I am a structural engineer and do various surveys on buildings of all ages so have had to familiarise myself with the means of detecting damp in buildings. I had watched videos of Peter Ward on YouTube before as he goes around various old buildings and much of what he says is sound and knowledgeable. However in producing this book he has fallen into the elephant trap and waving his anti Protimeter stance to the complete absence of any professional objectivity and has become just as manic as those in the damp roofing industry who he rightly criticises. I don't know what vetting this book went through to ensure its technical accuracy, but certainly from a structural point of view he makes some howlers when saying that the expansion of steel can lift a few storeys of building is just completely wrong.
However, he saves his worst howler for only the second sentence in the book by saying "Water can apply a force of 1 tonne per square centimetre". He thus shows us all in only 11 words his complete lack of knowledge of physics and of water. A tonne is weight and not a force, force is measured in Newtons. Tonnes per square centimetre is a pressure and not a force. The pressure that water exerts is related to how deep you are in the water and how much head of water that it is applying. The density of water is 1 tonne per cubic metre. Thus at one metre depth you would experience a pressure of 1 tonne per square metre. This is equivalent to 0.0001 tonne per square centimetre. To achieve a pressure of 1 tonne per square centimetre you would need to be at a depth 10 km. I am not quite sure what to believe of his 'science' from there on if he can't get this vary basic fact correct.
It's a pity because about 60% of the book is quite sound in that we do too much to old buildings to achieve this ideal of a modern lifestyle when all we need to do is understand how old buildings work.