American Reacts to CONFUSING Things Inside UK Houses
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- Опубліковано 21 вер 2024
- I would never have guessed that there would be much of a difference between a house in the United Kingdom compared to a house in the United States but apparently, I was wrong. However, that is exactly why I am extremely interested in learning and reacting to this list of UK home details that foreigners don't understand, from my American perspective. If you enjoyed the video feel free to leave a comment, like, or subscribe for more!
So, just a few corrections lol:
- We absolutely DO have curtains for our windows
- We absolutely DO heat our homes with central heating/radiators in the winter (although with recent rising fuel costs, this video might actually now be more accurate😅 )
- Hanging our clothes in the garden to dry them IS actually true and something that I would say MOST Brits do. Our houses typically just don't have the room for a dryer.
- I've personally never seen someone use the space under the stairs as a closet, but we do actually have them in our bedrooms, they're just not the large, walk-in style ones you see in the US.
Was a fun video nonetheless! Loving your reactions :)
We use fires not heating we have three fires and light two all winter heats the whole house
@@tillyct8937 sounds cosy!
I know at times I was like what’s he talking about 😂
I use under the stair space to hang coats from wall hooks, store shoes, vaccum cleaner and a few other items.
@@windymiller6908 same
This video is describing 1980s homes. Not seen carpets in bathrooms for decades, plenty of homes have wooden floors not carpets. Mixer taps are common now. We do use curtains too. Air conditioning isn't common because never warm enough to justify the expense but is available. If you need to dry hair here we used bedroom while in there getting dressed.
Totally agree, this video is describing 1980's houses (or maybe 1950's, 60's or even older)!! We don't live like primitives!
But most domestic homes don't have A/C atm (might change if very hot summers continue) - offices, shops, malls, restaurants and hotels largely do have A/C.
Thanks that makes much more sense
The curtains one was weird. Most houses I've been in have curtains. Also I've never heard of a milk door - maybe it's a London thing.
@@iantellam9970 the only place I've seen a milk door is in that video.
Only place i seen milk door is the wealthy
When it comes to dryers, most people I know have dryers, but people like to use clothes lines to dry clothes (or indoor ones) to save electricity in the summer months.
The the clothes smell better drying outside
Energy has, for most of the last century at least, generally been a lot more expensive in the UK than in the USA; in previous generations, the average Brit confronted with the sight of a running tumble-dryer or air conditioner would struggle not to perceive just a big pile of burning money.
@@maggiedoyle7476remember using a Tumble Dryer is up to 12,000 times faster to dry laundry than outdoors
This video started out fine and then got weird.
- Separate taps for hot and cold are still fairly common, though mixer taps are readily available and often used in kitchens.
- You can have sockets in a bathroom but they have to be a particular kind, referred to as razor sockets, that are safe in wet environments. Electric razors and chargers for electric toothbrushes will have specific plugs for this kind of socket. However, I've never lived in a house that had them. Generally, hair drying and styling is done in the bedroom where there's more space, as UK bathrooms are relatively small.
- Hanging washing outside is very common. We do have tumble dryers, but again, our houses are small, most people would rather have a dishwasher take up that space. So while they're not uncommon, they aren't a given. In fact, you can get combination washer-dryers, but they generally are not good at either job, you have to take half the load out to run the drying cycle.
- Carpet in kitchens and bathrooms is rare now, but can still be found. Carpet in the rest of the house is common, though it's currently in style to have wood floors.
- We generally don't have bedroom closets as the US would understand them in most houses, we have freestanding wardrobes instead. The requirements for a bedroom in the UK is a window and a radiator, not a closet.
- Most windows in the UK are double glazed i.e. have two panes of glass with an air cushion in between for insulation. UK houses are very well sealed and insulated because of the cold winters. However, this causes issues with damp and condensation so the solution is having trickle vents on the windows, which provide a small amount of ventilation and let the moisture out. The long pillows the video references are not used for windows (though they can be laid along the windowsill for more insulation), they are put along the bottom of interior doors to block draughts coming from other rooms.
- Of course we have curtains, that's ridiculous. In fact, we generally have thick blackout curtains or blinds on basically all windows. The sun can rise at 3am in summer and doesn't set until 11pm, so they're needed to block the light, and they provide extra insulation for warmth in winter.
- Private houses don't have air conditioning as a rule. Some businesses do, but not a lot of them. You generally won't find air conditioning in hotels for instance. We all freaked out this year when it hit 40°C (104°F) for the first time in recorded history. Generally, it doesn't get over 30°C (86°F). So yes, we do just open the windows and use electric fans. We also don't usually have insect screens, which I personally think Americans have the right idea with.
- We do also have heating, generally through the use of radiators in each room run by a boiler. But it is expensive and most people won't have it running all the time, only when they're awake and in the house. Plenty of people still use hot water bottles to warm up their beds. I personally grew up until age 11 without heating and just an open fireplace, so I'm used to layering up, but that's not particularly common any more. Though this winter is probably going to be that way with the current cost of living crisis. Some families will have to choose between heating and eating.
- Those garbage cans are called wheelie bins and they don't have to be in front of your house, they just have to be presented at the edge of your property on collection day.
- Post is not tucked under your door if you don't have a letter slot, every house just has a letter slot or has an American style letter box available.
- I have never seen, nor heard of a milk door, ever. And in doing a Google search I can only find American references to them. You can still get milk delivered in the UK though, some of my neighbours do, it's just left on their doorstep.
Well insulated? British homes have the worst insulation in Europe!
I didn't know that, I've just found an article about it. Thank you for the knowledge. However, I would still say UK houses are better insulated than US houses, given that according to a study in 2015 90% of US homes were under insulated based on IECC standards.
Fabulous very accurate response 👍
Well done. You said everything that needed to be said. Pithy and accurate
I live in Canada and my house has a service box or milk door.
Wall sockets are the norm. We use dryers and peg out washing . We don’t have carpet in the kitchen or bathroom, we have tiles and bathroom matts . We also have wood floors . We use curtains to lol we aren’t savages.
I never “peg out my washing” despite having a huge garden. I dry it on a drying rack in my utility room.
@@janheard3826 Then your missing out
@@clarehunter9038you prune,drying outdoors takes hours and there is also the chance of birds shitting on clean laundry meaning it would need washing all over again so a tumble is way faster and modern dryers are way faster and more power efficient
We have curtains. I don't think I've ever visited a home that didn't have curtains. Some rooms are more likely to have blinds (kitchen and/or bathroom) instead, but that's for practicality.
I have blinds and curtains on all my windows apart from the conservatory and i just have blinds. Blinds in homes with no curtains reminds me of offices.
100% true, it's very rare for a British house to have Air Conditioning. Public places like shops or offices typically do but homes do not.
The temperature rarely exceeds 30c (86f) in summer (although that has changed in recent years) and summers are typically very humid so when it DOES get hot, it's very unbearable.
Even here in Australia very few houses have central/ducted AC or heating. Most of us have individual AC units in some rooms and we use heaters in the winter (gas is the most popular).
Im SOO unused to air con, that when I enter a room that has it for any length of time I develop what I call "air-con cough" a dry, catch-in-my-chest type of insistent cough that doesnt go away till I leave. It also drys my throat out something awful and I end up having to constantly sip water to get rid of it.
I dislike Air-con.... very much.
