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May I add to that a dilution of both appreciative enquiry (as in fully trying to understand the position of someone who holds a different view, as well as contradictory findings) and critical enquiry (which is probably more important in that it involves a continuous critical enquiry of your own knowledge, understanding and position). I actually came across someone who had set up a website, specifically to track and critique another academic critical to some climate policies. This person had maintained the website for more than 20 years - creepy. The criticisms were highly personal, rather than academic, but one interesting thing I found was that the academic was criticised for changing his mind about aspects of climate change following empirical findings and research - to be critical of that as inconsistent is a bit weird in my view as surely that's what you're supposed to do following research no? There is also that the whole debate has become so politicised even within academic and scientific communities, it's often very hard to untangle the wheat from the chaff.

So Quantum Physics and Relavalistic Effect not exist then, or been written about. How it all moves forward, but I suspect the underlaying causes are the same. There is a methodology to science proofs that has not yet been bettered. There have been a number of academic that have tried to rewrite the science method, they all fall down in the end. I think the biggest problem is that when describing nature, models are used. At the early stages of peoples education, these are very simplistic models, the 'don't touch, it is hot' level. These move on a bit at school to putting a few words and maybe some theory to it i.e. temperature, energy, molecular movement. And for most people that is where it stops. This is why people still think low temperature, or low voltage, is equal to low energy, even though, they don't have a clue what energy is. Much of this confusion has come about because of the social and medial sciences. Trouble is, their burden of proof, or what us real scientists call truth, is so pitifully low i.e. a 95% confidence level, compared to 0.0000003% or nearly 17 million times less chance that it is a fluke. Also, when an idea is rejected, i.e. the research is on the wrong track, that does not prove any alternative is correct. So a simple medical experiment to see if taking a daily Aspirin reduces blood clotting, does not show anything about that not taking Aspirin. This is something that social and pseudo scientists, and especially pub bores do not adhere to at all. They use a negative result to show a proof in any other area that that fits their believes. This is hardly surprising as we have all been brought up a religious societies that thrive on 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence', which when you think about it, is a nonsense statement.

We want a 800-850mm workstation sink in our kitchen, kitchen is being installed 6th December so need it fairly soon. Due to various reasons, we're finding it hard to find anything in stock that will delivery to Northern Ireland. And a lot are silly prices, £500-£900 kind of range, and not much in stock. We've spotted a KORVO sink on Amazon that ticks most of our boxes and is about half the price of anything else we've looked at. Any red flags? The steel spec looks just the same as a Franke, Grohne etc sink so I'm struggling to see why not? https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08C7DQ61S?th=1

Resin fixing with threaded stainless rod

Less flush plate options for a start on the Omega and Delta. With the Sigma you can end up paying hundreds for an LED touchless plate. I don't think the Omega or Delta offer the squirty up the ar$e Aquaclean or odour extraction systems either?

sorry to say but i think that you are going to get cold floors, as the GSHP / ASHP relies on having well insulated houses

Yes that is definitely my opinion. I set my tv low on the wall, but at what I regard a comfortable height

Your BCO can only inspect what is on site and what the application is for. Suspecting what a future use could be is not relevant and is something that your BCO will not be able to consider.

ProDave, I came across this about an energy survey. which is perhaps relevant to your annoyance at your energy rating The SBEM prediction for post-improvement emissions (8,135 kgCO2) is extremely high in comparison with all other modelling programmes. The reason for this is almost certainly that SBEM assumes a greater use of electricity (mainly for the proposed heat recovery ventilation system) than the other programmes. This is covered in more detail in section 7.4, but the result is that it skews the post-improvement average (an 88% improvement at 2,589 kgCO2); removing SBEM from the equation would change this substantially, giving a 93% improvement to 1,480 kgCO2 and more on p23 here if still annoyed and interested https://www.changeworks.org.uk/sites/default/files/Historic_Scotland_Technical_Paper_8.pdf

I'll throw a curveball out there! Have you considered woodfibre board? What is the state of the inner walls? Original render and reasonably flat? Or bare stone? I've done a few buildings with it and it has been very successful - render behind boards provides very good continuous airtight layer. Haven't gone beyond 80mm thickness of woodfibre board for worries of interstital condensation. You would need a plasterer happy to work with lime render though you can get easy to use bagged mixes for the finish coats if you want to spend more than using sand/lime. No need for a ventilation gap that is hard to achieve yet a breathable buildup.

Don’t fill with water then, simples! Buy the pipes in the correct length coils from Wunda and they’ll come sealed and pre-pressurised to a good few bar. Cutting into it gets quite a notable rush of air and associated hissing noise. Either that or complete a regular installation with manifold rails and pressurise yourself / installer with air. A pressure gauge will show you that things haven’t gone tits-up during screeding

It will but will give you only 125mm thick brickwork per side of the external flue walls, you will need to then corbel the brickwork on each side to support the sides above ?

And I guess that's my concern - could they have reason to believe a garage containing a utility function is an attempt to use the room for a habitable purpose. Let's face it, I could make some further improvements to turn it in a bedsit and let it out if I was so way inclined (devils advocate and appreciate that's probably more of a planning issue and I am not concerned about planning). I guess I am hoping that would be a no, and you'd have to have made other material improvements to suggest that was the case and the inspector would only look at what was presented to them against the application and simply not concern themselves with a tumble dryer and water/waste source in view when they come to do final checks on a garage.

