Fozzie

Firstly, bloody hell! Welcome back! Not see you for a while. And adding to this, the most common type of heat pump (air source) is at its least efficient during the colder months. Right when your highest heating demand hits. At present I’d always advise people to install all viable insulation upgrades to their home first to get the best out of the boiler. Then as renewables on the grid increase and we get more periods of surplus, it might be that battery storage comes into play if the right tariffs exist.

Good evening! Off to Ju-Jitsu training, last Tuesday of the month means a quick trip to the pub afterwards. Much needed already as this week is going to be stressful, but it's for a good reason. After months of hold ups, I'm moving into my new house this weekend

Even the Facebook groups have thinned out a lot. The vast majority of rides I go on throughout the year now are with some of the stragglers who stopped going on the groups but kept contact. Generally speaking since covid, people have "siloed" a lot more, at least in my experience. I've also seen quite a few people hang up their helmets for good in the past few years. Death of a friend/family member due to a bike accident, losing the buzz for it, and arguably the biggest cause, can't afford it thanks to the cost of living rocketing. Hopefully the recent release of cheap and cheerful bikes into the market will see this turn around!

Good luck! You can regularly update us with the types of road you have been riding, and we won't be jealous... Until the wet season anyway... Good afternoon everyone else. Shattered today, I've had to lift the bits of a king size bed up 2 flights of stairs. Disconnected a washer, which I helped lift down two flights of stairs, then helped lifting a new (2nd hand) washing machine up the stairs and plumbed it in. I have spent £300 or so, but I keep furniture that would be around £2k to replace. I originally got both my washer and bed for free, from someone who refused payment as they were selling up. So in a way this works out, or at least that's what I'm telling myself.

There have been so many ups and downs with this process. Originally I was told I'd be in before Christmas. Had the buyers of our buyers house divorce, the sellers had someone die, our estate agent is a pathological liar. The new buyer is a cash buyer 10k under the highest offer we had... Small things really I understand by some say this is one of the most stressful things you will do in life.

Good afternoon! Selling my flat at the moment, been a bit of an ordeal. I'm leaving it furnished for the new buyer to rent out, but I'm swapping out some bits for cheaper alternatives. Fortunately, most of the furniture I have is cheap items I bought when I moved in 6 years ago as I knew I wouldn't be in the flat for long. This has been my strategy since I was young, and it feels almost nerve racking that I can essentially give it up when I move into my new house. Not sure where it came from, but I've always been cautious to lay roots. It was a great strategy when I lived in London on a low wage, as I often moved every 3-6 months and was always able to move most belongings in a single car journey. London properties were sold often, so house shares and rental flats tended to be short term fixes. One house share had a wrong 'un tenant that I knew for a couple of months, they stashed a bag of weapons in the back garden and claimed they had been used in a gang related murder. I put a rush on getting out of there. Plus, I always knew I was going to come back to Manchester and no one would change that, which framed a lot about how I felt about dating and even friendships. I was asked to part buy a property a couple of times by good friends, but I declined. Strange that in a few weeks, I might be able to go and buy a nice recliner sofa. A nice armchair. A proper dining table set. Fancy bedside cabinets. Never done it before!

Thanks for that. Did you manage to get a sit on it? Not sure how tall you are, I'm a hair under 6ft 2 but I'm long bodied so high pegs aren't too much of an issue, but handle bars that bend your arms a lot are. I got my fiancee to sort of agree to let me buy one. She said "it has been several months since you've had a tinker weekend in the garage to be fair". So I think she's about 65-70% of the way there!

I have now If I wasn’t trying to buy a house at the moment it would be a done deal I think.

Good evening, Working late (again) and found myself needing a little break, and sought refuge on Honda's website. Really like the look of this little bike: GB350S, a single cylinder, air cooled bike with about 21BHP. I've had 2-stroke 125's with 50% more power. But I love the retro look blended with modern but simple tech. Saw the price and I'm genuinely a little tempted. It's like my family dog Maxx, there's faster, lighter, better looking, and better behaved dogs. But I like Maxx.