There's a persistent cultural myth in the UK that AC is only for really hot weather. Whereas AC is for keeping rooms at steady temperature and humidity, as well as scrubbing the air. AC is actually more energy-efficient to heat a home than central heating.
While it may not be so hot outside during a British summer, it can be a lot warmer indoors, owing to (modern) British homes being insulated as to trap the heat-- so it definitely can get unbearable without AC.
@@Ooshgaar I find in such situations, the best thing to do is have a damp cloth nearby, or a mug of boiling water.
My house was built in about 1880, it’s in a terrace. I have no mixer taps (I really dislike them). I have no central hearing or air conditioning, I have windows and fireplaces, perfectly good for keeping the house warm and cool. Don’t know where the bit about curtains came from , every house I know has curtains, they might have blinds as well.
Windows, the ultimate air conditioning. Lots of people complain if they do not have a bathroom fan. Do you have a window? I ask. Well then open it!
You don’t have central heating ohhh my and I hate the separate taps. I wish the housing community could change them but they won’t unless I pay 😂
Yeah I thought that too.
@@artemisfowl66 well if you open the window,the bathroom will be freezing cold
@@grassytramtracks Good for the soul...along with cold showers. Wakes you up. Come on this is the British we are talking about here. Time for no nonsense, a stiff upper lip.....now where did that cold bath go to..!!!
Older houses sometimes had carpet in bathrooms but this isn’t a thing now and yes there are other options! I’ve never in my life seen a carpeted kitchen 😂
Also apparently we don’t have curtains???? What??? I can’t stop laughing
I haven't seen a carpeted bog since the 80s lol
Yes most of the other options are true.
Iv seen carpet tiles in kitchens 🤪🫣
I would be sick if I seen carpet on the kitchen 😂😂😭 and the bathroom
When we moved to our current house in the late 90s there was still carpet in both bathroom and kitchen. That soon changed.
-Why would you NOT hang your clothes out on a sunny day to dry? Using a dryer machine just seems completely unnecessary, in *that* circumstance anyway
-I dont think the carpet thing is true. And lol we dont use curtains? What? I see more curtains than blinds 😂
In the USA and Canada, our winters are very cold (at least most of Canada). Temps go down as low as - 30 C(sometimes even colder) . By the end of winter we have like 1.5 meter of accumulated snow after clearing the driveway and sidewalk (pavements) on our yards. Drying clothes outside would not be a good idea in winter.
@@helenevoyer5317 Did you not read my comment, Helene? --"out on a sunny day to dry? Using a dryer machine just seems completely unnecessary, in *that* circumstance".
Like, did you not read it?
@@michael_177 we have sunny days in winter. Still - 30 C weather. More so it's colder when it's sunny outside in the winter in Canada. Here we look at the temperature before assuming that it's warm outside because it's sunny and not overcast.
The weather?
It’s true it’s really unnecessary. They do the same in Germany believe it or not. We are very actually very culturally close to Germany. I know that sounds silly to say because we are both in Europe ofc we are
Yes our outlets have on/off switches so we don’t need to unplug things. We can just switch them off when we want and it’s a lot easier.
And safer 👍
The Window Tax is the origin of the term "Daylight robbery".
Well when you have a bath you put a rubber stopper or a rubber plug in the bath to keep the water in, it’s just the same with the sink, plus it saves water.
The hot tap in a traditional house is supplied from a tank in the loft and can become contaminated with anything including dead birds .The cold tap is straight from the mains supply and safe to drink or gargle with .
Some houses have or had cold water tanks in the attic which fed not only the hot water tank but also the cold water taps in the bathroom (but not the one in the kitchen). These were to guard against fluctuations in the water supply. If you ever needed water to drink during a water stoppage, you could fill a kettle with cold water in the bathroom and boil the water.
Why did anyone think having a tank of stagnant water where there could be dead rats and birds floating in the tank was a good idea
@@grassytramtracks the cold tank in the the loft supplied the hot water cylinder and kept it topped up
@@grassytramtracks Reminds me of Fawlty Towers were Basil sent Manuel up to take the 3 dead pigeons out of the water tank on the roof.
My washing machine and tumble dryer are in my garage , but I always hang my washing outside whenever possible 😊
That video seems to be based on the 50's and 60's. Our homes are smaller, were built a long time ago and have had to adapt to modern life. I've never heard of a home having a milk door. We do have curtains, blinds or shutters, it's down to personal choice. Many of the rules around electricity are safety features. Electricity is now getting very expensive, so dryers are wasteful, air-con has not been necessary in the past because high temps. only lasted for a few days. Waste pipes tend to be on the outside, but the supply pipes are buried underground, but this isn't true of newer homes.
When I was a kid I lived in a house with a milk door. The outer door could be opened to a small cupboard with a lockable inner door.
@@christineharding4190 I'm in Canada and my house has a milk door from the 1950s. We use it as a mailbox now. I thought British homes from that era might have it too.
I am Canadian and so far every detail they have in UK homes have been found in every home l have lived in except the one I am now which is a mobile home. We always had milk delivery as well as bread trucks that came every other day. My favourite place to play was the closet under the stairs !
A lot of things wrong here: carpeting is rare in bathrooms, also there may be 5 amp outlets (2 pin) to charge shavers (razors) or electric toothbrushes. The new trend is to have a single tap (faucet) in the kitchen that boils water, produces warm water, cold water, chilled water and some produce carbonated water. We have electric clothes driers, the new ones are low energy working by a heat pump rather than a heating element; they are safer too as they are less likely to catch fire. Recommend you find out about the British electric plugs as well.
My Tumble Drier is now very efficient, the heater packed up months ago and now dries by using ambient air, uses far less electricity, under 0.5kwh total, running 6-7 hours to dry than just 1-2 hours with the heater that draws 2kwh. Replacing it not an immediate priority as a lot of dismantling of the kitchen to get it out and a new one in to fit onto the exhaust vent through the wall. Hanging the washing out to dry here is not an option, far too many Crows and Seagulls using the line as a perch from which to scan the area for food. Washing things once is enough. It is old though, bought on moving in here over twenty years ago so it has lasted well, just wish that washing machines lasted that long as they are an expensive replacement, now on number 4 here. Paying an engineer 50 quid just to be told that parts are now no longer available so a new one is needed drives me mad.
There are sometimes special shaver outlets in UK bathrooms, typically around the basin mirror, but they're not just limited to low current, they're also on a special isolating transformer to leave the neutral wire floating relative to earth so that you can't get a shock off it even if you do inadvertently form a conductive path from the socket to ground.
The "Shaver socket" in the bathroom is 1A fused AND has a transformer inside to remove the tie to neutral so both legs are floating. It should NOT be used to charge even a razor/toothbrush because they are designed for short duration use.
Perfectly true about the power sockets having switches to disconnect just that socket. There are some without, but that is done on a case-by-case basis to stop essential equipment being turned off in error (fridge/freezer etc).
ALL UK plugs have a fuse in the plug to protect the equipment without blowing the consumer unit (fuse board) and taking all power off.
It is normal to only have two power circuits in the house. Mine is Kitchen and everything else. Some older are upstairs/downstairs.
Even the mixer taps found in the kitchen have two pipes internally right up to the spout so that the hot cannot contaminate the cold.
