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Yes it's a good question and unfortunately there isn't much around (at least not in terms of 'here is a publication that fully meets these standards'). Even sources that often have good journalistic content often depart from those standards when covering some topics. Pretty much most high quality journalism is now behind paywalls which makes it worse. It's much easier to rule out some publications as unreliable than it is to rule them in as reliable. So for me now I tend to look at news less. I have a highly curated set of social media follows and tend to use those as a starting point when they link to articles. Then you have to think through each article on it's own merits. No easy answers though and I'm sure it's why society as a whole is spending so much time arguing about things rather than moving forward and making things better.

To add, if you do just decide to DIY something and there is an underlying structural issue that then reappears later, you may be invalidating the NHBC insurance (or at least giving them a lot of ammunition for an argument) and exposing yourself to much higher costs down the line.

You are well within the warranty period and this has the potential to be an expensive repair (could also be relatively cheap). Get a structural engineer who is used to dealing with warranty issues to have a look and give an opinion. If they think it's a big/expensive issue then they can write a detailed claim to NHBC and get the ball rolling. If it's not a major issue then can propose the fix. @Oz07 is right that these floor usually start with a crest rather than a hollow. Though they are expecting to move a bit when weight is applied. But going from a crest to a hollow seems a bit much to me (an amateur).

Does it have to be wood fibre? Can you get some mineral wool/rockwool boards at the right thickness just for this area?

I should add, that I think you tend to need a thicker wall section to make blown in cellulose work. Like Mineral Wool cellulose is not as insulating on paper as PIR. It tends to be used in higher performing homes anyway where the thicker walls allow serious insulation values and easy installation (also very very good sound insulation).

I think that tends to be seen as the gold standard for a timber frame house. Easier to build and install so long as you have the right installer. @Nickfromwaleshas someone he recommends every now and then. But companies selling a 'package' will want to do things they way they usually do them. Anything else will cost more because it will be more complicated and costly for them to accomodate.

Doesn't someone here work for a wood fibre company? Maybe @sgt_woulds?

Mineral wall has better sound insulation too so leads to a quieter house compared to PIR.

And now I've written that I fell I've fallen (again) into the trap of talking in detail about something that doesn't warrant the time. The article is written from such a biased perspective in obvious bad faith that engaging with it is just falling into the trap of giving it more credit than it deserves. This line is implying climate change is false, the heatwaves didn't happen and people didn't die from those non-existent heatwaves. It's a case of 'believe what I'm saying not what you are seeing/experiencing'

@Spinny I'm really not sure there is any point in engaging further. You claim the article is exposing lies, when all the Met Office are claiming is that they have made estimates. If the article was focused more on something like 'Met Office estimates of heatwave death toll use deceptive methods' and actually showed the methods were bad then that may be different. But that's not what the article does and to be clear I don't think there is any evidence presented that the estimate is significantly wrong (I'm not saying it's right either - it's too soon to tell). The graph showing the ONS death toll is a lagging indicator, it takes time for reported deaths to make their way through the system so a graph that shows less deaths last week than same time last year doesn't prove anything. You have to wait for the data to come through. I've seen plenty of criticism of 'excess deaths' over time (same thing came up during covid). It's a difficult measure and the way it's used in the scientific community doesn't exactly match the way the lay-man understands it but again the article doesn't engage with that. I can't provide links or anything to backup the following but I have read various long and detailed explanations and critiques of this in the past and my conclusion from this reading is that excess death estimates we see are generally in line with reality.

Really thread drifting... It's unfortunate that this term encompasses such a wide range of people. Plenty of idiots using it as cover for awful stuff but some good independent researchers really digging into things that traditional media no longer has the budget for (but used to be a big part of their modus operandi -- eg BBC Newsnight). Every journalist that got let go due to budget cuts (ad driven revenue collapsing) starting their own substack really not helpful to a healthy media environment. It reveals plenty of money to fund journalism but spread extremely inefficiently. Only example I'm aware of that breaks out of this is Jim Waterson who was let go and started 'London Centric' a substack but instead of just being a him thing, he started hiring others and has turned it into an interesting local paper with proper investigations.