Isn't the rule on minimum EPC coming in 2030? Or has that been brought forward? For the house, have you upgraded to LED lighting? That counts for quite a bit for the EPC rating and is low cost. The cavity insulation should get you the rest of the way, and maybe a new combi-boiler as they will soon become the main target. The ambition is to electrify heat. I work in power generation, and the grid is a mess right now. Everyone running around like their hair is on fire. My view on it changes from optimistic to sceptic quite often, but when I'm feeling sceptical I start to suspect that those at the top know high energy bills are coming, and that power availability won't be the best. The only way to deal with that is reduce demand. The tech to decarbonise is expensive to retrofit (not so bad on new build), but it's the ongoing running costs of them that get you. So if I didn't know better, these green targets to insulate homes better is more to do with the fact people would freeze to death due to the increased poverty such measures bring.

I'm genuinely shocked to hear Honda used a wet belt! What is wrong with a chain? It barely seems worth it to me even as a cost saving exercise.

That's a long journey down memory lane as it's been about 16 years since I had that bike It was an 04 model, bought for £1400 in 2006. My dad found out it wasn't limited to 30 and would pull to an indicated 50. Once I got my CBT, I spent all my money from extra shifts in Somerfield's to pay for a used arrow exhaust, a bigger carb, fuel reeds, spark plug, air filter, and promptly blew the bike up. I rebuilt it, and tried again, but blew the crank case seals. So it was rebuilt again, with me getting at least a little wiser to my stupidity each time. It went off the speedo easily, though the speed stopped at 50, but the euro models went to 70, and I found it was doing an indicated 65-70mph when going downhill. I think the mods I did took it from 8-9bhp to about 11-12bhp based on what other friends claimed to be getting (a dad of one owned a workshop with a dnyo). I rebuilt it again, installing an unmarked malossi top end (I reckon it was the 82cc kit, which was popular at the time) and then had to mess with the fuelling for weeks, as well as the oil feed to stop it seizing. When I got it right, I stripped it of all extra weight, and tried to top it out but I went off the end of the rev counter at 14,000rpm and felt I was going to blow it up if I pushed it any further. So I started putting big front sprockets on it, and trialling different ones until I found one that didn't cause me to lose speed in 6th while in the power band. With over inflated tyres, and a 2 mile stretch of road near High Legh garden centre, and a cheap GPS speedo, I got over 70 on a flat. So I took it down Agden Brow hill in Lymm catching the left hand bend just right with the throttle wide open as it goes into a national speed limit, and there I got it to 82mph for all of 3 seconds. Once out of the power band I couldn't be in 6th gear as it just slowed to a stall. The biggest bragging right I got was when I went for a ride with a friend on a CBR125, and he couldn't catch me on a straight, although I was doing 14,000rpm+ in 5th But as with many teenage stories... Some details were conveniently left out. The friend on a CBR125 was in full gear, a lot heavier than me, on a heavier bike and not tucked in. I had my feet where the back pegs were, head under the screen (could barely see), was wearing steel toe capped boots, jeans, a river island leather jacket, a cheap £60 helmet and no gloves. The GPS speedo I used also had a habit of drifting between 30 and 50 when in a car sat doing 30 the whole time, so it wasn't trustworthy. And to top it off the top speed while it could hold it on a flat, it would never reach it without a hill or strong tail wind assist. At 16-19, I felt like a king who got an RS50 to do 82mph. At 34 looking back, I laugh and think "what a twat, he wrecked a reliable 50mph bike, and definitely didn't do much over 70 for all that trouble"

The cash buyer has come in £5.5k under the offer of the last buyer and asked the place be fully furnished. The house I'm buying has people who are moving into a new build, if they aren't ready by mid-Feb they lose the house. I believe there's a cash buyer for this house waiting in the wings, about 20k beneath what I offered who they will go with rather than lose this house. So my options are that I take the hit and keep the house I want to buy. Or try to resell my property, and find another house, which are silly rare at the moment as the market in my area is effectively stalled. The house I've got is in good condition, but it was owned by one owner for 50 years and is decorated as such, so it needs a full refit. I have spoken to the estate agent, and he thinks I can deck my place out with charity shop furniture and take my current furniture with me. It will cost £500-1000. Big hit to the pot I had to do renovations, but I think I can move savings around and delay other big purchases that were meant to follow this year. It sucks but hopefully in 6 months I won't care once I'm in and hopefully happy in the new home!