@@alan-freeman 6 Circuits in my 70's house but it had a rewire in the late 90's. 2 lighting, one up one down, same with the power plus one for the immersion heater/central heating boiler and one for the cooker. Plus an extra breaker marked EX, presumably for an external circuit that has not been installed. (Nothing connected to it). No Shaver socket or lightswitch in bathroom. Only 2 double sockets in the kitchen have switches on them, the rest in the house don't (not enough of them). This is Ireland though but building regs are almost the same as the UK.
Indeed, bright side is just a content farm that pulls loads of rubbish out of their arse
You make me laugh Tyler. I would say half the country hangs there washing outside. It is a nice way for them to dry, cheaper and excellent for the environment.
We Brits like, when possible to have our clean clothes brought in smelling of
fresh air. It is not of necessity, it is something we enjoy, as do most other
European countries. Go to Italy, Spain, Greece etc. and you will see their
duvers hanging outside on the bedroom windowsill for several hours every
morning!
@@marycarver1542 While in France we're mostly banned from using the window area for drying laundry... not that that stops people doing it altogether (this being France). 😉
@@marycarver1542using a Dryer for drying laundry is 3,000 times faster than drying outdoors
I’m from UK and baffled about the ‘No curtains/blinds with several layers’ part . EVERYONE I know has curtains, but often have blinds as well.
'Brit's don't use curtains, only blinds'. Not sure if this narrator has ever been to the UK, but this is bollocks.
Net curtains. 😁
We definitely don't have carpet in the kitchen and its pretty rare to find it in the bathroom too, although it was definitely something i remember seeing in the 80s!
Where i live, (in the country side) you'll usually find a combination of curtains and blinds, or just curtains, rarer to see blinds on their own, especially on downstairs windows.
I don't personally know a single person who has air conditioning. Some stores and modern hotels have it. This year's heat wave was tough. We had to sit with our feet in the paddling pool when we sat outside, and that was in the shade. 😁
My son has just moved into a new house which has air conditioning. It’s the only house I know of.
@@Madders23 my mom got some this summer too
The summer 22 heatwave finally forced my hand into getting air con in my houses bedrooms and living room. But it really hurt to pay for it to be installed 😂😂
I'm English and my terraced house was built in 1858 and I've lived in for 41yrs.I have never, ever seen a milk door, lol.I used to have milk delivered until 2012.I've always had curtains, never blinds.I only had central heating installed in 2019 and before that I had gas fires and before that coal fires.Old terraced houses are not big enough to have separate areas for washing machines.In my Grandmothers time she used to wash clothes in an old tin bath then run the wet clothes through a Mangle, which was two pieces of rounded metal that were rotated by a handle.Look that one up!
I have a new modern home here in England and I have a mix of mixer taps and single taps, informed you incorrectly when it comes to carpet, you very rarely see carpet in the bathroom and it’s normally considered to be yuck, and you most certainly do not find carpet in the kitchen or bathrooms are normally tiled and I personally have tiled bathrooms and kitchens and I have a wooden floor in my living room but yes the rest of my house is wall-to-wall carpet.
This date’s back to the 60s/70s I’m 69 years old and all my adult life I’ve had mixer taps
Are you working class?? I feel like that’s often a factor
Our outlets have on/off switches and when there is no plug in it you can stick your finger in the socket but not get a shock. Sockets have covers built inside and can only be opened when a plug is inserted. One of the prongs is longer that opens the covers to allow the plug go in
90% of the people I know, have no dryers. It's incredibly normal to just use a clothes horse or washing line. Dryers cost a lot to run and without a laundry or utility room, it's a lot of space to have both washer and dryer so yeah it's really the norm to not use a dryer here.
Do remember using a tumble dryer for drying Laundry is 3,000 times faster
A Brit watching your reactions to this is hilarious 😂 thank you for making this it’s so much fun to watch!
I love when Americans make info vids about the UK and still get stuff wrong lol 😂. Great reaction. Thanks for the laughs. I was talking about the video you watched and not your reaction btw.
Australia also has the switches on the power outlets. This way you can switch things off that don't have a built in off switch, such as the cord for an electric frying pan.
Another strange thing is that you have to pay a tv licence in the UK. They actually have systems in place to track down homes that are receiving tv signals and have not paid their licence fees.
We had the same tv licences in Oz as well a LONG time ago but got rid of them. The government thought about reintroducing them but public opinion told them where they could insert that idea and they gave up on that one.
No idea where some of this has come from, I don't recognise some of this as true.
1. Hot and cold taps are quite common. The taps were separated so that blind people would know which tap to switch on. You don't always want hot water. Mixer taps have the front half for hot water and the rear half for cold water.
2. Carpet in the bathroom is well out of date. Kitchens rarely have carpet. Tiles or wood or lino more likely.
3. Our houses are much smaller than the US so every inch has to be usable. Under the stairs can be great for storage or hiding!
4 Washing machines and tumble dryers fit well into a British kitchen if you don't have a utility room. We don't even give it second thought.
5 Plug points are 3 pin in the UK. Bathroons can have 2 pins for shavers and toothbrushes. UK law forbids 3 pin plugs in bathrooms due to the risk of electrocution. Also light switches have to be pull strings for the same reason.
6 Reverse switches usually have a red line showing when the switch is "on". All plug points have switches so you can switch the appliance off without unplugging it.
7 Electricity is becoming very expensive in the UK and yes, we do prefer to put another layer of jumpers on, rather than waste electricity or gas. Love a good soft jumper or cardi! It's why we have sheep.
8 Hanging washing outside. Far better for your clothes, the environment and it is free. What's not to love?
9 Dustbins are usually kept out of sight unless you cannot get them into the back garden, or live in a flat. We bring them to the front so our lovely binmen can empty really quick.
10 Milk doors - really? Never ever seen one. Catflaps in the backdoor are ok.
11 Of course we have curtains. Just go look at any country house or manor to see just how lavish we Brits can get with a bit of material. I have swags and tails on mine.
12 Letterboxes. How else does a Postie get your letters into your house? They're not Santa! We have Royal Mail red vans not reindeer.
Hope this clarifies a few points.
The only power socket you'll find in a UK bathroom is a shaver socket. This has an isolating transformer fitted to make it safe. I'm surprised these shaver sockets don't also have a usb socket these days, as some shavers now have usb charging instead of mains power. It could also charge your phone...but that's a different story 🤣
You can have (non-shaver) power sockets in UK bathrooms but they have to be at least 3m from the edge of a bath or shower. Most bathrooms aren't big enough, so you rarely see sockets in them. Maybe that could change in years to come as RCD (GFCI) protection is now mandatory on new works.
There's a famous saying about an English man's home is his castle. Back in the day, cold damp and draughty. That is why we have central heating, carpets (not usually in bathroom or kitchen) and curtains! Most of the other things were safety features (outlets etc). Because we don't have the land to keep building out, bigger, better and more modern, or demolish everything old and replacing it with some modern effort, we have got used to adapting old housing stock, and that is why foreign visitors love coming here. We still have the history externally, upgraded for modern living 😊
Perhaps the most popular Aussie movie of all time is called the Castle. So we’ve picked up on that expression too 😂
1. A lot of people in the UK have two taps. Idk why people are saying otherwise. Modern sinks and new builds usually opt for a single tap, but most people live in town/terraced houses, they are old houses and unless updated have two taps.
