American Reacts to British Front Doors
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- Опубліковано 30 кві 2024
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As an American I don't know what front doors are like in the UK. Today I am very interested in learning about the differences between front doors in the UK vs the United States. if you enjoyed the video feel free to leave a comment, like, or subscribe for more!
American: "Id feel uncomfortable having a slot in the front door"....
Brit: "Id feel uncomfortable having my mail hanging around outside where anyone can take it"
exactly, in Canada we have slots in many of our doors as well. bigger buildings have a mailroom. If whatever is delivered right through your door guess what it cannot be stolen.
We use both the imperial and metric system of measurement in the UK
Older houses like mine 100+ years or older will probably have a slightly different door size to modern houses as they were built before we embraced the metric system.
@@DennisHalifax To be fair there have been instances of dog poo and incendiary material put through letter boxes.
@@lynn69jackson Door sizes aren't based solely on metric or Imperial measurements as they were mostly based on the size of the door frame which will vary in size depending on the house as some houses have wider or narrower doors than others even if they were built at exactly the same time and even on the same street.
Yes don’t they care about identity theft?
I don't get why she thinks Brits don't understand inches. We invented the frigging things.
No we didn’t, the Romans did.
@@simonrobbins8357 well weve had it for 2000 years then
@@simonrobbins8357get it right it was a Scottish dude
British still use inches for things like doors TV sizes timber/wood flooring tho we do mix both together a lot like measuring for carpet and the thickness is in metric but we measure the floor area in imperial
Technically we are taught metric in school but learn imperial from our parents and grandparents.
It is also a layover from older houses. Doors, windows and pipes were all measured in imperial in houses built before the 80s when the use of metric started to be enforced rather than treated as a preference.
Also since we still buy beer and milk in pints separating Britain from imperial measures just goes against the grain
If she immediately thinks someone is breaking in when she hears mail coming through the letterbox, that is just indicative of the sad state of Americal mentality/society. Plus- what the hell would be afraid of coming through your front door? It sounds like Americans basically live in fear.
I suggested this on another video and got hordes of indignant Americans saying that there is not an ingrained culture of fear.
Why all the guns, then ,and people saying that on visits to other countries they hide under a table for a car backfiring? 🤣
@@Jill-mh2wnMost Americans have guns for hunting , I live very close to the Vermont national forest ad have a rifle, we have bears, fishers, here plus poisonous snakes etc.
@@marydavis5234 So are these creatures likely to come through the front door?
The most used phrase in American society...."I feared for my life" ive never seen a more paranoid terrified society and they think its normal.
they go on about the home of the brave, but they live in a state of constant fear
Britain invented the stamp thus creating a revolution in how mail was delivered.
The cost for a stamp was to pay for postmen to DELIVER mail to your house, not to a box at the end of your path where anyone can steal your mail.
No one can steal your mail if it is delivered INTO YOUR HOUSE.
In the US it is illegal to tamper with the mail, but there is no way to determine that your mail actually has remained in your mail box after it was put in. When it is delivered through a letterbox someone has to break in to steal your mail.
Letterboxes continue to be used in the UK because when a postie is hired they know they are expected to walk up every path to deliver letters.
The lazy method mailmen in the US have is because in rural areas they did not want to have to walk up long drives to farms. And when rural mailmen were able to use that argument, city mailmen followed suit to complain about having to walk up paths 20, or less, feet long.
Now your mailmen don't even get out of the mail van to put mail in your mailbox. The height of laziness for what Europeans see as a health job with plenty of exercise.
Also in Europe since our postmen walk everywhere, to deliver mail, the national mail services have a much lower carbon fingerprint than commercial couriers.
No one can steal the mail but the dog can chew it to pieces.
@@MrBulky992
If you have a dog (or maybe a toddler) ...or a cat that refused to use her litter tray so did her business right behind the front door under the letterbox... (I was forced by my HA to give that cat to a rehoming charity).
@@MrBulky992it never happens. If it should you can connect a cage to the back of your letter box
Does anyone else get frustrated by the way he interrupts the video practically every sentence to ask a question that's answered in literally the next few seconds of the video? :D
Oh, yeah.
