SimonD

I saw that video too and like the Skillbuilder heatpump rant, I skipped most of it. But this one did contain more sense ? Having reflected on the video, I came to the conclusion that it probably just points to correct design of the system at the outset as the main problem occurs if you design the heat emitters for uniform output throughout the house. My vague recollection is that the CIBSE standard heat loss method recommends different temperatures in different rooms (e.g. bathroom and kitchen, although it doesn't account for heat loss/gain between internal spaces. I'm sure the problems they highlight can be overcome by modifying the heatloss calcs and heat emitters accordingly and also if necessary include a buffer within the heatpump circuit to reduce cycling?

Before you go too far on the zoning, it might be worth considering what these guys have to say about it although it obviously doesn't work like they say for all situations.

Good to hear some experience. I've not done the install yet, we've been playing with samples to decide on the colour, a task in itself! I've also been talking to suppliers re recommended substrates and like with everything there seems to be rather differing opinions. One supplier of a major Spanish microcement manufacturer has said I can simply use plasterboard with skim as the microcement is waterproof, but I have to say I'm a bit wary of that in a shower enclosure. I'm going to use Knauf Exterior Aquapanel as the substrate instead. The buildup has also been an interesting task in research as different makes have slightly different approaches. Some do use 2-part resin mixed coats and then also waterproof coating, some use one-part base and middle coat with a couple of layers of waterproof coating with different hardeners. Some suggest a reinforcing mesh within the shower walls, some don't. I need a little time to figure this out and make a decision that isn't self-builder overkill yet remains robust. Since there hasn't been any other input, I'll assume it's not got much traction here and will report back once I've taken the plunge, hopefully before Xmas if I'm lucky.

There's always living in hope ?

I think if you speak to 1000 chippies you'll get 1000 different ways to do it! Not always helpful. The full head stainless nails I linked to above with a first fix nail gun work a treat. It's always worth trying nails on some off cuts before final decision. If you do go for the stainless as per the link, make sure you phone them to order as that way you'll likely get a reasonable discount too!

I few little tips: beware the water gauges they sell with cheap tubing as over long lengths, the tube will deform, especially when in the sun, and screw up your measurements - I know coz I've been there and freeked out when I found one corner of the house to be nearly 50mm higher than my datum. Then I change the tube to clear braided airline tubing and found the actual different was 3mm. The other is to fashion up a water tank that permanently sits at your datum point and feeds the water gauge. I threw away the one I bought and made my own - it was more robust, accurate and usable as I could make the measuring gauge as long/high as I wanted which was useful.

Interestingly the timber decking and cladding association recommends using face fix screws for species like larch and pre-drilling holes - https://www.tdca.org.uk/timber-cladding/cladding-fixings/ If you do choose to nail with a gun, you can get the 34 degree full round head stainless nails by Beck fasteners here: https://www.nailers.co.uk/product/fastenings/nails/34-framing-nails/34-stainless-steel-framing-nails/ They work a treat. Also your chippy should be able to get a tip for his gun - they're usually only a few quid!

Yeah, looks just like that.

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/homes-and-gardens/this-sensational-self-build-house-for-sale-near-saltburn-is-a-1960s-time-capsule-with-orange-shagpile-and-avocado-bathroom-3459734?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

What you said, quoting me, was: Perhaps that was a misunderstanding then? And of course, none of what I said was conspiracy theory either..

Yes, that sounds like the same one. Professor of Physics at the University of California and author of Do the math blog

Haha, yes indeed! ?

Hmm, interesting. No, I've not conflated anything in what I've said. As far as I'm aware there's only one post denying climate change as mere weather. You've clearly claimed my posts are to do with denial yet they're all within the second. I also note that I'm pretty much the only one who has supported their statements with reference to papers and books, all from respectabe sources. It's pretty naive to think that for a discussion to be of value it has to contain a proposed alternative direction of travel. This always starts with a development of awareness, which is patently missing within the thread. The direction of travel needs to be studied and investigated by a large community of people with interdisciplinary knowledge, experience and resources. As I suggested before, take a look at some of the sensible scientific publications, like the book by Tom Murphy, and that will demonstrate that with the knowledge and herd mentality currently in play, what we do about it is an immensely complicated and difficult challenge which will undoudtedly require several tangental but interrelated directions to emerge. First has to come a wider development of awareness. That would be my suggested alternative direction right now.