2. The bathroom sockets are accurate but we do often have sockets just for shavers.
3. The carpet thing is a bit weird. You would never find carpet in the kitchen or bathroom. I have only ever seen one carpeted bathroom and that was my Grans house decades ago.
4. We do use Curtains.
5. I've never seen built-in AC in a house. Portable maybe. But they do exist. Public areas and Businesses usually have AC etc.
Where are you living that still only has houses with old 2 taps?
@@michael_177 My house...my friends houses. My sister's house....
@@EthanfromEngland- Yea you didn't really answer my question, did you? (Nice self-like by the way) Obviously you are going to live near your friends and your sister... That's kind of a given. I asked where abouts are you living that still has 2 taps
@@michael_177 Almost every house I've been in has 2 taps. Only modern builds tend to have a single tap.
@@webbofysgethin2127 "Only modern builds tend to have a single tap" - Where on earth are you living.
Some clarifications:
Only older houses have the double faucet, most houses built in the last 30 years have a mixer tap.
The doors always being built the opposite way isn't true.
It's rare to find a bathroom or kitchen with carpet.
The curtains/blinds bit is nonsense, we commonly use both.
It's true we don't often have air-con, it doesn't get hot enough. Actually most houses are now fully insulated.
Double Faucets are more of a rarity today, but I know a lot of older houses certainly have them. Definitely not ALL houses in the UK have them. That's an important thing to remember with many of the details in this video.
Do you think? I'd say most homes still had at least some. My parents house was built in the 80s and they're in all the bathrooms though they've replaced the ones in the kitchen with a mixer.
@@hanifleylabi8071 I'd say like 90% of homes did have them at some point but most people I've met have had them replaced. I've never seen a modern bathroom with double faucets for sure.
@@drt1605 correct, it's bright side, they just pull all kinds of shit out of their arse
I’ve got a 3 storey, 4 bedroom townhouse, built new in 2019…
Still has double faucets throughout 🤗
Never watch an American video about the UK, they get so many things wrong. We do have dryers and even combined washer-dryers so you just put dirty clothes in and take clean dry clothes out. But on a sunny dry day, got to love freshly dried clothes outside, it saves electricity, money and the environment! My separate washing machine is in a room under the stairs, behind a closed door, our separate dryer is in the Kitchen! My double glazed windows don't have blinds, we have net curtain for privacy during the day and blackout curtain for night. Air vent is built into the wall. We do have central heating and warm houses. We have carpet in our bedroom, but more rooms have laminate/wooden floors/vinyl. We don't generate 'ash' anymore, and the old 'Rag & Bone' man has become the 'Bin Men', we have Garbage Cans (Wheelie Bins) for Garden Waste, Food Waste, Glass, Recyclable Material, Non-Recyclable Waste.
Everything in the UK is about "health & safety" so you'll see alot of safety features when viewing things about the UK. Our houses are so old so over the decades safety features get added, unless the houses are new obviously.
Although many people now use dryers, clothes always smell fresher when hung in the open air to dry. The U.K. plug is designed so that the grounding prong is slightly longer than the prongs responsible for transferring current. Like a tumbler in a lock, this grounding prong is responsible for “unlocking” the socket, giving access to the more dangerous live and neutral terminals.
Hi Tyler. You need to take this narrator with a pinch of salt, he's making a lot of generalisations, half truths and down right wrong statements.
The reverse switch thing, What is a 3-way lighting circuit?
A 3-way switch is one that allows you to control a ceiling light (or other electrical fixture) from two separate locations. Common scenarios would be 3-way switches located at both the top and bottom of a stairway, or having 3-way switches next to doors in a room with two entry points, so that means a switch could be up or down to turn on or off, so as you say just do the opposite as and when required.
He's not wrong about the houses being cold. One I lived in had ice on the inside of the windows over winter. Combo of massive single glazed windows (Victorian house, rented) very high ceilings, no fireplace, electric coin meter (very expensive) and a 3 bar electric fire.
We had to wear sleeping bags. It was so cold we went to the library to keep warm.
Very unusual !
That's the home of my childhood... but we did have a fireplace and a coal-fuelled boiler for hot water in the kitchen. Waking up and seeing your breath in the cold air was part of the fun! I'm sure it was also true for various people in cooler parts of the US up to the 1950s/1960s.
@@marycarver1542 it depends if you live in rented Victorian with a stingy landlord.
I’m British and I can assure you that NOBODY has air conditioning! I’ve never met anyone in my 40 years on this earth who has air con in their home. Shops and public buildings like gyms etc do but not homes. We do however have curtains in most rooms, the only rooms we don’t are kitchen and bathrooms where we just have blinds but lounges, bedrooms etc always have curtains.
I live in a block of 10 Victorian small terraced houses with only 3, including my house, who regularly hang washing out to dry. It just makes sense to me, especially with the increasing cost of energy. The other 7 households, I presume, must use tumble dryers, which in my opinion is more convenient yet more costly and also a sign that some people are simply too lazy to hang out their washing.
Yup. When I was a kid my mom hung clothes out to dry. Now, I'm too lazy to hang clothes out to dry and use a dryer exclusively. But energy is cheap here in Canada and for the convenience, it's worth it.
Air Conditioning.... yes, it's true, almost NO homes have air conditioning because the temperature in the UK rarely gets that hot for that long. We DO use windows for cooling down / ventilation. Curtains / blinds can also help when it's hot by stopping the sun entering the room so keeping the room cooler. Since most of our houses are made of brick or stone the house can be kept cooler by closing all the doors and blinds / curtains in summer as the bricks keep the house cooler.
Thanks for the insight, but I'm still confused why Bitcoin and crypto prices keep dropping? This drop follows a number of other significant drops in recent weeks. I still hold enormous value of cryptos and it scares me. Whats your take on this?
There are many reasons for this drop in value. One of the main reasons is that there is an ongoing debate about whether or not Bitcoin should be regulated as a security or as a currency.
@Peter Emmie Well, I've tried but was so confused with the inflation in price, due to the pointers on how to make substantial progress in earnings?
@Peter Emmie That's sum cool profit. I dream of that
@Peter Emmie I agree but finding a professional for guidance ain't as easy as it sounds, cause I've been searching for one.
@@glarasam8798 Does having a professional guide improve my profits? If you know any please share
Never close my upstairs curtains, I have net curtains as well on every window, even the patio doors, always have done in every house/bungalow I have lived in. The first house I lived in had a coal hole to keep coal in the cellar, along with Kilner jars, which is a rubber-sealed, screw-topped jar used for preserving (bottling) food. It was first produced by John Kilner & Co., Yorkshire, England.
In an episode of the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?, the former Top Gear television presenter Jeremy Clarkson found out that he is a great-great-great-great grandson of John Kilner.
Of course we use curtains.
The water from the Main water supply is drinkable - not sterile, but treated so as to be drinkable. Hot water often comes from a tank attached to the house, and the water may not be drinkable. So, the water outlets in the kitchen are kept separate so as not to contaminate the drinkable outlet. Bathroom taps are often combined.
I can recognize some of them. I'm not British and I found them strange at the beginning, but then few of them are really useful:
1. the 2 faucets are in new houses as well. This is the standard on old and new house. You can change into a mixing one, but you have to change the sink as well. You can attach a mixer too , but it's looking very bad..