"It's like the mail is being delivered to you". Mindblowing. 😅😅😅
2 second memory man rage baiting again .
He is riding high on all your money , who is the clever one ? ?
No he is great!
You know the three little pigs? The first one built his house in the American style.
We had a wind storm in my area of Vermont, guess which house got damaged and which one didn’t, the options are a brick house that was built on 2012 or the wood frame house that was built over 110 years ago.
Americans build their houses out of hay?
@@billyhills9933 Right. With doors made out of diamonds.
I visited the US some years ago,,, and there was a DIY show where they put french windows in,,, the guy used a chainsaw to cut a hole in the wall, then fitted a door. those houses are built like sheds
When I get my mail I don’t freeze to death by leaving the house in winter.
Or get wet if its raining
Point of note: we in the UK don't exclusively use metric - it's a mix of metric and UK imperial, depending on the situation.
Like for example, we measure peoples' height and body measurements (neck, chest, waist etc.) in feet and inches, weight in stone, pounds and ounces, distance in miles and yards; but when it comes to more precise measurements we use metres/centimetres/millimetres, for sporting measurements (like the 100m sprint, or throwing a javelin 70m) or furniture. We measure how much water a bathtub can hold in litres, but cars are miles to the gallon.
I’ve been using the metric system to weigh myself for about 30 years, and I also use metric for my height. When you have these measurements taken in hospital they are all taken in metric units. I worked in exhibition design, and we changed to metric measurements in around 1980. I use fully metric tape measures with metres on both sides of the tape. The only imperial size I regularly use is shoe sizes which are measured in barleycorns. There are three barleycorns to the inch, and each one is 8.47mm.
Here in the UK we can manage to understand & use more than a single system for weights, distance, temperature & time. It's not difficult.
@@danielferguson3784 ... Exactly, this would fry a USians brain though.
"It's like the mail is being delivered to you". Mindblowing. 😅😅😅
Bless him 😂
Ooh look you got 11 likes , brilliant...
What she doesn’t tell you is our doors that lock when they shut can also be put on the latch so they don’t lock they just close to. Our letter boxes aren’t a hole in a door there’s usually a cover on each side now and bristles in the middle and they’re not the easiest thing to get things through letters and smalllll packages are about all. Bigger packages are delivered by hand by the postie, or obviously a delivery service. Also a lot of our houses don’t have huge front gardens so having a post box would be pointless as it would be very near the door anyway so postie not going any further than he would have. And plz for the love of god it’s by accident not on accident, even your own English teachers say you’re saying it wrong you it makes the whole sentence wrong you literally can’t do anything g on accident.
Over 90 % of front doors have letter boxes .
Not in Florida for some reason. Maybe because the baby gators can figure out how to crawl in.
or at least the rectangular openings without the actual boxes, so the post/mail drops on the floor lol
@@eddihaskellthey'd end up decapitated trying to get through my heavy brass letterbox. It's darn fiercer than a gator. How di you get your mail at bottom of driveway whengators are on the loose, and bears is some states?
I am grateful I don't have to walk down my garden to a box to collect my mail. It all conveniently lands inside my front door, thanks to the letter box, on the floor of my hallway
Seems nice, but I wouldn’t want to have the mailman’s job physically walking up to every door.
Many posties love having a job where you walk a lot. They thrive on it. They used to have bicycles to go longer distances. Nowadays the Red Royal Mail van parks in a road and the postie walks from there. They used to know every address personally, because they used to sort the mail for their area themselves. It's called 'prepping the walk.' These days they don't seem to be as personally involved. I recently got a letter addressed to someone who lives 200 miles away. The only thing we had in common was the same house number! Of course, I put it back in the post box.
Never have I had mail posted and thought I was been broken into what an amazing thing for her to have said I cant imagine anyone has ever thought that, great reaction
My dog thinks that 🤣
to be fair she did "or maybe that's just me/her" not sure if you caught that as it was just after he unpaused
If you have a yale lock, there is an easy way to stop getting locked out. You put the door on the catch, retract the mechanism. Most people now have UPVC doors which have 5 to 7 bolts, engaged by turning the key. Your insurance company will discount your insurance slightly as they are safer. Letter boxes. Only an American would panic when the post comes. Brits don't "jump 2 feet in the air!", when your letters come. Yes our postmen deliver through the letter box, because most of us don't have miles of drive. Most driveways are about 12ft long. Just a fun fact, mail being delivered only started in Victorian times with the invention of the postage stamp. 👵🏴
Sorry but pre modern stamped mail, it was delivered to your door. You had to pay on delivery so they wanted the money!
