[dagss]

As a metric user: This is about your lack of familiarity.

E.g. can picture lumber expressed in cm or mm very easily. E.g., if you work with beams that are 48mm / 5 cm or 98mm / 10cm a lot then those sizes becomes second nature. Just as easy to picture as 2 inch, 4 inch, 1/2 inch, 3/4 inch etc that is in use in US.

And saying that something is 200m away is exactly as intuitive as however many feet that is. A large meter has a usecase.

I feel square metres for houses is very natural unit and square feet sounds awkward (each patch of house area is so small you can do nothing with it, a square metre gets you somewhere..).

Making yet another system of units sounds like massive pain and as someone who are used to metric I see no advantages.

[ddingus]

As a user of both Imperial and Standard International units, I agree with you.

As a kid, one of my science educators spoke about the many benefits people gain from becoming familiar with basic units. I bought in and did so during the big metric push that happened around that time.

I ended up more familiar with Imperial units.

Then, later in life, I entered a young industry, with strong users of metric, Standard International units.

So I did the work to build familiarity just as I did long ago. Took half a year and today I enjoy the benefits.

And those are:

Ease of understanding unit values meaning in my daily life.

Ease of expression of same to others.

Greater accuracy estimating.

Easier computation and unit checks.

And so on...

[dwighttk]

Ah but are 48x98s nowhere near 48mm and 98mms like our 2x4s?

[dagss]

48x98 is exactly that dimension (i..e after planing of the lumber). Well, +/- 1 mm of tolerance/shrinkage due to drying.

It goes by the name "two four" here as well informally due to long tradition (and yes, I once did wonder why 2-by-4 is smaller than 2 by 4 inches and looked it up), but you will not see it written anywhere, in writing it is always in mm after planing.

The oral words for lumber dimensions before planing is the only context as an adult I have met inches except in US.