2. There are tumble dryers in most houses & yes, most of the time the houses have no utility rooms for the the washing machine, the tumble dryer etc
3. UK standard houses are very small comparing with houses in USA. You usually get the space building it on vertical rather than on horizontal. Most of the gardens are as large as the Livingroom or just a bit larger.. There are houses with large garden, but I'm speaking about Terraced Houses that are very common cross the UK.
4. The carpets are almost everywhere, but not in the kitchen and bathroom usually. That may be by exception
5. There are curtains on most of the houses. They are quality curtains in the UK and large diversity of materials and designs, considering other European countries.
6. The sockets do have switch on/off that I find very useful when we are away from home for holiday. Switch them off will avoid any potential risk of fire while away.
I've seen separate taps very rarely in newer homes, only in slightly older ones.
A lot of houses have tumble dryers, but I don't know about most
Carpeted bathrooms are not so common now, but they exist in some older houses that haven't been recently revamped
Switching off the socket won't save you any energy per se, and they're only there really for convenience, not so much safety and they aren't legally required
@@grassytramtracks We may agree to disagree on some of the topics.
1. I'm living in a new development and I had 2 taps (I've changed the to mixed one and I had to change the sinks as well) . I've been viewing new and old houses for almost 2 years before I've purchased mine. It may be region wise, I have not house hunting cross UK.
2. Tumble-dryers - Most of the houses I've viewed had it (old and new houses). It seems is based on personal experience.
3. I haven't seen any of the old or new houses with carpets on the bathroom, but I guess there may be some of them, by exception. But this is not the normality in UK. You may find carpets in bathrooms in any other country around the world...
4. I didn't said it saves energy, it's just avoiding risk of fire. Instead of unplug all of the electrical consumers that DO NOT need to stay ON, I'm switching off the socket.
Hope this is clarifying the things.
We do have curtains,
We don't have carpet in the kitchen or bathroom,
We don't have air conditioning,
We do use central heating in the winter.
Not all houses have double taps but I do and a lot of places do.
My house was built in the 1940s
1. My house has single mixed taps (faucets).
2. No electric outlets in my bathroom. They can be fitted, but it's rare. My bathroom light switch is on a pull-string too.
3. Plugs, yup, it is what it is.
4. Yeah, my washing machine is in the kitchen. Although a lot of people have a small "utility room" for it. Yes, I have a drier, but I like to dry bedding outside in the summer.
5. Light switch direction, I had no idea this was a thing. Not going to check if this is true. My office room has 2 switches in it for the same light (in 2 locations) so the direction to press for "on" changes. I'm sure this depends on who installed them.
6. Doors opening to the parralel wall, thinking about it, yes that's true in my house. Again, didn't know this was a thing.
7. We have no carpets in the kitchen/bathroom. We have it everywhere else, but it's not uncommon for people to have hard floors in their house here.
8. Closets, yeah, we have wardrobes (closets) and drawers in the bedrooms. I didn't think this was strange. Nobody stores clothes under the stairs. That's just for tools, or a vacuum cleaner, or christmas decorations :)
9. Windows, mine all open outward, but I've seen the option for windows that pull backwards, these are common in Germany if I remember right.
10. The curtain thing is dumb, yes, we have curtains. The room I'm sat in now has curtains. The choice between blinds and curtains is purely aesthetic, and plenty of people use both.
11. Air conditioning, that's true. I have a portable AC unit for my office, which gets hot, but we only need it for about 1 week a year. AIR LEAKS? wtf? Some windows have vents on them, but there's a switch to shut them. Most of my windows have no vents because guess what, if you want air, you can open a window! I have NEVER heard of someone putting a pillow in their window!
12. No idea about the window tax thing, most homes aren't old enough. This is more for old town hall buildings etc.
13. Cold inside houses. Erm, no. I put the heating on. Our houses are built very well to retain heat. Wearing sweaters in the winter is also just common sense. This is garbage.
14. Pipes on the house front. Yeah, that's true, some ground level pipes go underground, but drains from the upstairs floors exit outside. Water inlet pipes are inside the house.
15. Garbage cans. Kinda true, we store them away from the front of the house, and take them out on collection day. I think that's true in many US cities too.
16. Small yards. Again, kinda true for urban areas, I mean look at New York. I live in the country and have good sized front and back yards.
17. Mail delivery. Letter boxes are true, and more secure than mailboxes on the yard. I don't like the idea of letting anyone access my credit card bills or mortgage statements from the mailbox.
18. Milk doors. Never heard of those, like ever. I was a paper boy as a kid, and don't remember seeing them. Lots of people do get milkman deliveries, which is nice and convenient, but most people buy it from the store.
It sounds like a list written by an american and confirmed by one young person who lives in London. I recommend checking out the channel "Lost in the Pond" to see actual differences experienced by a brit who now lives in the states ua-cam.com/users/LostinthePond
The reason we have two taps which is on the basin which next to the downstairs toilet is because old houses had a hot water tank in the loft and the cold tap is fresh cold water. I have same arrangement on my downstairs basin next to my downstairs toilet I don’t have a hot water tank hot water comes through after a minute of turning the tap on. I have a shaver socket in my upstairs bathroom. An outlet is were you buy discount clothing, kitchenwares, chocolate , sweets etc. A socket is were you plug you electrical appliances in. Modern houses have tiles or waterproof flooring I have linoleum in my bathroom and on the the floor of my downstairs toilet. Air conditioners are only in businesses. I turn my heating on and I’m nice and warm in a few minutes. We use wheelie bins in Britain one for general rubbish, one for garden waste, one for cardboard and paper and another for glass and plastic you put the appropriate bin out front of your house and the bin men come and empty it. It’s a letter box on house doors.
I’ve never, ever heard of a milk door & i was born & live in England! Carpet in the kitchen & bathrooms is very seldom seen & yes we do have curtains, but mainly blinds in the kitchen & bathrooms. 👍💕🇬🇧
I have just looked up "milk doors" and all of the articles I could find explained that "old" houses in the US used to have them. They consisted of a hatch in the brickwork or stonework of the exterior wall of the house leading to a small recess where the milk could be left on delivery. There was nothing relating to the UK.
I am by no means a youngster and have never heard of a milk door in the UK. If they existed, they would never have been as shown here: anyone putting glass bottles through a hinged panel in the door would risk their being knocked over when the door was opened inwards from the outside. What a mess that would make!
Electricity outlets in bathrooms…most Americans say ‘where do I plug my hairdryer when I’m getting ready?’ In the UK most people generally get ready in the bedroom, there is more room and electricity outlets too! UK bathrooms may contain 2 pin shaver outlets which have a much lower voltage, these can also be used to charge your electric toothbrush! Safety around the home is a big thing in the UK
I’ve watched most of your videos and have enjoyed them a lot. However I really feel it’s time you visited Britain because I think you are getting some very strange ideas about how we live!
Definitely
You make me literally laugh out loud several times in your videos mate, and I'm not usually easy to make laugh :)
The air vent above a window is called a "trickle vent". It allows air into the room for purposes of ventilation and air circulation. Without an air conditioning system, it is essential for air to enter the room so the inhabitants don't suffocate and to promote air circulation to prevent condensation and mildew. Opening a window in winter would let in too much cold air for comfort and make the room more expensive to heat.
I have never heard of anyone covering the trickle vent with a draught excluder: you would simply close the vent if too much air was getting in.