@@jonathanwetherell3609 Hence the mail stage coaches, but your mail could take weeks to arrive, depending on the appearance of highway men.
@@angeladormer6659 Before that was the Courier. You sent a letter and the recipient paid.
@jonathanwetherell3609 What happened if the recipient couldn't pay or was no longer there? It was such a dangerous place then. Did the couriers take from the writer and then travel with the mail, or were there a chain that each handed off to? Was there a set rate for receiving mail and did they also do parcels? It is very interesting.
@@angeladormer6659 No pay, no letter. Some went by a single courier but that cost more. Most would travel by Carter, along with general goods and then by a chain.
As to rates, not in my ken.
By accident not "on accident"..
I don’t know where it started but it drives me bonkers. You literally can’t do anything on accident. 😂
Yes, why oh! WHY! do American's say things incorrectly, that annoy me... Anyway, I COULDN'T CARE LESS... 😂 (I COULD care less - is of particular annoyance TBH). Just saying...
Accidentally. Done.
Glad I'm not the only one who's annoyed by this. It's like nails down a blackboard.
Whenever people say on the bus or on the train, I imagine the roof. I am usually inside. Usually.
Most British front doors have a 'catch' so if, for instance, you are tidying up the front garden, then you flick a little button on your front door lock that prevents the lock engaging - so you don't have to worry about being shut out of the house. You don't have a hole in the door that remains open. It has a letter box - usually made of brass/metal - that has a sprung 'flap' that covers the hole until a letter is pushed through. Some people have a cage on the inside that 'catches' the letters or, like us another 'flap' on the inside just in case a pesky winter draught thinks about coming in to get warm. In towns or cities, postman walk their routes and are often given a cart to pull. In rural areas of course they have a post office van. Many people choose this job because they like to walk and to work in the fresh air. Postman often know their routes and the people. Many keep an eye out for the sick and elderly. People have been saved because postmen have checked on people.
Yale locks for front or backdoors normally have a switch / button on the lock that is on the side of the door that inside the home, that you can press to freeze the lock in place so you can either "double" lock your door from the inside or when you need to go in and out frequently you can use the switch / button and the door will not shut properly and not lock you out.
or you can open the catch, then operate the button and the lock will stay in the open position (although some locks prevent this)
I have a Yale lock which stays in the frozen locked position ,if I use the key to lock from the inside.
It can be opened normally from the outside using the correct key but the latch cannot be moved using a thin card or tool.
My house in the UK has wood doors about 3cm thick and they have lasted 98 years so far, but I'm not sure the other alternatives given would even have been available back then. You just work with what you have to hand.
British are bilingual in both inches and cm!
I'm not cm and millimetres mean nothing to me but then I'm 74.
US homes are indeed made of crap. You can punch a whole in a wall without much effort. In the UK and the rest of Europe the walls are made of brick or cement.
In the Netherlands in the Postal Law it is stated that the letterbox in the door must be within 10 meters of the pavement, further then that you need to have a seperate mailbox within that 10 meters or direct on the pavement. Also on that the letterboxes in the doors have a flap on the outside and on the inside in the Netherlands we have a wind brush.
The (front) doorlock is common all over Europe.
I wouldn’t say they are made of crap they just have hollow walls with a structural wooden skeleton that supports the structure. The hollow walls are filled with a blanket type material which insulate the building much better than solid walls. This makes using temperature controls in American houses is very inexpensive compared to Europe. The insulation keeps heat inside in the winter and keeps the heat out in the summer. I’ve always noticed how cold European houses are in winter because of this. That goes for any building with solid walls.
Most doors in the UK are either wood or uPVC.
I've only seen metal doors on industrial buildings.
Not that I've taken notice much, but most front doors I've seen in the UK were wood... I guess bigger fancy houses had uPVC?