While 'journalist' is a broad term and applies to just about anyone writing stories for newspapers/doing tv news/etc. For a lot of the last century Journalist has meant something more specific. Someone who writes following journalistic ethics, aims to report unbiased, factual information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards Unfortunately, that does seem to have faded in recent years and most of what people call journalism now is at best what I would call reporting and much more is closer to mere opinion. This is unfortunate, we would all be better off if the bulk of journalism we encountered day to day was of the form that followed strict ethics. I tend to focus my news reading on those sources which are clearly trying to follow those standards and actively avoid those who reject them. I don't regard any publication or author who don't follow journalistic ethics to be journalism. I want my news to seek truth, cite sources, to accurately quote statements (rather than selectively quote just the bit that agrees with viewpoint of the article), etc. The Daily Sceptic is not that, it imitates that. Based on all the threads we have had here in the past on similar topics I doubt spending an hour dissecting an article would reveal anything that hasn't already been covered many times. But I will briefly highlight two things: 1. The whole article is seething with bias and loaded language, to the extent that if you'd been living in a climate controlled box and hadn't experienced the recent heatwave you'd think we hadn't just lived through a period of time where records were falling repeatedly and by significant amounts. 2. The whole premise of the article is that the reports of 2700 dead were false. But this is not what they claimed at all. They very clearly say they estimated that up to 2700 may have died. That is not the same as finding 2700 dead people. It goes on from there and someone with more patience than me could write a very long critique but I have said enough, I don't see how saying more will make any difference.

I've not had the chance to build yet but my planning was always to do the holes early as the walls went up. Likely with preplaced pvc tubes with some form of sealant ring concreted in using formwork (blockwork wall). Why? Seen that suggested as a much better way to get long lasting airtightness vs trying to seal up holes later. PVC making a nice route through insulation and easy to seal to pipework/cables (and easy to pull the pipework/cables out and replace). Obviously need everything preplanned and relies on careful placement (hidden by cladding/other). Likely overkill. If people preplan routes through slabs then you can do the same through walls but I'm probably overthinking it. Even if you don't premake the holes, for airtightness reasons I think it's a good idea to really plan out penetrations ahead of time. I've seen too many on youtube start with great airtightness intentions and then end up drilling holes all over the show (lights, antennas, CCTV, etc, etc). Yes the airtightness can be addressed but if you can plan ahead and minimise penetrations then it's less work. All that said, all my thoughts are based on a DIY heavy approach. If paying contractors, this method likely gets very difficult.

A little story from my past. Back when the war in Iraq started after what seemed like obviously overhyped (putting it politely) weapons of mass destruction evidence I sought out alternative news sources for progress of the war having lost trust in what we were being told by the mainstream media. I came across a blog 'Colonel Cassad' who was supposedly a Russian military analyst of some form. For some time his reports seemed to fairly well match what was reported in the news except that from his reports the losses on our side were much higher than reported. At some point it became obvious that the blog was propaganda rather than truth and that was the end of me reading it. However, I feel grateful I found it when I did as that experience has served me well as inoculation against similar tactics repeated (by both Russians and other motivated players) in other areas. Once you've gone down a rabbit hole and come out the other side it's fairly easy to spot. Which brings me to the Daily Skeptic. Which uses all the same techniques as Colonel Cassad. Take elements of truth, use incomplete quotes to reinforce your angle, mix them in with some motivated reasoning and deliberate bias. Avoid stating counterpoints unless you deliberately want to diminish them (using the same tactics) and focus on areas where there is a willing audience who is ready to take in what you say because it agrees with their priors. It's an incredibly successful tactic that works over and over. Indeed, it's Toby Young's most successful career move (founder of the Daily Skeptic). He earns many times the salary of any climate scientist you ever see quoted in the news.