The only draught excluders I have ever seen were positioned along the bottoms of doors and that was many years ago.
Radiators are often positioned beneath windows as this area of wall in a small home is often one of the few not occupied by furniture which would otherwise hide the radiator and block the heat circulation.
Regarding seperate hot & cold taps.
We tend to put the plug in & fill the sink from both taps to get the temperature we find comfortable, then wash our hands.
The socket we use in the UK is the UK type G plug or BS 1363. BS 1363 requires a switch by the standard for a wall socket, UK may control this standard but it's used in multiple countries through Asia, Africa and the Middle-East (esp. the Middle-East), but not much in Europe. The main thing is that BS 1363 is focused on safety; while not impossible it is the hardest socket type to electrocute yourself with. The longest prong on the plug is Earth, the live and neutral prongs are physically blocked until the Earth prong is in far enough. The live and neutral prongs are half-sheathed to prevent physical contact being possible with them while they are active, altho some cheaper Chinese plugs often get the sheathing wrong and is a warning sign that a plug is not BS1363 compliant. The plugs are normally individually fused as well, while that doesn't apply to every plug, for those that it does, it's an additional safety feature. Lastly the plug is designed to be hard to rip out by accident but is easy to pull out by hand.
The long and short of it is that BS1363 isn't design to just be idiot proof, it's also designed to be child friendly, since the live and neutral are near impossible to get into for a child.
I have an Air Conditioner but they are very rare in the UK. The UK usually doesn't get hot but it gets humid, sometimes we get hit by heat waves from Africa and this often leads to deaths in Spain and the UK, that is about the only time we ever need to watch out for heat stroke.
Many British houses do get cold, but not as cold as this video makes out, it could actually cost more to not put the heating on as water pipes are liable to burst if the water in them freezes. The reason for thick clothes is for less adjustment when going outside where it can easily be in the negative centigrade (below the freezing point of water).
I believe there are several factors to do with USA using mailboxes and UK using mailslots. Primarily post office workers in the UK walk a lot more than mailmen in the U.S.. Some post office mail workers in the UK may even use bicycles to do their deliveries, whereas most mail workers in the US are going between large suburban homes and so just drive their mail van between each box. Basically British homes are generally smaller and closer together.
1: You'd fill the sink with hot and then add cold until the temp is right.
2: Even today some new builds have a shaver outlet in the bathroom but those are special sockets.
3: Laws weren't stupid proof but child proof.
4: Not every plug has an on off but it comes in very useful so you don't have to keep unplugging.
5: Carpet in the bathroom is an old thing, starting dying out in the 70s.
6: Loads of people use curtains, blinds is more a modern thing like laminate flooding now instead of carpets.
7: Window tax was to fund a war, also VAT was created to help pay for WW2 which we've still got.
Older American homes that haven’t been renovated have many of the same features. They just aren’t the norm because if the economy of an area was good the older home were updated with the times. If you go to some cities / town in America that had historic downturns in the economy you will find lots of houses with old plumbing, radiators, or boarded up milk doors/ coal doors. I have lived in many houses that still have some of these features.
I suppose it also depends where you live in the US and the style of housing. Often in the UK older houses are seen as more desirable (and are frequently better built tbh) so tend to stick around longer. Even so the houses tend to get renovated and modernised by their occupants so you’re less likely to see many of these features anyway. I mean, carpeted bathrooms are seen as very old fashioned these days, but they definitely used to be a thing up to the 80s. Some elderly people still keep them that way, one benefit being it’s harder to slip and fall on a carpeted surface.
@@iantellam9970 Makes sense. The house I live in now was built before 1900 but nearly all of the historic features have been removed. They were probably seen as undesirable. The last home I lived in though was in a designated historic neighborhood and my house still had the 1908 bathroom with double faucets on the sink and tub and the toilet in a separate closet. The kitchen had been renovated though and the original butler's pantry and icebox door were removed. I grew up in an old working-class house with no air-conditioning but it would be rare to find an American house now without air conditioning in all but the poorest homes. At least that is the case in the Midwest where I am.
The switches are also to do with security against electric shock.
I've also found that if you don't switch off, you can produce a small flash when you withdraw your plug from the socket and that also can fuse the circuit.
The UK is much more energy conscious than in North America. In the UK, water boilers are only turned on if a significant amount of water is going to be used, like taking a shower or bath. Also, in older houses closets in bedrooms don’t exist. They use wardrobes that people take with them if they move out. And, they do use curtains,lol. To cut down on heating costs, doors are in every door frame and kept closed. This keeps heat in the actual room. UK residents also don’t have wasted space in homes like we do here. A laundry room would be considered wasted space
The thing about getting warm water is completely wrong - no one to my knowledge quickly moves their hands back and forth or mixes water together in the sink. The hot tap go from cold to hot gradually giving you enough time to wash your hands while it os warm. The cold tap always stays cold tho
Most exterior pipes on UK houses are gutter pipes taking rain-water from the roof to the ground without creating waterfalls all over the building. Sewage pipes are also often exterior but not so often on the house fronts; usually to the side. Fresh water pipes are most often underground.
OK so am British so here in the UK we can have two faucets which we call taps but we also have one tap so although it's kinda true its not the case in a lot of uk homes. The switch to turn on a light and which way a door opens I have never really thought of that tbh. OK so outlets in the bathroom we don't have them in there for safety reasons cause water and electricity do not mix however we do have mirrors that light up and would be powered by a shaving outlet and those are designed in such a way that they are deemed safe or safer. Now for the kitchen. yes we do have washing machines and dryers in kitchens but some houses have separate laundry rooms also not all but some do. Also we have kettles that are powered by electricity so plugged into an outlet and the reason for this is because in the uk are electricity outtage is much higher. Now ac again some homes do have ac however the government says we don't need them because our summers are not that hot which is bull. we always have temperatures from 18 degree Celsius up to mid to hight 20s and we can have very stressful very uncomfortable hot nights were we cannot sleep. In winter we have gas/electric fires and central heating normally ran through gas which is heated by a boiler which I and most other people use every fall and winter. The pipes outside is mostly true but mine are on the back of my home not the front. yes we have small yards that normally consist of no grass just concrete but we also have many many homes with yards that we call gardens when they have grass in both front and back of the home. I have never ever seen a milk door ever and letter boxes on doors is true. Most homes have double glazing windows which gives home warmth and reduces noise outside and listed buildings (very old) you cannot change those windows. Blinds we use also we still use lace nets on windows and absolutely we do have curtains I know of no-one who does not. we do not have carpets in kitchens and bathrooms that's weird and most homes have some kind of hard floors normally with rugs on some ppl might have carpets in living rooms and stairs.
Btw, most housing stock in the UK is terraced housing, which means space is VERY limited. That’s why washing machines are in the kitchen
Windows / curtains….many homes in the UK DO have curtains, in bedrooms and the lounge/dining room, they help darken bedrooms at night and give privacy to the lounge at night as well as help keep the house warm in the colder months or cooler in the summer
@Tyler Rumple
We do know about tumble dryers but not every kitchen is big enough to house one. They are also very energy intensive & expensive to run.
We do use curtains, we also use blinds, sometimes both at once.
Summers are generally quite mild & really hot days are few & far between, therefore few houses use air conditioning.
Electric lights are on a different circuit to the outlets & are operated with a seperate switch, the outlets also have a gate inside that prevents foreign objects being inserted & electrocuting kids.
