Sorry to thread hijack – but I’m trying to workout the calculation for the heat pump in the French Alps. I’ve not been in the 45m2 apartment for a Winter yet but it can in theory get down to -20. Is there a way I can calculate the demand myself based on the m3 of the property and window sizes and insulation? I’m popping 80mm kingspan on all internal walls and it already has underfloor heating that is run from an oil boiler (which I want to get off). If I can’t work it out I’m going to go this route as I think its still cheaper than oil: https://www.electric-heatingcompany.co.uk/shop/product/slimjim-4kw-electric-flow-boiler/

Thanks!

Now that is a good bit of advice!!!! thanks for the information I’ve not seen those Shelly devices before. A normal extractor fan with one of those setup to run a couple of times a day would fit the bill perfectly. Thank you – I’ve cancelled my original order and will get a cheaper inline fan to go with this.

Yes I want to expeliarmus the funk!

Going to try this on minimum:

https://www.electricalsonline.co.uk/product-page/cv2gip

There are no regs about staying in a room without a window, it’s only a selling criteria

Not much help but maybe something… all my mates who have done it from Morzine to Cham said they wouldn’t do it again and there was more walking than they wanted (all very very good riders). If I also remember correctly they said it’d be better from Cham to Morzine in direction.

You also could go very easily from GVA airport to GVA central station and then catch a train to Thonon les Bains and then pedal up via Habere poche or somewhere in that valley.. its a lot more rolling and could be a good chilled half day to get your legs warmed up before going into the GR5… and the train to thonon will be a few quid vs 70+ for a transfer if that matters.

If you do; go for a dip in Sciez or somewhere in the lake first as its red hot at the moment.

Good luck!

Hire Graham to guide you for a day or 2 https://www.sublimerides.co.uk/

You’d struggle to find them and theres still plenty to be had even with trees down

I’m based in ulverston so not so close sadly – do they have the right foot pack for existing roof rails?

M way eagle 1200 – they have a 10mm slot .. it’s not as bad as it sounds as it will still be 20mm wide.. still a lot of structural integrity- mway do a 10mm bolt for their accessories but they aren’t long enough.

edit – Volvo v50 has roof rails already

Only thing that puts me off and other v6 is that they aren’t very tuneable so it is what it is.. which is a pro and a con.  Wonder if it’ll feel a bit like a heavier a3 3.2 v6 though? and slightly less traction than the quattro?

Legacys are nice but not sure they hold their value that well.

The r53 is interesting but things like this put me off.. £3k recently spent and its for sale for £3k.. hmm:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/294567975983?hash=item44959e9c2f:g:NwMAAOSw3g9hmoau

Haha Phaeton no way – was on the list years ago though :D well my mates list! a porsche cayman cayenne would be more fun

Soft top – fine as long as I can get a hard top easily.. but mainly I dont want to come back to the car after 6 months to find a leak in the roof if I had to leave it outside.

Never heard of a crossfire.. I’ll look! **edit – far too ugly!**

r53s look quite nice – there is one for sale around 5k online but he linked to a thread on a forum of what hes done to it and he was in 15k in a short period of time so I figured they were probably fairly unreliable – does anyone have any comparison on their drive vs a civic? I’m assuming more go karty but slower?

Kind of getting into clio 200 territory now too?

No soft tops – the coupe would be nice but they are pretty much double the cost.. getting into porsche caymen territory

haha I’m not buying that sharan!!!

Think a wrx is in budget too but for the miles maybe an engine risk. Niva – would be fun but I don’t want a project.. I only want a silly car whilst my knackered 74 s3 land rover is being built backup then I’ll just run that.

Cars are mad money right now – maybe too mad to justify my idea.. the Civic seems the best spec for 5k so far though and probably way more engaging to drive than my a3 was

Mk3 mr2s are too ugly – I really like the older ones but cant justify them sadly

Can’t do a mx5 – too slow and too small, I’d love a r8 but I do feel like it’ll crap itself quickly! Also the car could be sat around for months on end as I’m out of the country a lot.

My last silly car was a 06 3.2 v6 quattro a3 – I sold it for £3500 and it was top spec everything so with the current prices I’m sad I let it go a few years ago!

ep3 type r is high on the list – any thoughts on how fun these are vs a focus st (although the st looks a bit mcdonalds car parky to me!)

Cool thanks I’ll have a go at running a new cable

Got a legend of an engineer! now on 73 down and 20 up.. had to change the line… annnd diagnosed the plusnet router is also bollocked as an old BT one I had connected at the actual line speed.

As if I got a happy ending from an internet story!

Sods law.. I just found an old BT homehub and popped in my plusnet details and now its back to 55mbps down and the upload is up to 17mbps which I haven’t seen for a couple of years! (since moving to plusnet)… so I wonder if the router they provided was a bit of a dud.

