twelve, softeners set wrong by the installer, and scale that quietly kills fixtures. That is all diagnosable from photos and a couple of numbers off your water report.

  $18.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇪🇸ES
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Priya Raghavan

  🇺🇸

  EV charging, home batteries and residential electrical capacity

  I am a licensed professional engineer in Texas. I spent eight years designing charging equipment for a manufacturer before going independent on residential integration in Austin: chargers, home batteries, load management. The subject I care most about is panel capacity, because that is where charger projects die. The existing service will not carry the load, and the owner finds out after the equipment is bought that they need a service upgrade costing more than the charger did. That calculation takes twenty minutes on a call with a photo of your panel and twelve months of utility bills. I also spend a lot of time explaining load management, which is the cheap way out of a service upgrade and which almost no installer proposes because it sells less hardware. I work to the National Electrical Code; for a project in Europe I can set the method but I cannot sign off on compliance.

  $22.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇫🇷FR
  • 🌍TA

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  Reggie Fontaine

  🇺🇸

  Air conditioning in hot humid climates: moisture and mould

  Twenty years of air conditioning in South Florida. Down here the system is not really there to cool - it is there to dry, and that is where nearly everybody gets it wrong. Oversize the equipment and it cools fast, shuts off early, never runs long enough to pull moisture, and you end up with a house that is cold, clammy and eventually mouldy. What I handle on calls: indoor humidity that will not come down, smells coming out of the ductwork, mould around the supply registers, and power bills that went up after brand-new equipment went in. Same failures show up in Mediterranean and tropical properties, so this is not only a Florida conversation. I will ask you to buy a fifteen-dollar hygrometer and take three readings over three days before we go any further. Those numbers settle arguments that ten contractor visits will not.

  $17.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇪🇸ES
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Léo Marchetti

  🇫🇷

  Électronique embarquée : Arduino, ESP32 et capteurs

  Ingénieur en électronique embarquée à Grenoble, je conçois des cartes et du firmware pour des PME industrielles. En dehors du travail, j'accompagne depuis longtemps des makers et des étudiants sur leurs projets, et c'est ce que je propose ici. Les sujets qui reviennent : un montage qui fonctionne sur la table et pas dans son boîtier, un capteur qui renvoie n'importe quoi, une alimentation sous-dimensionnée, un ESP32 qui redémarre en boucle dès qu'il émet en wifi. Ce sont des problèmes d'électronique, pas de code, et ils se résolvent très vite quand on sait où regarder. Je peux aussi relire un schéma ou un routage avant que vous ne lanciez une fabrication de cartes. Une heure là-dessus fait économiser un cycle complet.

  ≈ $15.12charged €14.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇫🇷FR
  • 🇮🇹IT

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  Deborah Krantz

  🇺🇸

  US company formation and commercial contracts for founders abroad

  Seventeen years as a business lawyer in New York, working with foreign founders who want to operate in the United States. There is an extraordinary amount of confident bad advice in this area, most of it about Delaware, which gets sold as a universal answer and creates more problems than it solves for small foreign-owned businesses. On a call I deal with structure questions: which state, which entity, what a non-resident owner actually triggers tax-wise, and what really follows from opening a bank account or putting one employee on the ground. I also read commercial contracts before you sign - specifically governing law, venue and dispute resolution, which are the clauses people skim and the ones that cost the most later. To be clear about what this is: general legal information and orientation. A formal attorney-client relationship requires a separate engagement letter and a conflicts check, and I will tell you plainly when your situation needs one.

  $110.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Trevor Nakamura

  🇺🇸

  US expatriate tax, foreign accounts and double taxation

  I am a CPA in Chicago and for fifteen years I have worked with Americans living abroad and foreign nationals with US-source income. The United States taxes its citizens on worldwide income no matter where they live, and every year that produces situations nobody saw coming. The recurring ones: returns years behind and how to catch up without penalties, foreign bank accounts that should have been reported, the foreign tax credit, and the treatment of French assurance-vie and PEA accounts - both of which the IRS handles in ways that are punishing if you did not plan for them. I also see a lot of French nationals who worked in the States and do not know what to do with a 401(k) they left behind. There is a right answer and a wrong one, and the wrong one costs roughly thirty percent.