Probably, if I could afford it. I was selling to a chap who was selling his house due to getting divorced, then over Christmas the couple buying his house also chose to divorce and the chain fell out from under me. Was saved by a cash buyer who wants to rent it out, which I don't like, and it has cost me £6k all told including having to buy furniture so he can rent it out immediately. I've joked a couple of times that between that and E Coli, I "lost my ass twice last week". I half think this work trip is wasted, as I'm looking at battery energy storage. The UK needs a lot more renewables on grid to make the direct to grid projects make sense, and behind the meter projects are few and far between. Once commercial sites have installed solar, and those systems have paid for themselves, it won't take long for people to gradually become more irritated at the system turning itself down when there's a lot of sun and not a lot of site load. Rules on exporting are now very firm, and usually 0. Once they see how much power they could generate, they'll go for the battery system, but I'd say this was 5 years off at least, and the technology moves very fast. Still it will be interesting, I'm just a professional sceptic

Good afternoon, Been a very busy few weeks, nearly had the purchase of a new house fall through, I've had flu and then suspected E-Coli (from service station food), which has nackered me a bit. And I've got to go to France for work next week, which while interesting I'm going to Strasbourg via train the whole distance. All in for two of us, it has produced £2k in expenses, it better be worth it

I think I joined when I was 16, I had an Aprilia RS50. So 18 years, I've been a member here longer than I was alive at the time of joining Happy birthday to the forum!

Reminds me of a time I was driving back from Scotland. Beautiful clear day, fresh snow on all the surrounding fields. What I thought was thick fog was up ahead as I went up a stretch of the motorway into some hills. It wasn't fog, it was a blizzard and I went into it at speed limit of 70mph. Big mistake. I had moved into the middle lane to overtake a truck, and as we hit this wall of flying snow we both got on the brakes and put our fog lights on. Never seen it go light/dark as fast as it did. Within seconds, we went from driving on clear roads to a lot of slush, and the right lane had a lot more snow settling on it. As I cleared the truck I saw a BMW coming up behind quickly in the right lane, I saw the inevitable happening and got into the left lane quickly. Mr BMW overtook me and the truck as he hit the snow and went sideways, and carried on into a big spin across the motorway as he overcorrected and ended up in the hard shoulder with some wheels on the verge. Me and the truck managed to shed speed and dodge him. No safe way to stop in that, so I kept on going, and about 20 minutes later it was back to clear skies and nice roads again. BMW was a nob no doubt, although he'd have gotten away with it had he not being doing 90+.

Good afternoon, My area is still reeling from the flooding a couple of days ago. The canal breached at a section near my old home town, and has shut down the roads. Quite a serious thing when you see it, a 100m length or more has just simply ceased to exist, and it drained the canal into the nearby countryside, also grounding the boats that were moored up. Speaking to some locals, this wasn't the first time it happened, the same spot failed back in the 70s and took 2 years to fix! No doubt Peel will find a way to make it take double the time, and cost 5 times more than anyone would reasonably guess.

I'm probably working until 8pm tonight, this time of year is great for getting yourself lined up for the 5 months of January Happy new year folks!

Silly question, but could you live somewhere in immediate striking distance of Asia? My sister was until recently, in Perth Australia and only 4 hours flight away from Bali. Only another 4 to Japan. Or is there a reason it has to be east Asia? Like culture/work? Cost of living in Perth is quite low compared with Sydney, although outside of the main city there isn't much I'm told. Might not be as good as living there directly, but it's on the same time zone, and about the same flight time as going to Greece from the UK. Know what you mean on the traffic noise. I climbed Mt Batur, which started at 1am and the scooters with chopped off exhausts were always in earshot. Around 4am it was like rush hour began and it got really noisy.

I feel I could have been quicker, I put a lot of the early complaints down to typical grumbles of the team. And wasn't fully appreciating the content of what they were saying. While I got him down to 2 weeks paid notice, it would have only been 1 had I looked into it sooner. The big one for me is I think I've dented a relationship with one of the team managers I really like. He's had a lot going on, and he has seemed really worn down. I think he just didn't want, or need the added stress, so he suggested we let the guys contract time out. But in the moment, I saw it as him letting a guy steal 6 months of wages at a contractors rate, while we expect full time staff members to pick up the slack. I hated the message that would send. I basically said I would be taking it to the senior leadership if he (this contractors manager) didn't and forced the situation. If I could do it again, I would simply tell him to delegate the issue to me entirely, and tell senior leadership I was tasked with investigating/reporting on this contractors behaviour. I will be privately apologising to him in the new year, and hopefully it will be a lesson well learnt.

