Ed_

The thing with thermal bridge calculations is a high psi just tells you that the bridge is much worse than the surrounding structure at keeping the heat in. This means that if your house is otherwise very well insulated then you will get a higher psi. If you decide to mitigate your thermal bridge by increasing insualtion adjacent to it, you increase the psi - counterintuitive. A high psi is (imo) not an issue provided that the building taken as a whole is sufficiently insulated and your thermal bridges are good enough to prevent condensation and mould, so the lowest internal temperature at the bridge is more illuminating.

Not nonsense - £104 billion from 2010 to 2023 - https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/ucloe/article/id/3584/ The fact that bills continue to go up is obscuring the fact that renewables have mitigated that rise. Its not immediately obvious, but a very simple and obvious concept when you first see it: Renewables displace other generation (obviously). That other generation would have been more expensive than the generation that wasn't displaced (again, obviously) So we just need to net off the "subsidy" of those renewables against the expensive generation they displaced £104 billion saved QED.

Every windfarm is cleared (or not) by MOD. Much overstated, see any research on the topic. Not specific to wind. They are going regardless. North sea is a declining basin and fewer fields are cost competitive. Oil can be sold regardless of whether it is used in the UK - see Norway! Blade factories in Hull & IoW. Vestas Nacelle factory coming to Scotland Monopile fabrication facility on Teeside JDR Cables at Hartlepool, multiple Prysmian cable factories We probably make as much of wind farms as we do oil and gas facilities. Piper alpha?

Presumably their house was cheaper on account of the proximity to noisy kids?

Hmmm so back of the envelope water is about 4000J/kg K. Lets say 100kWh a day in heat energy absorbed (e.g 8kW of cooling on average over 12 hours), thats 360000000 Joules Water at 15 degrees and say useable up to 25 degrees, so 10 degrees delta. 3.6e8 / 10 / 4000 = 9000 litres. Basically tap wide open all day. My water is £2.75 / 1000l so £25 on a meter.

Losing a chunk of power for a period is normal for war time- look at Ukraine. Conversely look at Russia, floating on oil but can't get petrol at the pump due to the concentrated nature of fossil fuel refinement. Electricity grids are highly resilient, particularly once rolling blackouts become acceptable, as they are in wartime. Fossil fuel supply chain? Not nearly so much. You could argue nuclear is best as no one would dare to attack it... I can assure you that no one will build a wind farm unless they have a grid offer. Frequently the grid connection is delayed so a wind farm could be dormant for a short period, but no one gets the finance to build a project without a grid connection date.

To an extent, outside of a very small number, none of us, no matter how well read are able to be experts on any particular topic, so we have to take our views from those who we see as experts. I have not read all of the source material, conducted my own experiments or submitted my theories to scientific challenge so any assertion I make is potentially a call to authority. The same is true for the other side of the argument. All any of us can do is weigh the situation in front of us, which seems to be following a common playbook. First - deny. Next, obfuscate - its not anthropogonic etc. Finally, fatalism - we cant do anything anyway. Some things are clear however: It is hot. Much hotter than when I was young, and hotter every year. There is a physical mechanism for this heat being caused by C02 emissions Modelling and predictions of the C02 effect are matching reality If it is C02 and if we don't do anything we are in for a very bad time If it isn't C02, and we reach net zero, we are in for a pretty good time still It does make me laugh (cry) when people blame renewables for high prices. The UK spent at least £75 billion on supporting energy prices just during 2022-23 due to gas prices. It is also the case that renewables knock out the most expensive conventional electricity generators, so the wholesale price of electricity is reduced by renewables, which gives the impression of a subsidy but the reality is the reverse - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oct/wind-power-delivers-ps104-billion-net-benefit-uk-consumers I do get frustrated with people who just raise problems like there will never be a solution. The nature of progress is you don't always have all the answers, if you never started a journey unless you knew how it could be done then nothing new would ever be invented. It is also a demonstrable fact that renewables are more suitable from a security perspective. More distributed generation, less reliance on critical things like pipelines, LNG facilities and so on - we're literally right in the middle of 2 wars that are being defined by attacks on energy infrastructure. Really?

Quite an acheivement to buckle that column, it doesn't seem that slender. Surprised that column can be totally lost without other damage being immediately apparent.

Oh we are doing pretty well at that in europe....

Is it always the same height? Could be a drawing error in the app, where even 0 shows up?

😮 With spraying I think the masking time is the killer. It might be you can accept some comprimises to get it done. For example if you don't have floor finishings /electrics in and your ceiling is white and you are at least misting the walls white then maybe you can get away with just masking the windows and doors and treat the white as undercoat for any skirting or woodwork you have installed.

Do you mean 1500m2 not 1.5km2?! I have sprayed before with a low quality DIY sprayer and I would not do it again, that was slower than rollering in the end I think. Check out youtube to see what a good quality sprayer does, easy to see why its 3 times the setup compared to the spraying time.