  $40.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇫🇷FR
  • 🇯🇵JA

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  Yanis Ould-Amar

  🇫🇷

  Développement backend et architecture applicative

  Développeur depuis quinze ans, aujourd'hui architecte dans une entreprise de services. Je travaille surtout sur des applications qui ont grandi trop vite et qui commencent à faire mal : lenteurs, déploiements risqués, base de données qui sature aux heures de pointe. En session, je fais deux choses. La revue de code et d'architecture, où je regarde ce que vous avez construit et où je vous dis ce qui va vous coûter cher dans six mois. Et le déblocage : une requête lente, un bug de concurrence, un choix de conception dont on ne sait plus sortir. Ce sont des sujets où deux paires d'yeux valent mieux qu'une semaine seul. Je travaille en Node, Python et PHP, avec PostgreSQL et MySQL. Je ne fais pas vos devoirs à votre place, mais je vous explique jusqu'à ce que vous puissiez les faire.

  ≈ $24.84charged €23.00/ 15 min

  • 🇸🇦AR
  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Kevin Osei

  🇺🇸

  AWS architecture, deployment pipelines and cloud cost control

  Infrastructure engineer in Seattle, twelve years in, seven of them running AWS at real scale. These days a lot of my work is about something nobody discussed five years ago: the bill. Badly designed cloud architectures do not fall over. They quietly cost three times what they should, forever. On a call we go through your AWS bill line by line and I show you where the money actually goes. In most accounts two or three line items are the whole story - usually NAT gateway data processing, unattached EBS volumes, and instances sized for a load test that ended in 2023. Those are hours of work, not months. I also cover the usual ground: containers, CI/CD, backup and disaster recovery, and infrastructure as code. My French is decent, picked up over two years in Montreal, though I switch to English when the subject gets deep.

  $35.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Sandra Villalobos

  🇺🇸

  Brand positioning and message, for companies that lost the thread

  Eighteen years in brand, split between agency and client side in Los Angeles. Consumer product launches, and repositioning work for companies that had stopped being able to say what they were. The problem I meet most often is not a logo problem and not a colour problem. It is that nobody in the company can say, in one sentence, who they exist for and what they get chosen instead of. Until that sentence exists, everything downstream - the site, the ads, the sales deck - is vague, and vague does not get fixed with media budget. So that is what we work on. It is uncomfortable, it usually takes the whole hour, and it changes more than anything else I could do for you in sixty minutes. Come with your actual competitors in mind, not a category description.

  $42.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇪🇸ES
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Jamal Whitfield

  🇺🇸

  Team management and the first year of leading people

  Twenty years in industry in Boston, twelve of them running teams from ten to eighty people in healthcare operations. These days I coach managers, and particularly the ones who were just promoted and are discovering that the job they were good at is no longer the job. That transition is the worst-prepared moment in professional life. You promote the strongest technician, teach them nothing, and then act surprised when they keep doing their team's work instead of leading it. Everything I do is concrete: the difficult conversation you have scheduled for Thursday, the recurring meeting that serves no purpose, the person you have been avoiding for three months. I work in English and French. My French comes from my mother's family in Haiti and it holds up fine in a working conversation.

  $38.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇫🇷FR
  • 🌍HT

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  Hector Salinas

  🇺🇸

  Ocean freight and importing into the United States

  Nineteen years in ocean freight at the Port of Long Beach, first on the carrier side and now as a licensed US customs broker. I work with European exporters selling into the States who find out the hard way that the American customs system resembles nothing they know. The recurring issues: getting an importer number as a foreign company, what a customs bond actually is and why you need one, labelling and marking rules that hold entire containers at the port, and the additional duties that have moved from season to season these past few years. Every one of those has stranded shipments belonging to serious, competent companies. My job on a call is to tell you what has to be settled before the vessel sails. After it sails your options narrow fast, and each one of them has a price.