You're right, it gets taken too far which is highly unpleasant and can be upsetting (well, I know I can find it upsetting sometimes when I get flamed). As I also seem to be assumed to have such a wicked undiclosed agenda, be science illiterate, and willing to cast away the future of the planet, I do wonder why I spent years designing, and then several years building, with my own two hands, a low energy house that uses a huge amount of waste, recycled, and renewable materials so that now, even after fitting 3g windows and a metal roof, my house is still calculated as having a negative carbon footprint. I've also gone to great lengths to minimise waste of building materials in the whole process. Perhaps I could get a badge or lollipop for that at least, since I am also a child apparently ?? I think that is the key point, there's a broad spectrum, and probably always will be. We need to get beyond the binary somehow.

No, my arguments were and are not intended to be anti-science at all. Never have been. They've been about how science is more messy, complex and revisionary than has been put forward, but also that mainstream science represents a limited perspective on knowledge about the world that needs modern revision and enhancement. In latter parts its also that the body of knowledge of science, just like society, has a tendency toward herd mentality with both current and historical problems of accuracy and correctness (you can look this up to confirm that it isn't a conspiracy theory). This really is an unfortunate example of how it is now almost impossible to have a balance and nuanced rational debate about such an important topic. It has been reduced down to a couple of dualistic boxes. If someone comes along that doesn't completely agree with the box you associate with, then that person must be alien and belong in the other box. Just to reiterate, the point of my argument and others on this thread who've also been flamed and accused of denial (which is entirely untrue) is much more to with knowledge, or epistemology, which sadly seems to have gone over yours and others heads. The important part of this debate on knowledge is that there are other forms of knowledge that provide alternative guidance to action in the real world. Let me spell that out - it can tell us what to do about climate change in the real world, in possibly more effective ways than those approaches currently being proposed at a grand scale. Because, lets not forget, that while there is almost conclusive evidence that climate change has been brought about by human activity, there is almost no evidence whatsoever that the solutions proposed are going to have anywhere near the effect it is hoped. Nor is there any robust evidence that the proposals aren't going to cause more damage. There is actually growing modelling, evidence and opinion to the contrary. If you take the time to read some sensible scientific texts and studies about this very topic rather than interpretions in more popular media - one of them I may have linked to already by Tom Murphy, Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet - you might find that there is significant amount of scientific thought put into the problem but in ways that question the sanity and scientific basis of current proposed fixes. One of these goes straight back to the very start of the thread and heat pumps. Heat pumps are part of the solution but they are also a dangereous distraction as they take our eyes of much more important balls. I'll sign off with a quote from the beginning of Tom Murphy's book (he's actually a 'proper' scientist too and professor of physics in case anyone wondered so there,'s no confusion) and then if you want to explore more and reflect on it, that's great; if not and you want to call me an inferior infant in the shadow of you, a proper grown up, then so be it : " " Laters ?

My sister used to live in Dumfries & Galloway not far from Castle Douglas, my brother in law eventually got to counting the days with no rain. One year he said he could count it on his two hands (possibly a slight exageration there but I got his point) ?

I think it is even worse as the scientific method and science as described by @SteamyTea is a simplistic and categorical one that doesn't include the complexities and uncertainty of exploring and developing new knowledge and understanding about our world, let alone communicating it. Unfortunately, despite his assertions otherwise, science is a best guess based on current knowledge and understanding, not a truth and certainly not cast in stone (if it were it would amount to religion). To quote an article from the Guardian about the science involved in the Hadron Collider a few years ago: "Welcome to science in the real world: it is messy, inconclusive and subject to revision. As Lord May, former chief scientific adviser to the government once said, science is best represented as "organised scepticism" - and science's results and conclusions have to be included in that scepticism. Science is not the arbiter of truth. All it can do is offer opinions about the answers to certain questions that we ask of nature. And it reserves the right to revise those opinions in the light of future discoveries." So for me this is a reminder to remain sceptical, even in light of the current consensus around anthropogenic climate change, and particularly in light of the suggested means to deal with it. I seem to be one of the few that seriously question current mainstream suggested approaches, thinking that the simplistic focus on carbon emissions is misguided. In my view we need to massively reduce energy and resource use, and regenerate the natural environment. Current focus doesn't actually do this, and in many cases might cause more harm to the environment. Unfortunately what seems to be happening in this thread in particular, but also more generally in the climate debate, is that healthy and necessary scepticism is being misinterpreted and mislabelled as "denial." A term entirely of political and social origin. You're dead right it doesn't embrace, or even permit for that matter, any validity of alternative forms of knowledge, which may actually be more valuable to us in enhancing science. For example, in parallel to your comment about ancient Greek philosophers, I listened to a fascinating programme on Radio 4 this afternoon. I missed the beginning but basically some real, yes real, scientists had read some ancient medical remedy recipes from the Dark Ages and found one that is extremely effective at killing MRSA and other bacteria. It's now being tested for approval and use. They explained that during the Enlightenment, this knowledge had been dismissed as irrelevant, partly down to politics and economics. They said that we now really need to revisit this knowledge and seriously reassess our current view of it. The same thing is happening in various areas of scientific study into the environment, biology and ecology where they're finding ancient knowledge to be far more developed and effective in guiding real world action than knowledge derived from modern science. Obviously there needs to be an amalgamation of all these forms of knowledge, but it does mean that your prototypical western scientist does need to open his/her mind to this.