They have stilled promised the down could be 67mbps minimum so we’ll see what the engineer says on Friday but I’m happy with it now as the upload seems pretty damn good!

Wonder what it was on the old router messing up :/

Tried the router offline for 10mins no joy.
Internals are good just BT master socket (with built in filter) straight into a plusnet router with wifi disabled and using a ubiquiti AC-LR for wifi.
Is there anyway to see if there are any reports on poor performance on the network? I really doubt it… too coincidental that after the engineer phoned me it went to crap so must be something he’s knocked or done?.

I haven’t seen inside a cabinet but I guess its a rack of switches or something that branch off from a main fibre line in?

I guess I was just being a little greedy as the upload at 10mbps is annoying as I do actually push quite a bit of stuff up.. didn’t care so much about the DL… however I am literally only 250meters from the box (actual line measurement). so to drop 50% on upload in that distance is pretty mental.

How does using a VPN get around your upload issue? That doesn’t make sense to me.

Thanks !

Done it 2x now… book it in at home.

Tried it the other way last time and it failed on suspension (even though it didnt the tester was wrong) he misread the foams on the rear leaf springs touching as overloaded but its literally the suspension design as a helper… anyway…. point being you cant sort it there and if it fails on something dramatically you’re even more technically not meant to drive it.

Book it at home… drive it there.. the covid fine is technically much worse than the MOT fine.

I’ve got a jab saw they are just a bit crappy when its all dot and dab behind it – no worries I’ll crack on :D

Great thanks for the tips!

Does anyone have any recommendations for the best wall mounted brackets, I want to run 15mm plastic into copper that comes vertically out of the wall – it doesn’t seem like theres loads of choice for options available. I’m leaning towards speedfit.

Thanks that’s good to hear! I did think of using that but thought it could be a bit slow compared for a full length but probably still the least messy of power tools

Just chiming in.. self employed, turnover a decent amount.. not london wages but I stop working when I’m about to hit the VAT threshold. Mainly php, larvel, js / typescript, wordpress type stuff. Tons of holidays but usually with my laptop and a project on hand..

I really like the tech and the learning.. but I’m about 10 years in and getting fairly fed up of being on my own. My main issue is I’d really like a business partner.

I’ve tried employing people.. thats not for me!

I’d say stop working for an employer and give self employment a bash for probably a lot of missing flexibility.

Thanks all – I’ll split the risk!

Last post.. sorry for the spam.. but I just wanted to emphasis… my point on front suspension.. if its too soft you can’t keep your weight neutral… if its harder it’ll allow you to bring your weight back to a neutral position because you can interact with your suspension not just dive through it.

You’d be amazing the size of hits your front wheel can take when your forks are working correctly. If you’re worried about going too hard – then add a click or 2 of rebound and a little more air.. you can always soften them back down once you’ve found a good spot.. but you learn nothing from soft / slow front forks.

Going heavier on a front brake isn’t what loses you tracting.. an overly aggressive braking force on an unsuitable patch is. On the section you loop go down it and have a look for suitable breaking points and only brake there.

If you’re not good at picking the bike up – practise bunny hops.

Wet roots.. if you can’t come into them square, go around them.. or if you see a safe place to land after them hop them.. if you cant do either, look for where they will take you and try to find a catch berm and aim there.

If you’re not relaxed over roots letting the bike move under you then you’ll probably have a sit down. If its going pete tong.. try and at least clear the worst with your front wheel and then go light when your back wheel is passing over them

I’d say your tyre is too soft – go for about 24psi or slightly less if you’re less than 80kg and try that.

Also your forks are probably too soft so make them firmer so you’re not eating through the travel with no where left to go.

Confidence inspiring tyres.. no idea what ground type Gilburn is but if the maxxis isn’t doing it for you try a michelin dh casing or their top enduro tyre on the front.

Check your bar angle is inline or close to inline with your forks (if not inline slightly forwards) and make sure your brake levers are at a comfortable neutral angle inline mainly with a straight wrist.

Go and session a section until you find your confidence and keep lapping it until you do.

Get into your head that if you put yourself on your bike as a passenger you’ll have the reactions and lack of control as one.. if you get a neutral confident stance with heels dropped, eyes where you want to go and elbows proud and bent you’ll be much better equipped with tackling the unexpected.

Time yourself on the same section not pedalling and then pedalling and surprise yourself how much smoother you were and faster / or the same time WITHOUT pedalling

Get some helpful mates..

Just ethernet over power.. I really dont see the point of running cat5/6 cables unless you have a very specific purpose where you know you’ll benefit from the max speed.. If its just connectivity EOP.

Just to chime in a little more.. possibly useful information.. I commuted to Carlisle from the farm I was living on.. it was ok to get to the edge (serviced offices) but when I moved my office into town it made my commute an hour or more with traffic… and had a nice flooding surprise which messed the town “city” up for a while.