  $28.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇪🇸ES
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Rui Cardoso

  🇵🇹

  Canalizações, infiltrações e humidade em edifícios antigos

  Trabalho em prédios antigos do Porto há vinte anos, e a humidade é aqui um assunto por si só. Uma mancha no tecto quase nunca fica onde está a fuga, e é aí que a maioria das obras corre mal: abre-se no sítio errado, fecha-se, e o problema volta seis meses depois. Na sessão ensino-o a ler uma patologia: a forma da mancha, a sua evolução com a chuva, a diferença entre uma infiltração, uma ascensão capilar e uma condensação. Estas três causas tratam-se de três maneiras opostas, e confundi-las sai caro. Muitos dos meus clientes são franceses que compraram em Portugal e acompanham obras à distância. É exactamente a situação em que uma conversa vale mais do que um orçamento.

  ≈ $9.72charged €9.00/ 15 min

  • 🇪🇸ES
  • 🇫🇷FR
  • 🇵🇹PT

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  Tiago Lourenço

  🇵🇹

  Carpintaria tradicional: janelas de madeira e restauro

  Carpinteiro em Braga, terceira geração na mesma oficina. Fabricamos e restauramos janelas de madeira, portas e portadas, sobretudo para edifícios antigos do norte do país. Sou muitas vezes consultado por proprietários a quem propõem substituir caixilharia antiga por PVC. Em muitos casos é mau negócio: uma janela de madeira do início do século, se a madeira estiver sã, restaura-se por menos do que custa a substituição e dura mais do que aquilo que a substituiria. Resta saber reconhecer madeira sã, e é isso que lhe ensino na sessão. Também trato do problema mais banal dos edifícios antigos: a janela que já não fecha. Nove em cada dez vezes não é a janela, é a parede.

  ≈ $8.64charged €8.00/ 15 min

  • 🇪🇸ES
  • 🇫🇷FR
  • 🇵🇹PT

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  Camille Estève

  🇫🇷

  Référencement naturel : audit, contenu et trafic

  Consultante en référencement naturel depuis onze ans, installée à Bordeaux. Je travaille avec des sites marchands et des sites de services, la plupart du temps sur des situations où le trafic a chuté et où personne ne sait pourquoi. Les causes sont rarement mystérieuses. Une refonte qui a cassé les redirections, un contenu dupliqué par le catalogue, des pages qui se concurrencent entre elles, un site trop lent depuis l'ajout d'un outil de suivi. Ce sont des diagnostics qui se posent en trente minutes quand on sait où regarder. Je passe aussi beaucoup de temps à décourager. Le référencement vendu comme un abonnement mensuel indéfini est souvent un pur gaspillage pour une petite structure, et je préfère vous le dire que vous le facturer.

  ≈ $22.68charged €21.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇪🇸ES
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Karim Belkacem

  🇫🇷

  Diagnostic électronique automobile et lecture de défauts

  Je répare des voitures depuis dix-sept ans, dont les onze dernières dans un garage indépendant multimarque à Lyon. Ma spécialité, c'est le moment où le voyant moteur s'allume et où personne ne sait pourquoi : lecture de la valise, interprétation des codes défaut, et surtout le tri entre ce qui est la cause et ce qui n'est qu'une conséquence. En session, je vous demande de brancher un lecteur OBD à vingt euros et de me lire les codes. Dans huit cas sur dix, on identifie ensemble la pièce en cause en moins d'une demi-heure. Vous arrivez ensuite au garage en sachant ce qu'on doit vous facturer, ce qui change beaucoup la conversation. Je travaille surtout sur les groupes Volkswagen, Renault et Stellantis, en essence comme en diesel. Je ne fais pas de devis à distance et je ne remplace pas votre garagiste : je vous rends capable de discuter avec lui.