There are multiple problems with this statement which yields it to be highly dubious and almost as bad as the misinformation it's trying to dispel. It doesn't actually reflect the herding mentality that still exists within science. From a study from 2014 from London School of Economics blog to illustrate: " there are concerns that many published research findings may be incorrect. The true extent of this problem is difficult to know with certainty, but pressure on academics to publish (the “publish or perish” culture) may incentivise the publication of novel, eye-catching findings. However, the very nature of these findings (in other words, that they are surprising or unexpected) means that they are more likely to be incorrect – extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Peer review has been criticised because it sometimes fails by allowing such claims to be published, often when it is clear to many scientists that the claims are extremely unlikely to be true. Is peer review as unsuccessful as is sometimes claimed? And how might it be improved? We explored this question recently in a mathematical model of reviewer and author behaviour... When a paper is published, the manuscript begins to partially influence the conclusions that later scientists reach. As a result, the amount of new information transmitted decreases. In other words, authors begin to “herd” on a specific topic...." If you've ever lived in that world, which is highly political and egostistical in many spheres, your papers can make or break your career and thus herding of mentality is many times a function of not just surviving but getting ahead - you've got to build on existing knowledge whether or not it's correct. Therefore the differentiation suggested by the above statement is pretty questionable as is the one about funding as all areas of research can be funded for a variety of reasons by parties who have a financial, or political interest in the outcome.

So why don't you answer the question? It's actually a genuine question because your statement was so general and vague, I really don't know who or what you're talking about. I have to say I'm also genuinely bemused by someone calling themselves a scientist saying that there's no need to look for anything else - the whole point about science is to continually revisit your findings and/or assumptions, it is not?

Okay, so what you said about there being enough ignorance so you don't need to look for anything else was stupid and not based on any evidence?

You've lost me here. Who's ignorant of what exactly?

So just to build on this comment of mine a little further. I've just started reading a new book by Tom Murphy, Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet Assessing and Adapting to Planetary Limits and what do I find, but a better illustration of what I said re knowing about the component parts: "Problems in this book are formulated to emphasize understanding the underlying concepts, rather than execution of a mathematical recipe. When students say they have math difficulties, it is usually not a problem carrying out the operations (+,−,×,÷), but in formulating an approach. Therefore, the main difficulty is a conceptual one, but blamed on math because casting a problem in a mathematical framework forces a mastery of the conceptual underpinning: nowhere to hide. Given two numbers,should one divide or multiply them to get the answer sought? Resolving such questions requires a deeper understanding of the meaning behind the numbers in the problem (and associated units, often). By focusing on what the numbers represent and how they relate to each other, problems aim to build a more meaningful and permanent understanding of the content."

Ah okay, so it's a left liberal conspiracy to make science more messy and complicated than it is and we obviously don't need education above GCSE level for scientific enquiry. Got it.

Indeed it does, but seems to me to presume that science isn't messy, full of complexity, and shrouded in various scales of grey, particularly at the forefront of knowledge. I do think there's a limit to how accessible you can make some parts of science without dumbing it down to descriptions like a fridge in reverse that make the general public more comfortable in their understanding but make a scientist shudder... Yup, a vast number of people really don't want to look at an equation as it usually means they also need to know what the components parts are of that equation - pandora's box.

I suspect it's more a thing that isn't done here in the UK, mostly because the understanding and practise isn't very well developed here. It's perfectly fine to install xps or eps externally to the bricks below dpc. The example I attached isn't my design, it's just an image I sourced from a quick search. With mine, I have some parts where I go below ground, but others where I can't because the existing shallow foundations don't allow it. Instead I have eps that goes down to just above the existing foundations but there is a small amount of gravel between bottom of eps and the existing shallow foundations to allow drainage. You can get brick slips to go on the plinth, or you simply render, or even use slate as others have done here on Buildhub.