Oh bollocks. I had my eye on them as the preferred option if I ever find a plot.

Subs are hard because they are very very tight on space. AFAIK the sub reactors aren't actually that much bigger than a container. That's why they need to use highly enriched uranium to get them small enough. But they are very much part of the structure of the boat (especially the shielding). On a big container ship you have a lot more space. IIRC the idea is you could design a ship so that the traditional smoke stack area through to the bilge is a fairly open area to allow a big module to be craned in and out. Much bigger than a container and obviously needs to be done at special facilities (but you wouldn't work on nuclear stuff outside a specialist facility anyway) but very doable. Craning in 100-200 tons is very feasible if you plan for it in advance.

Call OSO and ask? I'd guess you are probably be ok as it makes more sense to me to put the VIP on the inside and PUR outer. But it's just a guess. Edit: But if the manual says no penetrations then making the plumber replace makes most sense. If you want to show flexibility then check with OSO and see what they say. If they are willing to warrant based on the screw being no longer than x then ok. No good to move forward with a void warranty.

Where does the lower pipe (below the floor of the cabinet) go? Any joins in it? Just wondering if the smell is travelling a bit and leading you off track? Smell could migrate into the cupboard and accumulate through those cut outs while the mhvr clears the rest of the room.

Way way bigger than a container. But then so are the engines these ships use now.

Bottom line is it comes down to money depending on the situation. But worth considering (again dependent on specific circumstances) if overpanelling may lead to longer run time/more energy generated in winter. ie. in low light, the panels acting together produce enough to overcome the inefficiencies/minimum input of a single mppt where as two separate strings on separate mppts never get above the threshold. I think this is much more likely in older installs with newer tech it not being a concern but worth bearing in mind.

But if you're neighbour is f-gas certified then you could potentially do the leg work of mounting units, drilling holes, etc, and just leave the pipework ready to be connected by your neighbour. There are other types of AC unit that don't need f-gas certification at all that might be worth looking at. One is just requires two largish holes in the wall and another type use r290 gas though there are some safety concerns there so would lean against in most situations except things like garden building (Other threads on here, have a search)

No expert, just relaying what I've seen online but I think there have been two schools of thought with this. Some of the new SMR designs are really low power using fairly conventional fuels. Maybe still a bit big for big ships but not far off, a revised design is feasible. Big ships are a hell of a lot bigger than nuclear subs. The other strand I've seen is talk about allowing more highly enriched designs on container traffic. ie, 20%, not 5% IIRC. Still way below what is used on nuclear subs and not close to weapons grade. Both cases the thought is that is such that it is a crane on module to the ship and any maintenance is done offship by first craning the module off to a maintenance facility (likely swapping the module with another so the ship can continue service without delay). The engineers on ship are just focused on monitoring it and shutting it down if a problem develops, not actively working on it. But either way I think given the issues you mention I doubt the west produces this technology. It'll get too tied up in red tape. But I can see China pushing ahead with it (or maybe Korea). Both big shipbuilders, both make a lot of money from green technologies and agree with the scientific consensus on climate change, both with significant civilian nuclear experience. Russia has been running nuclear icebreakers for decades (though I think they are more military form reactors).

Took me a while earlier:

Ah. Not sure what a plumber has to do with that. In my mums cold bathroom with relatively weak shower she specifically asked for the fan to be moved further away from the shower head because she thought it promoted cold. Couldn't tell you if it made any difference (used it before and after) but I could see an argument for wanting more steam to hand around (for a short while) in a room like that. (Of course consequences are condensation everywhere but that's another matter).

Someone mentioned the need for fuel in case of war earlier. It's been said already, but it's an awful lot easier to bomb refineries and oil pipelines than it is to bomb solar panels and windfarms. And as an importer of fuel it's also a lot easier to blockade/disrupt shipping than it is to stop the sun/wind. See Russia