Thanks for all the replies.

First thing I did was go to all the neighbours and they we’re all fine. We’re in South Wales and there’s never been a chlorine taste or smell.

Anyway, I fitted a NRV yesterday in front of the washing machine and utility sink and toilet, and it seems to be solved.

Out of interest though, you mentioned to check the filling loop valves and the cylinder NRV. These we’re installed in December too, so I’d hope they were okay. One of the loop valves looks like if has a NRV built in.
But… the cylinder doesn’t have a NRV… Should it?

Thanks all.

R

For the boiler with separate hopper and a 250L un-vented cylinder we’ve been quoted about £13k installed. This boiler can feed directly into the heating circuit so you don’t need a thermal store.

I thought that I should get a quote from another company, as £13k is a lot of cash! but the next company quoted for a Windhager and that was £27k!!

From what I’ve read Windhager seem to be a favourite, but at that price the’re not even remotely an option.

Cheers

Not sure what that private banking threshold is, but I doubt we’ll quite be there yet!

I have just spoken to Scottish Widows though about their professional mortgage and that sounded promising.

Thanks for all the recommendations guys. Very helpful.

Poly, yes as a GP partner you are self employed, but it’s a little different to just having set up your own company, as you’re joining an already established partnership with an existing financial history. Or at least, that what we’re hoping will be taken into account.

Thanks Martin, I’ll check that out.

Thanks guys,

It’s going into the For Sale forum. It’s located in South Wales.

Easy, go and persuade the shop to give you the Orange five pro 2012 for £2400. Worked for me a few years ago!

Thanks guys, really useful stuff!

I don’t think I’m going to need the Quasar for what I do… currently 😉

I’m planning some wild camping in Snowdonia in a few weeks, not exactly Arctic conditions, but you want to be prepared. Chances are that pegs will go in fine, but also want to account for future use in America and Australia, so similar requirements to ebygomm.

Thanks guys, that’s as I thought. Just wanted a word from someone who’s tried it.

Any other suggestions on alternatives to the Vango Mirage 300? I have a sudo budget of £200 and the Mirage at Go Outdoors comes in at a nice £127 at the moment, but something a little lighter than 3.6kg would be nice.

R

I can vouch for the 2.25, they’re great! The 60a compound ones are solid, and the 42a (super tacky) stick to everything. Give them a try. I wouldn’t have said that going to 2.5 was necessary, but that’s a bit of a pointless opinion as I don’t what sort of stuff you really ride! 😉

If you look at Snowdon, remember it’s into May now so I think you have to ride early or late. Can’t remember the timings, so look it up.

I’m not local to the area, nor have I done a lot of riding there, so you probably know everything that I’ve done. But I’ll chime in anyway while you wait for some decent suggestions from people in the know!

I’ve ridden Snowdon, up from Llanberis and back the same way, and it was awesome in my opinion. But I did it end of November and it was -12 blizzard at the top! So would be even better now I think. Any many people talk about the Ranger path decent, which sounds like a better (more techy and quieter) decent. The climb from Llanberis is long and techy in places, and unridable in some places for most people. Can’t remember how long it took, but I think it was about 3.5 hours or something like that.

Also, not too far from there is Penmachno which is a really great purpose built trail, which doesn’t have a whole “trail centre” setup and feels a bit more natural and rugged than most. Think it’s a 30km loop.

No await some better suggestions!

Nice 😉

What do you mean too many bikes?? I don’t understand that sentence 😉

I’ve used M&S home insurance in the past, and I think many other people do for bikes. If I remember correctly, they don’t have an upper limit.

Alternatively you could get specific insurance. I’ve used ETA in the past, and they’re very good, but I think it get’s expensive with high value bikes, so I dropped it.

I think I’m with Halifax at the moment and they cover my Five at £2500. I don’t think that was the limit though (if there was even a limit) so might be worth asking them.

Everyone’s saying that the sentence is terrible, but may I ask what he should have had?
Life ban from driving?
Life in prison?
Death sentence?

It seems to me that this person unfortunately had a collision with a cyclist nearly 30 years ago and went to prison for 2 years for it, as it was deemed by the courts to be reckless driving.

30 years later, unfortunately again, he has another collision. All it says in that article is that he clipped her wheel. We can’t see exactly what happened, and the courts have only deemed it careless driving, and have given the punishment that they see fit.

Everyone here seems to be talking as though this guy is careering round the streets, knocking down cyclists left right and centre! I don’t see any sign that he was intending to cause any accidents, and guess what, accidents happen. Referring to this as “murder” seems a bit strong.

I’m not in favour of light sentences if the driver has been genuinely reckless, and maybe in both of these cases they could have been stronger, but I don’t see that people should be locked up and the key thrown away just because of an accident.

Cycling is a dangerous activity, especially in a city. There are accidents on the roads everyday, and not always because someone was being reckless. We don’t know anything about what the cyclists where doing at the time. I’m not blaming the cyclist in any way, just saying we don’t have the information.

And everyone’s getting upset about the helmet comment. If you choose to ride your bike with cars you’re taking a risk. They’re much bigger than you, and if you hit one/one hits you, you’re going to lose. If you choose to ride your bike with cars and not wear a helmet (it’s your choice), you just increase your risk.

Hyperthetical question:
If a driver had two collisions with cyclists over his lifetime and they both got up and road away because they were wearing helmets, or they both died because they weren’t and suffered serious head injuries, should the driver receive the same or different punishments?

gofasterstripes, please can I ask about “roast brake pads in gas cooker to remove oil”???