A lot of this is out of date.
1. All of my taps are mixers
2. I have blinds, out of preference, but plenty of people I know have curtains.
3. My ‘closet’ is built into the wall in my bedroom and is huge, it runs the entire wall and has four large sliding doors.
4. My washer/dryer is in the bathroom, in a utility cupboard. (I live in London, but I’m originally from New Zealand, I found the washing machine in the kitchen weird too. Living in an apartment block I use a clothes drying rack mostly, but in New Zealand I always used an outdoor clothesline.
5. I have wooden floors everywhere except the tiled bathroom and en-suite and carpet only in the bedrooms.
6. I have night store heaters in the bedrooms and underfloor heating throughout the rest of the house. No air conditioning thank goodness. I hate it, it makes me cough.
This list is so out of date. But it was fun to watch your reaction. 👏👏
Nope, it’s not an exaggeration, we do hang washing out on an outside line. But some people do have washer/dryers. Yes, we have one machine that can wash and then dry clothes.
WW2: our cottage, no electricity or gas. Tin bath in front of fire on rag rug, black-out curtains. Copper fired by coal in outside shed, mangle out there too..washing line. Ice on inside windows, forming lace patterns. Bathrooms,
no..lavatory down a long garden, earth closet which had to be emptied......
Milk came in cans straight from the farm. No fridges, larders and meat safes.
My house today is a palace compared with the cottage. However one thing missing, very happy days!
Carpet stores sell water resistant carpets for bathrooms - the main national carpet stores sell it, including Carpetright, so there would appear to still be a market for them. My mum has carpet manufactured specifically for bathrooms, it's made of water resistant material and backing and she finds it cosy and less risk of tripping as it's properly fitted and not at all slippy - falls are her greatest fear. It is easy to clean and there is a washable pedestal mat in front of the loo, which most Brits have for hygiene whatever the floor covering. The hole in the door tends to be called a letterbox. Most houses have them.
Washing machines are in kitchens because there is already plumbing for water for the kitchen sink that can be utilised to provide water to the machine and a way to drain the dirty water after washing.
Larger houses in uk have a utility room for the washer & dryer but smaller homes have theirs in the kitchen and the smallest home will just have a washing machine or a combined washer/dryer.
8:12 we do have tumble driers and washer driers but not as many homes have them. Plus if you have a garden you might not want to spend extra first buying the thing, figuring out where to put it, getting it delivered and installed, then spending electricity on drying your clothes. And not all clothes can be tumble dried.
Carpets.. in many UK homes you will usually find carpet in the lounge/dining room , on the stairs and in the bedrooms. Many homes have solid floors, tiles or wood/laminate, in halls, kitchens, conservatories and bathrooms. Sometimes you might find carpet in a bathroom but I don’t think it’s that common anymore.
That draft excluder thing that goes at the top of windows is a new one on me... never seen one in over 60 years. The vents mentioned are found in some sealed uPVC-framed double glazed windows. They can be opened and closed with a little slider found on the inside; no need for those excluders. They stop the house being hermetically sealed without having to open a window.
Mail slots in front doors absolutely do exist in the USA, though not in most places. You'll find them in some of the old row houses (resembling British terraced houses) in cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia, where the properties exit onto the street. On our street here in the UK, some houses (including ours), have mailboxes on the wall outside the house. Our house has 2.5 bathrooms and NO twin taps...
Washing machine are generally in the kitchen because it gives easy access for plumbing into the water and waste facilities.
Most new double glazed window frames have adjustable air vents .open for fresh air and close to keep the heat in. No need for air conditioners but when we have a "Heatwave" there is a massive surge in the purchase of electric fans for cooling.
I live in a newly built house in 2019 in Scotland… I still have double faucets throughout, I have a utility room, no washing machine in the kitchen. And it’s true, 99% of sockets in the UK have built in switches.
Brit here, I have 19 windows in my house and they all have curtains except for 2 which have blinds. None are boarded up and I don’t pay any extra tax for having more windows, that’s a ridiculous statement.
Every wall plug socket in uk has an on/off socket so if you are leaving something plugged in (a bread maker, a treadmill, an electric piano) you aren’t wasting electricity.
It's weirder than that! Kitchen sinks usually have one tap with hot and cold options. But bathroom sinks invariably have separate hot and cold taps. Baths vary, but more modern baths might have a single tap. We don't call them faucets. To us, it's a tap. Originally invented for beer barrels way back when but useful for when we came up with indoor plumbing later.
washing machine in the kitchen are so that there is minimal plumbing needed in the uk, you will notice that not only is the kitchen and bathroom on the same side of the house, they are commonly above eachother so that there is minimal plumbing needed ove minimal area.
lol in the uk, we need curtains, because of the winter temperatures, though dependant on the window type on wether theyre actually up to the window alcove or across the whole edifice for the window (bay windows would need 4+ curtains of thinner widths where you get away with 2 wide curtains if its across the opening for the bay) ....
the internal temperatures in houses in the 80's and 90's was pre widespread radiator heating, a lot of the houses had not long since been renovated from an above open fire boiler which supplied hot water to the house but only in small amounts, there was the swapover to immersion heaters for hot water, which .... dependant on the setup of the house would still only keep water hot for say bath water or washing up water, then came the half and half malarky where the combination boilers happened, that fed into immersion heaters as pre warmed water that was kept to temperature (leaving the plumbing and electric circuits involved in a complete mess which can still exist to this day, even though the immersion part has been removed, the piping mess makes an average game of satisfactory by LetsGameItOut seem organised (i lived with this situation and my ex still lives with the situation now) .... but on whole the wwhole 18c or farenheit equivalent isnt necessary for the uk other than to make the uk winter worse for its inhabitants as naturally we are acclimatised to a lot colder weathers, and the introduction of certain laws about keeping the house heated is adding to bills rather than realising the people have survived at temperatures a lot lower, for many years, and power outages didnt bother them anywhere near as much as they will this year if they happen ....
The bins situation is a little errant on its explanation, my grandad worked for the council when the laws changed .... burning refuse was stopped well before the 70's, in the late80's to 90's there was a spate of "make it leaner make it meaner" in the council workforce, up to 1/2 of the council workforce was laid off, and the rule that bins were put at the end of the backstreet or on the road infront of your house if not a major thouroughfare .... then came the recycling as well as a private firm taking over the contract and even less people being employed to do the jobs in the 2000's and 2010's ......
Milk door was never very common, but being a paperboy early in my life and later a white goods delivery person over the 2000's i saw them in mainly larger older houses of 3 or 4 stories height where multiple families would have lived or older larger buildings where the factory owners lived, but in the latter they were installed on the rear entrance for the servants to collect them (the times/guardian/and independent on sundays was ordered by one large house that had one and instead of taking about 7 minutes to deconstruct the papers into sections that would fit through the letterbox, you could put all through at once since the milkman didnt come on sundays :D
The US also used to have two taps (faucets) on their sink units, when you watch older Hollywood movies they have two taps in public toilets and homes.
