I had some on when I got bike, they roll like slicks and are actually not tooo bad. Swapped them for some high rollers pretty sharpish though. They are LITE

but those velo solo ones are very fancy indeed….

Thanks, charlie the bikemonger has what I was looking for.

I say: singlespeed as it's fun and will feel different to your normal bike, rigid forks for the low maintenance and as above, and hybrids are a bit "shopper" really. Get an MTB and then you can swap parts around with the meta rather than something which needs different bits. Not sure who does a good rigid single speed hardtail for cheap though, sure you'll find one pretty quick. Maybe genesis or something.

Thanks all for your iteresting "facts" – to summarise:

cup and cone = excellent if you remember to religiously service them even when you think they're fine (I'd like to think I'd do this, but probably won't), and once you've accidentally forgotten to service them (for a few years) they could be irreparably damaged

cartridge e.g. hope – cost a few pounds more per year but you can ignore them until something's wrong, and they have a bit more resistance (though that probably wont make a noticeable difference, I remember reading an article by Lennard Zinn about it here)

I have some ritchey road sealed ones, which I'd like to have messed about with, but the freehub body is too soft and the casette has made big dents in it! That's a design fault.

A fine collection indeed, I'd like to add my (pointless) comment-
Clearly the aesthetics are important, I reckon the ti stem and stackers are ruining the balance of the frame, might work if you put a Ti seatpost on them all? Or go for black stems and stackers to match the bars.

I think Ti looks much better with silver thompson and brown saddles/tape.

There, I've said it.

NiCad batteries hold their charge, whereas NiMH ose it all in a matter of months, so if you only use tools occasionally and don't want to have to charge them every time you use them then NiCad probably works out better

You want to live near waterloo, vauxhall, battersea, clapham junction. From there you can go to S. Downs and Swinley as the other captain suggests. It's (all) dead flat, very expensive and high crime. One gear is plenty, but I don't like drops across town as the brakes are a)sh*te and b)too far away, some people do though.

There are some numbers on the shimano tech literature, however I've gone well over them with a short cage on my road bike and it's fine. ~Think sheldon brown or someone has a piece on it

and again, they're getting all the swine flu vaccine

ok I found the web site of their bicycle line, they look appalling.

So, to summarise, the world famous gun manufacturer is rebadging shite bikes with their name. They are made especially for police, so there is no point in advertising them as a bike manufacturer.

So our bike police advertise guns.

I have never heard of smith and wesson bikes, they make guns

dunno, but I've raced there as part of the gorrick series, and it was god. I'm pretty sure they get special permits for those though. Yes the riding was good, but maybe it was in areas you can'tnormally ride. Try to enter some of them if you want to know what it's like.

thanks for the replies, sounds like it's a case of try and hope to some extent….

agreed with full stop, there are a lot of "parasitic" energy uses in offices such as servers, computers and pretty much anything with a transformer, which use power even when they're off. You probably can't switch the server off but might be able to run it more efficiently, or cool it better.

Also look at things like draughts, though that really depends on what kind of office you have. Most architects I work with have old leaky buildings!

Other than that lighting is always big, use flourescent tubes and light to a lower level, then use task lights for individuals who need it (though these obviously need to be compact flourescent or perhaps LED)

Your best start is to find out where yourr energy is going, nowatt can be useful, and record your gas meter readings.

Thanks for the advice, yeah bike companies do like to put several hundred perceent markup on bearings, I'll look out for somewhere near me.

I hsave the classic, I think it has some extra features like the tail flap, I have only once been cold in it and that was after a several hours in continuous rain, which it didn't stand up to. If the classic is the same fabric it should be the same I think?

Depends how much you like going over jagged rocks.
I went last week on my old old zaskar, it was very uncomfortable.

To calculate the power you require for heating is easy, you take the U-value of each component of the house (i.e. windows, walls, roof etc) and multiply each by the area of each one. So 10m2 of double glazed windows with a U-value of 2.2w/m2k would be 10×2.2=22w/k. Add all these together and you have a power required to heat the building to 1 kelvin above the outside temperature. You want to heat the building to 25K above external air, so multiply this by 25. That’s your “fabric loss” in Watts.

Then you need to add the loss due to infiltration, which depends on the house construction and airtightness. I would assume 0.8 air changes an hour for a new house, so 0.8ac/hr / 3600s/hr x vloume of house (m3) x 25K x 1.2KJ/kgk (Cp of air). Add this to your fabric loss and you’re there. I can help if you want, it’s my job.

GSHP is good if designed well, otherwise it’s rubbish. It wont be very efficient heating your hot water either. Have a look at dimplex, viessmann and ciat, they all make domestic heat pumps which are suitable for hot water. Look at the CoP charts in their brochures, you need to be above 2.5 to save carbon.

juliancottrill at googlemail dot com