Thanks, on digging further I think it should be sufficient to list the systems and that they will be commissioned by the installer under competent persons scheme or similar.

Part L seems to want me to submit a commissioning plan before construction: 8.2 A commissioning plan should be produced, identifying both of the following. a. Systems that need to be tested. b. How these systems will be tested. For new dwellings, the commissioning plan should be given to the building control body with the design stage dwelling primary energy rate, dwelling emission rate and dwelling fabric energy efficiency rate calculations. Seems quite sensible but do people actually do this in practice? I want to get my submission in asap and thought I'd work out these details as I go along but maybe that is not possible anymore.

I think my point is that the amount of work flying someone does is less likely to be affected by their environmental ideals than their personal flying. For example a company CEO could choose to never fly for personal reasons but is unlikely to be able to do the same regarding work travel regardless of their personal beliefs, so not considering this distinction introduces a source of bias into the analysis.

I too want to know the answer to this and haven't been able to find it. The principle of SUDS is that the sub base acts like a water tank, storing the water until it can drain away into the underlying ground. As soon as you put that on a slope, you are tilting the tank and reducing the amount of water it can store - like tipping a tray of water. Logically there is no solution to this other than make the bottom of the "tank" level, which hugely increases the volume and cost, or an ACO drain at the bottom to a soak away.

I notice a lot of cognitive dissonance around the impact of flying. It's not clear in this study whether they count flying for work and pleasure as the same, I expect that people earning more generally are required to fly more.

I think this is a devil is in the detail question. EU data is H2 2025 whereas 24.67p is price cap now, so was a few p higher in the comparative period, say 32 euro cents. Still not most expensive. I believe a lot of the shouting is about prices for industry which are not set in the same way as household prices. I have no idea where we stand on that measure and I'd imagine a serious international comparison is highly non trivial and well beyond journalists.

Some of these portable AC units can be simply modified so that the air intake is ducted outside too which makes it closed loop. A whole internet ecosystem of people doing it!

There is rebar yes. I don't doubt all that is necessary for this concept where the 2m section of retaining wall beyond the edge of the basment is structurally integrated, and it may be the best solution, but it can also be done by freestanding sheet piles for example, so I just want to get a feel for any other options. For example I could have a separate retaining wall for that 2m wide section using something like this:

I have a walkout basement as the house is built into a slope. I need to retain the earth between one side of the basement and an existing retaining wall on the boundary, approx 2.5m height of earth. My structural engineer has come up with a design which extends the basement slab and one of the basement retaining walls to the boundary. It just doesn't look quite right to me. My concerns are mainly: rain water splash back from the extended slab, particularly as there is a door threshold and external insulation/render with no ventilation cavity. thermal bridging (not too concerned as just one corner) This is the plan view: This is the section view I don't want to just say "I don't like it" because maybe i'm wrong and this looks fine to others. I will also get the view of the builder. I'm just wondering what the general thoughts are as to whether it is a detail that will cause issues in the longer term and whether there are any ideas for improvement that I could take back to my SE? For example, the cowboy developer next door is retaining the same earth with sheet piles bashed in using a digger bucket. Not an approach I will take but does show that there may be other approaches.

Rust bulks up much more than the parent steel, around 7 times, so rust always looks very bad. I'm not saying its not an issue, but don't assume it must be an issue based on how it looks. Concrete inhibits corrosion so it is not a given that there is corrosion under the mortar - is the mortar cracked at all? Rust expands so if it is rusted you might expect to see the mortar was cracked. 6m is quite a long span so it is likely that the beam is sized for the bending moment not shear force. BM is maximum at the middle of the span, shear force is maximum at the ends, so SF would be your concern here and it is likely the beam has spare capacity e.g. it is the middle of the span which is most highly stressed not the ends. Also your rust is mainly on the flange and the flange barely contributes to shear strength. I would definitely investigate further before cutting anything. If you scrape the rust off you can measure the thickness and compare to the nominal thickness. If it has lost only a small amount I would clean and preserve as best you can and then monitor. If you are concerned then the belt and braces approach would be to get a technician out to do some ultrasonic thickness measurements and then ask a structural engineer to redo the calculations with the new thickness measurements to check the strength. They could also advise on remaining corrosion margin and when to start worrying about it again. For preservation something like Zinga is ideal, and you can get a spray which might help to get into any tight corners.

Your house should have been designed to never form mold. F&B is popular for period houses so I imagine that is why they are cautious. Similarly I personnally would not worry about moisture affecting paint in a kitchen, i've just checked my kitchen smart thermostat (current 100+ yr old house, average to poor extractor over hob) and the humidity only changes a few percent during cooking.

I'm going to be building a Danwood house. Some things are flexible and other things definitely aren't and it is difficult to tell beforehand which will be which, they have a build system and that is that. I've attached a photo i took of the system in a completed house I visited.

Never stated, just drawings of panels, but only 4-5kw ish. If finances allow at the end of the build I likely will do as you suggest and try to semi DIY it, I'd just rather not have to do it as I want to keep options open.