The electricity outlets in the U.K. and most of Europe are higher powered than the US, we use 220/240 volts, the US is 110/120 volts. A lot of modern homes have a 110 volt outlet in bathrooms for electric razors and electric toothbrushes. Switches on power outlets( sockets) are a safety feature as are our plugs. Young children would have difficulty in accessing live power as the sockets have spring loaded blanks on the live and neutral holes when plugs are removed. The earth prong on a plug is longer than the other two, this opens the blanks when the plug is inserted. The plugs also have built in fuses of varying amps according to the appliance etc that they are attached to, a radio would be 3 amp a toaster etc would be 13amp this is another safety feature to protect the user and the appliance. Power leads hang downwards for safety unlike the US where they stick out, a water splash is less likely to ingress the outlet that way. Switches generally press downwards as there is either a red stripe or the word ‘On’ on the top of the switch itself when it is pressed, yet another safety feature. There is method in our madness 😂
Some of this is bollocks. Most houses have curtains. And with the window vents, we don't use "pillows" to prevent draughts, the vent can be opened and closed as you wish to allow air through or not.
Yes we do have an on/off switch on plugs on the wall. This saves electricity. If you leave an appliance plugged in but the appliance is switched off it still uses electricity, its called residual electricity. Switching off appliances at the plug can save approx 20% off your electricity bill. Just because your appliance is not in use does not mean its not using electricity if its plugged in.
Also yes we do peg our clothes outside on a line to dry, they smell beautiful when dry. Of course it's dependent on the weather.
No we don't have air con, if its hot open the windows if it's cold close them ! If it's cold put on an extra jumper ! Personally it has to be really cold to put all the heating on, maybe because I like camping I don't feel the cold as much but too hot and it's too stuffy. Some folks like to have the heating on all day. However with the current energy prices it may change.
Yes we do have milkman that delivers milk at 6am on your doorstep, he drives an electric van and you wash your milk bottles when finished and put them out for him to collect next morning. Milk bottles get recycled.
Most people outside of city centres have large gardens . Funny video yo watch.
Oh for your info it is the Dutch who don't have curtains.
Keeping warm indoors in the Winter is no joke for millions of people in the UK. The phrase being used is eat or heat which is the choice for many people.
Never heard of a milk door. We used to have a coal hole where coal was tipped into the front room and then stored under the stairs.
I watched this whilst in the bath tub ironically. In front of me is a mixer tap (or faucet as they're called in the US), another one on the sink next to me. Next to that is my electric toothbrush on charge plugged into the wall (although granted they are special sockets here in the UK, they're still electrical outlets none the less) that doesn't have a switch on it. There's no carpet on my bathroom floor and I've only ever seen this in my grans house. Behind me is a radiator that's nice and warm. There's no pull chord for the light, the switch to it just outside the room.
Before I got in the bath, I was drying my clothes in my tumble dryer which, in my 40 years alive, I've had one in every house I've lived in. I've never ever seen a milk door ever in my life. Using blinds as opposed to curtains is very rare, most houses have curtains. I've never seen a house with external plumbing, only drain pipes from the guttering which is identical to how it is in the US. Putting bins out on bin day on the kerb is also the same process as in the US.
So I guess that only leaves the switch direction one and washing machines in the kitchen then? Which are indeed both true.
In the 80's our milkman used to come at 3 o'clock in the very early morning, the garden gate latch never woke us up.
Yes we have tumble driers but we use washing lines in summer to reduce bills
Everybody I know in the UK have curtains at most windows! In my time growing up in the UK I never had to put on loads of clothes in the winter, and when I bought a house in the UK it had central heating.
5:14 in your bedroom of course. A bathroom might have a special low voltage shaving plug for shavers and electric toothbrushes and the like, but those are specially designed to keep water out and usually a safe distance from the sink, and they don't all have one.
I was a care worker and a few of the elderly had carpets in the kitchen and bathroom. It was a symbol of wealth. But it is very unhygienic. 90% of homes do not have carpet in the kitchen or bathroom. They use laminate or linoleum (this is a 70’s thing).
Most homes are no different to American ones. We also use mixer taps but there are some older houses still with boilers but double taps is just something we are used tooo.
We also use curtains. Blinds are not as common place in the home. We use netcurtains for privacy and help regulate the heat and blackout curtains in the bedroom. Only places your likely to find blinds are bathrooms and kitchens especially Venetian as they are wipeable
We use desk fans to circulate the air.
We do wait as long as we can before the heating comes on lol but we do use heating.
The rubbish bins are not kept like that lol they are stored out of sight in bin sheds or in the back garden. They have to be wheeled to the front for collection once a week
Some gardens have large gardens. The older terrace houses may not have any yard.
Never heard of a milk door. And they wouldn’t leave milk inside they would leave them on the doorstep.
Now what some houses have is a cat flap where the cat can come in or go outside. Some people have dog flaps too. But no such thing as a milk door.
But this video is so full of in accurate information.
Every house has curtains. WTF is he on about? No we dont have AC, the UK is further north than Vancouver. Average summer temp is in the high 70's. The cold house thing is a bit bollocks, maybe in the 1950's before everybody had gas heating but not today.
1. most older homes have the two taps but newer or updated homes have mixers
2. our voltage is 240v not 230v (he should have done his research properly)
3. not all outlets have switches but i have only seen unswitched in the kitchen where things will be plugged in all the time, like a fridge. also extension cables now come switched to allow you to turn off your phone charger without turning off your table lamp or something. pulling out a plug takes energy and it also makes that socket open to kids poking something into them, if the socket is on that means a trip to the hospital (or morgue if you are unlucky)
4. some of us have driers, others won't pay the running costs or have the space for another bulky appliance
5. i would say most brits have the same opinion as you do about the switches, if it's on you just flip it to turn it off. i think only sparkies know this is a thing in reality (and those who make the switches obviously)
6. the door thing isn't always true, it may be the door is switched for space reasons (like if my bathroom door was on the parallel wall i would constantly hit the toilet on the way to the bath)
7. carpeting isn't popular anymore, even Carpetright, a company who sells carpets are more likely to sell Lino or wood flooring. in my house carpet is exclusive to the two big bedrooms. tiles in the kitchen and everywhere else is wood flooring
8. blinds are used in conjunction with curtains in rooms like the living room or bedrooms, and are exclusive in kitchens and bathrooms because of moisture. curtains are better at keeping light out and heat in. we also use net curtains for privacy but these are going out of fashion
9. when he said our summer temp don't get too high remember that we are as close to the north pole as Canada and we would have to go to somewhere like Spain to get the heat you do. but my does it get cold in the winter
10. speaking of winter, many find it's too expensive to turn on the heating now because not only have the gas bill gone up but so has the house, food, electricity, fuel and water bills gone up as well as others. layering is a must if you don't want to be kicked out of your home
11. guttering, waste pipes and electrical cables can all be seen on the outside of the house and wheelie bins are usually left outside the front of the house to make it easier for the owner every bin day, better 4m than dragging around the house (yes i have a small front garden, but a decent sized back garden)
12. i don't think he means episode like a tv series. episode can also be used to mean an eventful part of a day. for example you could say my son was having a tantrum at the store or my son had an episode at the store (if that helps)
Haha I love your videos!! Can I just say, your reactions and little comments remind me of Sheldon Cooper!!
I've never know carpets in bathrooms and kitchens, never known milk doors and we DO have curtains! Lol. Ihave grown up with and have lived with the rest my whole life. I find your response fascinating. And the differences between our countries... I seen your Cardiff watch, but would love to see another Wales video 😊 keep up the great work!! 👍 🏴