Got a big un. 70 hour weeks in the run up to Christmas, and I was knocked down by a cold/covid/flu/whatever it was. It has battered my lungs. Just before Christmas, I had to sack a rogue contractor. Was a bit embarrassing as I interviewed him originally, and he had all the right jargon, was well spoken. Quickly, staff began commenting he was rude, confrontational and would deny agreeing to deadlines even if you sent him the screenshot of the e-mail where he did. I warned management we had a bit of a chancer in our midst, initially I just thought we'd give him easier work and not renew his contract. Fortunately I'd limited him to 6 months rather than 12 as he hadn't given enough content in his answers. The moment I decided to give him the bullet was after a lengthy debate. I was polite to him, but I technically backed him into a corner on some of his assertions. I quoted the relevant regs, and he still declared my arguments didn't stack up, but also that he accepted how we do it. I wasn't in the mood, so I pushed him for a technical reason on why my arguments didn't stack up, and he gave me a lot of waffling, before switching tactic to saying "it's just I've never done it that way". I kept it polite, but I pointed out compliant designs shouldn't be alien to someone as experienced as him. I decided then I would be making sure he got his notice in the new year. But then I discovered 2 days later he had gone on site, got in front of a client and a specialist, and then repeated his arguments without any of the corrections I'd given. He introduced himself as a consultant (he's a designer) for a start. The client seemed to lap up everything he said, the specialist called me up and said he was put in a very difficult position by it. Apparently he didn't make a lick of sense, and kept looking at things he didn't need to. To top it off, he was spending ludicrous amounts of hours on simple tasks and not able to do them. He had 2 weeks of unpaid leave coming up for Christmas, so I hoovered up all the complaints about him, presented them to the chief, and was given permission to speak to his agent to sack him with immediate affect. Rather than say it wasn't working out, I decided he'd behaved poorly enough to warrant outlining the exact issues we had with him. I kept it professional, but it was fairly damning stuff, as I also included how I found him on companies house where he was listed as a "mechanical engineer". Which explained a few things... A day later, he sends an e-mail from his personal e-mail address to me and several others in the business. And essentially tried to accuse me of doing all kinds of dangerous things. It was a revenge smear, so I just replied technically speaking as he really drove home the point I had made. In several of his claims, he basically outed himself as not being competent on the topic. I dropped him from the reply and pointed these out and kept it professional, but it was like shooting fish in a barrel. I also think I found out how he "sounded competent". He baselessly accused me of using ChatGPT, which until that point I thought was a tool that did kids homework for them. Apparently they are a bit more advanced than that now. It suddenly offered a very good explanation for a lot of his points, and why he had no answer when I shot them down. Fortunately, I've hired some really good eggs, so this doesn't put too much of a black mark on me. But I have been bothered by it over the Christmas period, and there's definitely things I could have done better so thought I'd regurgitate it all here

Christmas in my household is a time to get things we need. A new Makita drill with a 5Ah battery was the best. It's about to get some serious use once the new house completes. Worst? Probably a gecko fridge magnet I got. I hate the little bast*rds after a trip to Indonesia this year where they kept me awake every bloody night. It's now a joke present that the family likes to buy me. It's not bad, but I do roll my eyes a bit at it now as I've already had 10 other things referencing it

Didn’t even know you could get a 400 out there. My sister hired a PCX like the one pictured but in white. And was a good little introduction to 2 wheels. I couldn’t be tempted away, had to be a bike with gears. The CB150X reminded me of my old Varadero 125, but with all the problems I had with it solved. In Nusa Penida I was reduced to a Honda Vario and it was fun but more challenging than I liked. The roads there were so bad and it so small, it was hard work all the time. I had the suspension overwhelmed with just me on it, and I had a pillion. Should have gone for the Yamaha Xmax. Saw a few 250cc two stroke Kawasakis. If I were to live out there, the Honda would be the daily, the 250 the weekend toy.

Nice! Where specifically in Asia or is that bit secret? Could you ship me a Honda CB150X back? Had one in Bali as a rental and fell in love! Was gutted to learn there's no real way to import one other than buying one locally and shipping it.