I would always put a DPM between blinding layer and insulation

My house has the same insulation, my was tight in the cavity. But I am still worried about whether it could be sitting on wall ties and not pushed down together horizontally Although I did stand on the top of the insulation to force it down before the roof timbers went on. (All to late now, as at first fix stage). I have happened seal the inside of the cavity see photo taken at time buy screwing it too the wall plate at the top.

Very little PIR in this build, the only place is under the bathroom UFH. Roof, from outside to in, tiles battens counter battens breathable membrane 100mm wood fibre board 195mm thick rafters full filled with Frametherm 35 13mm OSB Air tight membrane taped 25mm battened service void Plasterboard.

For me it's a fundamental problem where areas of science continue to believe in that the mechanistic approach is sufficient and applicable to encompass all scientific enquiry, or should I say knowledge about the world. This is especially the case when it comes to our planetary environment. Whilst it has benefited us enormously since its philosophical inception about the 1600s, it has some fundamental limits. So yes, while it has its place, there does need to be a fairly significant injection of non-mechanical, dynamical, and relational approaches to science, and I'd say related areas of engineering. There is a reasonable body of climate science using complex systems, non-linear dynamics etc. but while they take a significant step in the right direction they are subject to arbitrary system boundary cut off and the models don't necessary consider, or include, relevant influence of relationships external to the system considered - relationships that may in fact be critical in the emergence of system properties and behaviours. This is an unfortunate aspect still in a lot of systems thinking and approaches. So yes, there are better approaches suitable for the context, but often because they are challenging to entrenched scientific thought, they tend to get marginalised and/or dismissed. Really? Or is that just another case of enhanced human optimism, something which we do know a lot about but still fail to acknowledge and do something about, especially in leadership circles?

I have an old reclaimed kitchen in my workshop with sink, cabinets and hot water, saves getting the house sink mucky and the BCO said “what a good idea”

Not yet @SuperJohnG - the build has started now and I'm a little occupied. Have even started using the Vana tape - blimey it's sticky.! Anywho, roughly speaking I worked out to buy over here my order would have been around £2300 inc VAT from ecomerchant or similar. My total order cost from Germany was a sniff under £1600 all in. This was for 2x roof membranes, 2x wall membranes, 3x intello plus, various sizes pipe grommets and 30 rolls of Vana. I hope this helps!

yes

I used the plus, no real reason as to why, I am probably guilty of spending extra money unnecessarily at times?‍♂️

I am doing very similar to you, I have allowed the walls some ventilation to the rubble middle from the outside and have left enough ventilation between the inside stone and the stud work to keep the air moving but more restricted than the middle of the wall. I painted the outside and then sealed it with masonry paint as the stone was very fractured and would let a lot of water in if not sealed. It’s bone dry in the building and no problems in 10 years.

All ASHP's will have some form of timer controls, either built in via it's own controller or an external controller. In my case I decided the controller that came with it while it could do timer functions it was a complicated thing. So I chose to control mine from an ordinary central heating controller and that ultimately links to the ASHP's "room thermostat" input. So when my heating programmer says off, the ASHP is off. It's as simple as that.

That is enough to heat my whole house. My PC uses 8W

Actually this is a LED projector ? I'll certainly be looking to minimize, but my desktop PC by itself runs at 550W when gaming. Then I rounded up for a few of the other pieces bits and bobs. Certainly the PC won't be on permanently, or gaming even when it is on, but you have to take peaks into account not just averages.

Here's a report of walls that were in the 400mm to 600mm range of solid historic construction. I'm trying to find another Scottish document that I read that had a more comprehensive report. Specifically it echoed the comments above about the moisture content of the walls being all important.

Have you looked at this document or a newer scotch one. BR_443_(2006_Edition) (1).pdf

In real life, I dispute that dry lined walls in old stone buildings are better. They might be if detailed properly. But almost without exception my findings are the cavity created with the dry lining is open to the loft space and just allows cold air into that cavity, bypassing most of the insulation properties of the wall. This shows itself in winter when you remove a switch or a socket and an icy blast of cold air comes out of the vacated hole.

I'm glad I am no longer a Mod. I'd have shut this thread down long ago. Whats the matter with some of you ... ? Expletives and childish insults all over the place.

Once upon a time I remember catching a tv series, maybe on BBC2 or something, where they had an ex-burglar actually break into people's houses and then show them how to secure the place. I was always amazed by the simple and cheap steps he would suggest. One of these was a gate across the driveway - not anything highly secure, just any old gate, and to keep it shut. Didn't even need to be locked. He basically explained exactly the same thing, that any scrote looking to burgle somewhere will tot up a list of annoyances which amount to inconvenience and risk and walk away to the next easier picking. The other side to security is not to make it so annoying and cumbersome to yourself that you then can't be bothered.

I too am a van dweller, 32ft x 10ft, 2 berth with missus, 2 kids and 2 cats. 2.5 yrs in now, summers are far far worse than winter. It's easy to get warm in a van, nigh on impossible to cool the thing down, apart from that it's easy, just like a small flat tbh. I built a lean to next to mine, got a tall fridge freezer in, washing machine and tumble dryer as well as shelves and drawers for extra storage. I'd recommend spending a little money to do the same, it will make a massive difference to van life, cost me about £600 in materials.

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Glad to say that the barrow has been fixed to fight another day - and I fixed the squeak ?

Or just create a new house in the metaverse.

Been there, done that, got the tee shirt. When you tap the barrow it crumbles like tissue paper. Most startling one though is either when you use too big a bucket and drop a ton on it and flatten it, or use it as a brazier and the tyre explodes. Those were the days....

It no longer squeaks

(Expletive deleted) agree.