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Whether your ride on the road or on mountain trails, every bicycle needs well-inflated tires. All tires will lose pressure over time. High pressure road tires need to be re-inflated every few days to make sure they maintain pressure. Lower-pressure mountain and hybrid tires can usually maintain adequate pressure for a couple weeks before they need to be pumped up.
A floor pump is designed to allow you to stand on the base and use both hands on the handle to pump up the tire. This is the best option to have at home to re-inflate your tires on a regular basis. These pumps have a large enough chamber to allow you to quickly inflate high-pressure road tires and high-volume mountain tires.
Every cyclist will eventually get a flat tire. If you ride beyond easy walking distance from your home or car, you'll want to carry some means to repair and re-inflate your tires. For many years, the frame pump was the only choice, and is still the preferred choice of many. This is a hand-held pump that mounts to your bicycle frame. They work well for emergency use, but since these pumps don't allow you to get your weight behind the pumping, it is a slow and tedious process to pump up a large tire or a high pressure racing tire. A very popular option today is the CO2 inflator. Instead of using your own muscles to pump up the tire, you can carry a small cartridge of compressed CO2. A single 16 gram cartridge (this is the mass of the compressed CO2 gas) will inflate a typical 700C or 27 inch road tire to full pressure (around 120 psi), and a 26 inch MTB tire to about 40 psi (enough to get home on). It only takes seconds to inflate.
In addition, an inflator with one or two CO2 cartridges weighs less, takes up less space, and is significantly faster and easier to use than a pump. The downsides? The CO2 cartridges are disposable, so you'll have to purchase replacements when you use them. If you run out of cartridges while on the road or trail and still have a tire to inflate, you're out of luck.
BicycleTires carries a great selection of floor pumps, hand pumps, and CO2 inflators. Select Pumps and Inflators above to see all our products. | 