  ≈ $12.96charged €12.00/ 15 min

  • 🇸🇦AR
  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Nuria Sanchís

  🇪🇸

  Mecánica de moto: mantenimiento, carburación y preparación

  Abrí mi taller de motos en Valencia en 2012, después de seis años en competición como mecánica de equipo en el Campeonato de España de Velocidad. Trabajo con motos de calle y de circuito, cuatro tiempos modernos y dos tiempos antiguos. Lo que más me consultan: una moto que arranca mal en frío, una carburación que nunca se rehízo después de cambiar el escape, un reglaje de suspensión que no corresponde a nadie. Son tres problemas que se resuelven muy bien hablando, porque dependen de ajustes y no de piezas. Hablo francés desde mis años de campeonato, cuando medio paddock era francés. Mándame fotos de tu moto antes de la sesión y me ahorras diez minutos.

  ≈ $9.72charged €9.00/ 15 min

  • 🌍CA
  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇪🇸ES
  • +1

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  Antoine Rivière

  🇫🇷

  Électricien NF C 15-100 et installations domotiques KNX

  Électricien depuis dix-neuf ans, je fais aujourd'hui moitié rénovation électrique, moitié domotique KNX chez des particuliers. J'interviens beaucoup en amont de chantiers : lecture de plan, dimensionnement du tableau, choix des protections. La question qui revient le plus est celle de la mise aux normes. Contrairement à ce qu'on entend, une installation ancienne n'est pas obligatoirement à refaire : la norme NF C 15-100 s'applique au neuf et aux rénovations lourdes, pas rétroactivement à votre maison de 1975. Ce que je vous aide à faire, c'est séparer le vraiment dangereux du simplement ancien. Sur la domotique, mon conseil principal est de résister. Un logement bourré d'automatismes mal pensés devient invivable, et je passe beaucoup de temps à en retirer.

  ≈ $14.04charged €13.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Iván Moreno

  🇪🇸

  Fotovoltaica: dimensionado, autoconsumo y baterías

  Instalo plantas fotovoltaicas en Andalucía desde 2013, en viviendas unifamiliares y pequeñas explotaciones agrícolas. Viví la burbuja española del solar, sus promesas y sus instalaciones sobredimensionadas, y de ahí saqué un método bastante simple: se parte del consumo real, nunca de la superficie de tejado disponible. En la sesión te ayudo a leer tus facturas de luz hora por hora, a estimar lo que vas a consumir de verdad durante el día, y a calcular si una batería tiene sentido en tu caso. Siete de cada diez veces no lo tiene, y el instalador no te lo va a decir. También reviso instalaciones ya montadas que producen menos de lo previsto, algo que casi siempre tiene una causa identificable a distancia.

  ≈ $15.12charged €14.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇪🇸ES
  • 🇫🇷FR

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  Inês Salgueiro

  🇵🇹

  Reabilitação de edifícios antigos e licenciamento camarário

  Engenheira civil em Lisboa, trabalho exclusivamente em edifícios antigos há doze anos: prédios pombalinos, casas de vila, estruturas de madeira e alvenaria de pedra. É uma área onde os reflexos da construção nova não só são inúteis como muitas vezes destrutivos. Recebo muitos pedidos de compradores franceses e ingleses que adquiriram um imóvel para reabilitar e descobrem o percurso administrativo português. Explico a diferença entre uma obra de escassa relevância urbanística e um projecto sujeito a licenciamento, o que a câmara vai exigir, e quanto tempo isso demora na realidade. Na parte técnica, a minha mensagem é sempre a mesma: antes de reforçar, perceba porque é que aquilo se aguentou duzentos anos. Um edifício antigo trabalha, e enrijecê-lo com betão é a melhor forma de o partir.

  ≈ $21.60charged €20.00/ 15 min

  • 🇬🇧EN
  • 🇪🇸ES
  • 🇫🇷FR
  • +1

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