I think the UK is probably the outlier internationally when it comes to preferring air to water wet heating systems? R values of buildups are easier to do in your head than U values too (though U values are an easier starting point for heat loss).

What an amazing bargain!

I didn’t really want to dig a big hole in the garden and then process the soil, and I might have struggled to mix it, but the infinitely extendable working time and skin-friendliness are very appealing.

We’ve been renovating a 1970s house, and insulated some walls with rigid woodfibre, which then needed lime plastering. I don’t know if gypsum wouldn’t have worked to be honest, but woodfibre+lime or clay is the recommended system and I’ve more experience with lime plaster anyway.

How did you get started? I fancy trying it but the delivery costs of prebagged are prohibitive, and I can buy lime plaster locally.

I note that (although clay boards seem really interesting) the carbon footprint of plasterboard still seems pretty low in the scheme of things!

Like the UK with Brexit, trading relevance for self-importance.

It does (according to the specs) consume considerably less energy than its predecessor though.

I had a sort of reverse Jevons with my most recent fridge purchase- to get a good efficiency rating I had to go up in size. I suppose it’s a bit like how Passivhaus favours larger buildings. Bigger = more room for insulation and more litres/kWh.

If there’s a reasonable temperature difference between inside and outside, it should show you where there are holes yes. That’s a good point!

- it (or my phone) can be a bit slow to process the live camera, especially at first, so it sometimes needs a second or two to catch up to where you're pointing it if you move it too quickly.

cons:
- takes a little while to open the app, connect with wifi, recognise the device, click OK again, etc, which is pretty frustrating, and probably means I use it less than a more immediate device. It can also lose connection sometimes!

re this particular device:
pros:
- saves photos/vids to your phone for easy sharing etc
- you can open the photos in the app and check the temperature of any spot.
- robust
- using wifi instead of usb-c or lightning means it works with any phone with wifi

bsky.app/profile/did:...

Also, I used to worry/wonder about over-compression, which reduces the effectiveness of insulation, but with woodfibre batts at least, I haven't seen any noticably colder patches on a thermal image due to accidental over-compression. This is probably different with softer wool-like insulations.

The thermal image can also tell you what things *aren't* a problem that you might otherwise worry about - eg butting multiple cuts of a batt into a bay might look a bit scruffy, but doesn't seem to be a problem so long as they're fitted snugly, and don't fall out.

I've also found little cold areas that visually looked OK, but where the wood fibre/hemp batts weren't quite tight enough against an edge. There doesn't need to be a visible gap, if the batts aren't compressed against the edge, the cold will get through.

(I'm not sure if this is due to my poor technique, or if just the results of skooshing foam into a void you can't see are quite unpredictable!)

eg, I found some holes in the corners of a window reveal, clearly cold spots due to the air infiltration, and squirted expanding foam in there. When I checked with the camera later, one corner was now fine but the other was still leaking badly! The foam hadn't expanded in a way that sealed the hole.

(The boards I used for the window reveals are softer and more fragile and would have fallen apart if I’d tried to shape them)