Do you stick the brake pads in the oven? Does that actually remove oil? How’s the oil got into them? My friend got some oil on his pads and it seemed like the pads and rotor were a write-off.

Ah! Have I missed out??? Just went to sign up and it says it’s full! 🙁

I’m in a similar position and have been looking at Zermatt. I guess most resorts in the Alps are going to have some great riding, but can anyone compare it to other places? I’ve never ridden in the Alps before. Been to Morzine a few times in the winter and seems to be the most popular area for biking, but worried that in mid July it would be heaving! Is the riding there that much better than anywhere else? Mostly interested in good XC with a bit of downhill stuff to have a go on if it’s there. Got a week and will be driving.

Awesome tip Trout. That’s working a treat, sure they’re almost back to normal already!

Thanks Dick for the bleeding tips. I should probably look at doing that at some point as I guess there must be some air in there somewhere.

R

Thanks guys, I’ll give the ziptie trick a go first, then look at bleeding.

R

I saw a couple in north Wales unloading their two bikes from the back of a KA. They had the seats down, and the bikes stood upside down, facing front to back. Handle bars at the front and straight across to stop the frames falling over. Wheels off obviously. I was very impressed. Usually carry my bike like that now, even with a bigger car. Takes up the smallest footprint.

I tend to ride with it on max for most stuff except big decents (orange five).

But am I wrong in thinking that propedal isn’t trying to be a lockout, and that it’s more clever than just stiffening the shock? I was under the impression that it was designed to reduce low speed compression caused by pedal stoked and therefore wouldn’t have much effect on faster compression caused by hits on a decent. Looking at the travel used when it’s been on vs when it’s been off, there’s not much difference, but there is a noticeable difference in pedal bob.

I could be wrong here, so please correct me if I am.

Please elaborate on the mattress requirement. Also interested in these but thought they might mean you wouldn’t need on if off the ground.

Yes, do penmachno, but make sure you do the long loop!

Yes, but we ride them, nit weigh them. Sorry.

Don’t think they put it on the site, so best off go to a shop and see if they have a frame they can weigh for you. Or wait for someone to give you a proper responce here!

I don’t have a dog, but followed on down a trail at cwmcarn! Great fun, and I’ve never seen a dog run so fast!

I have the free version of Motion X and it’s great for a free app with map caching, but it does really eat the battery (3GS). Not much good for long rides if you want to keep your phone alive for emergencies. I have MemoryMap for the PC but haven’t gone for the app yet. What sort of battery life do you get using MemoryMap? Better than Motion X?

+1 for the adidas evil eyes. I have the explorer model and have three different outer lenses, depending on the conditions. When it’s dry I use them with the prescription insert. When it’s raining I do find that the double lens makes it more serseptable to misting up and harder to clear, so normally swap to contacts and use the glasses without the insert to stop mud etc.

No help to you, but the switch failed on my first too. You had to plug in the battery and hope the light came on. If it didn’t, unplug and repeat. This want on until I actually lost the light (left it on a wall or something when packing the car) so was forced to buy a new one.

There are some crazy experimental camer angles in that vid! Nice!

I wanted one of those soooo bad when I first started riding, but too young at the time to contemplate actually ever getting one!

Does that mean I’m now old? 😐

Any idea how it happened? Sharp rock? Badger? Maybe they were never there?

I’ll try and look it up on iplayer, just finished reading the book. Recommend that btw.

Agree with flow

I have the stock 90 on my ’09 Five, and happy with that, but haven’t tried changing it, so limited help I expect.

Edit: 20″ frame, 6’1″ rider

I (and the guy I ride with) had this problem really bad a few years ago when we first started riding afan. After the local trails we’ve always ridden, afan was the first place we were doing such long rides with that amount of rocky decents.

It’s basically fategue in your fingers. Simple answer is doing that kind of riding more will help. Nowadays I sometimes get a bit of pain towards the end of a long ride, but no where near what it used to be like. I also have thin, hard grips and that hasn’t changed.

You can try relaxing your grip a bit, as that helps the blood flow to your fingers better. Opening your hand fully when you get the chance can releave the pain in the very short term. Also, make sure you are only using one finger to break, and try not to hover your finger on the brake leaver when your not braking. The more fingers you have on the grip, the easier it will be on your hands.

My friend had a period a while ago where this pain came back with a vengeance and he couldn’t work out why. Finally he spotted that (for some reason) he was riding with his thumbs above the bars, not below! Coupled with 2 finger braking, he only had 2 fingers in each hard to hold onto the bars! Resulting in gripping way too hard.

Hope this helps.

I love how a thread title “my first drop-off” is mingled with posts about 8 by 20 foot gap drops! 😀

Have I miss read the article? Sounds to me like they’re carting 120 people up there for a specific race. I guess because there’s no other simple way of getting everyone up there. The idea behind DH, love it or hate it, is that you ride down hill, and normally down stuff too steep/technical to ride up easily, and you don’t want to be burnt out before you start the decent (that’s for XC). Anyway, using a heli for one race is quite a bit different to opening a day in day out heli uplift service, which I’m pretty sure isn’t happening, right?

There is an issue of how the cassette interacted with your freehub body. I.e. an XT cassette is much better on my Hope Pro 2 as the
Interacting metals are the same. Cheaper ones tent to chew it up. But that might not be an issue with your hub.

+1 SRAM chain.