The pub culture in the borders in Scotland is terrible compare to England or Scottish Cities and I don’t think there was 1 pub in Langholm or Selkirk I’d happily sit to drink a pint in.

The now GF lived in Gala for a bit (relocated for work with an office in Selkirk)… she managed a year and had to move back to Edinburgh and suck up the commute.. I’m sorry to say but it just all feels down trodden in looks and attitudes.

I’m sure there are some really nice “nest” homes in those areas and lots of good folk but it wasn’t pouring out with a community spirit.

FYI the farm I was on had about 10 cottages to rent.. some with land and they were offensively cheap… so I’d look at the A7 between Carlisle and Selkirk or the Newcastleton road if you want the biggest bargain for land price.. however as said if my arm was twisted I’d do everything I could to make Inners my doorstep / local pub as theres more going on since you’re connected with biking.

However I’d imagine a lot of people are buying up this area more and more for commuterville.

Another option is to look in Dalkeith direction and more East of Edinburgh and then back down towards Inners… Dalkeith is horrible but no worse than Gala or Selkirk imo.. and you can get some good walks on beaches and other amenities.

Coin flip; I moved between Langholm and Selkirk with a partner at the time onto a 5000 acre Estate that her family owned… even that couldn’t keep me there.. I found it a miserable & dreich place. No disrespect to anyone that likes it, but I couldn’t see myself there or find happiness. Granted it was coming from the South Lakes (near Coniston) and from living in Morzine… so I maybe had a warped experience. I tried Edinburgh for a year too but still didn’t cut it.

I’m back in Morzine now. My advice would be to rent a house for 1 week or a month (no idea what schools in the uk are doing right now) and see how you feel after it.

The riding in the Peebles valley really is special though and there are a lot of good folk up there. The Scottish landscape in the borders doesn’t inspire me like the Lake District or Alps…

Good luck with the move – but test your toes in the water first is my advice!

Woocommerce is overkill, heavy and messy and you’d be into £400/ish a year off the bat in keeping upto date plugins. However because it is so big heavy and messy there are a lot of people who work with it. It is solid too.. I’ve got 2 sites turning over millions a year via it without a hiccup.. however its not what I’d recommend if you want to do simple restricted content, simple membership levels and membership payments.

It’s made by Automatic.. the creators of WordPress.

Any reason you’d be adversed to Laravel… it literally ticks all the boxes if you don’t think the learning curve will get in the way?

You should be scanning documentations not asking the questions IMO and especially on a bike forum… go on reddit/laravel or reddit/wordpress or even better go back to the docs; as all the answers are laid out to a digest-able level there.

You’d be hard pushed to get Squarespace to work for your needs without feeling suffocated.

I’m still not sure why you’re sweating attaching a well documented JS library to replace a textarea in a form.. that still throws alarm bells.

If things like Webpack, Composer, NPM, SCSS, GIT worry you then go with WordPress if not… and for the final time Laravel.. you’d actually end up with a worthy SASS.

Just be prepared you’ll probably make a mess with wordpress as it’d be extremely hard not to with your angle.

Don’t mean to say this the wrong way but theres a lot of plates spinning to get this working in a way that wont introduce an absolute clustermuppet of technical debt… so if you think shotgun coding this is going to be a good idea then I’d strongly disagree unless you’ve got a month to waste.

I say this because the questions you’re asking are moot points and not the real battles.. for example any modern interface would likely use a js related library like trix, tiptap, tinymce etc… it doesn’t matter.. thats easy, a CRUD interface could have that up an running within the first hour of a project.

If you go down a route that isn’t PHP then good luck getting an abundance of affordable dev’s involved if you need to delegate.

/ speaking from a lot of experience

If you’re doing your own code… honestly why not Laravel?

Clean MVC code / PHP framework
User authentication check
Subscription models baked in with Cashier
Options like Nova for a fast CRUD interface or many similar
Secure, fast, stable, easy to test and seed data, set strict relationships etc…
Use tailwind or a bootstrap theme for styling

Lots of freelance dev’s using it – it’s nice to work in and modern and they will actually be dev’s no just procedural php tweakers.

… sounds like you could be a little out your depth though if the last time you looked at css and html was 20 years ago.. so if you. want some learning get a laracast subscription.

Stop in at the bakehouse in greenodd on your way through.. then chesters cafe seems fairly popular with a flat walk to a pub at the other end if its too nasty to walk up the hills.

lob some stones into hodge close and go cow tipping when the farmers not looking

Honestly… Laravel.. however if its between Drupal and WP for most reasons WP.

If you are looking to pay my offer still maybe interesting to you..

I’ll sell you a custom WP implementation I’ve done, content restriction, subscription levels.. it’d get you a good head start.. you’d have to also buy the licenses of “premium” plugins I’ve used.

If I was doing it for myself I’d use Laravel.

Videos.. never self host.. use Vimeo and restrict access to a domain / embed only.