@@myself0510 In my area all houses have uPVC doors including all council housing which had all their wood doors replaced by uPVC.
But mostly all new doors are not wood defo if you live in a council home
@@myself0510 big fancy houses are far more likely to have wooden doors.
@@myself0510 Other way around. Big fancy houses, particularly older 'character' properties have wooden doors. uPVC are generally fitted to all newly built houses.
"Timber is less efficient for UK homes"... That's *COMPLETELY* wrong. Most UK FRONT doors are timber/wood and are regulated... They have to be made of a Hardwood (English Oak was common). Must be treated. Must be a certain thickness and must be able to resist a brute force attack or fire for a certain amount of time. UK doors can last upto a hundred years if they are protected from the rain (most are, with a awning, balcony or mudroom/foyer protecting the front door from rain). If it's hit by the elements, it will still last a few decades before it's integrity is compromised.
It's common to see old front doors here in London that have been hit by rain and pollution for over a hundred years... and they are not at all compromised.
PVC or cheap wood is becoming more common as foreign housing estate companies idolise in American mass cheap housing (just to save money). Local authorities however regulate their doors built for them (but not all). These companies are also starting to idolise in the cheap wood and plasterboard walls from America (just to save money)... it used to be regulation to build the walls out of Brick and Concrete.
My door is a standard issue for my borough. Over 80% of the homes here have the same door. It's 3 inches of Oak, with a steel edge lining, steel internal bolts and a steel frame. The police have to use blow torches to make entry on these doors and it takes upto quarter of an hour for them to cut the 7 bolts. A steel battering ram will never make entry, there are even video's of the police discovering this years back. It's also over 2 decades old and doing totally fine.
Yeh, cant beat a Oak Door
Recently I had new front and back doors fitted to my house here in the UK.
They were designed and made to my own order specifications and I had to wait about six weeks for them to be manufactured.
I had composite ones made and fitted that have a steel frame inside and a thick insulation panel. This makes them so thick and heavy that they are each mounted on three hinges that resemble some kind of hinge you would expect to see on a bank vault. This is to hold the weight of the door and make the property more secure as the doors each have a multiple locking point mechanism.
They were very expensive. The two combined cost around £4000 which is currently around $5000US but it has made a massive difference this last winter in comparison to my old wooden doors I had previously because I live opposite a park area and the cold winter wind whips straight across the open park and slams straight into the front of my house in the cold months. It's also making a lot of difference in that a lot more heat is being kept in the house and I don't need the central heating on as much as before so in many ways they are paying for themselves.
Going from a single thin panel wood door to a very thick composite door has been like stepping up from a Reliant Robin to an Aston Martin in one go.
Is it possible to provide me with the name and number of the company that installed these doors?
I think its amusing that america calls the video format 'letterboxed' and never ever asks why.
The weird thing is that you'll sometimes see British letterboxes that are vertical.
@@billyhills9933 As a former postman, those are awkward LOL.
Lol so true! 😅😂😊
@@billyhills9933... and in some front doors, the letter box is at the bottom near the floor. There's no thud when the post comes through and it must be hard on the postman, having to bend.
@@frankhooper7871 I remember helping post pamphlets during a local election I was not too fond of those vertical ones they seemed to be on a spring and would fight back
WE HAVE THIS ALL ,IN THE NORMAL WORLD IN EUROPE !!!!
The self locking locks have usually got a button to stop it locking for regular traffic short term
Indeed, its called a latch. i.e. "putting on the latch"
The mailmen all wear shorts even sometimes in winter and they are all very fit
👀
Watching American cop shows it is always surprising how easily they break doors open.
I've come across a few videos showing our Bobbies trying to break open our stubborn doors, lol.
@@Sachik30 They usually have a hand-held battering ram to break the door
@@MsKaz1000 Those were the video fails I saw, lol. They're on YT. :-D
Our newspapers get put through the letter box too not just thrown at the house.
Lots of British doors are wooden.
You can put your door 'on the latch' if you're going in and out so it won't lock if it closes.
How are you the only person in this thread that knows the word 'latch'?!
Stopper/ flicky thing ?*?!"£'? What happened? It's a thing we pretty much all have on our house :-\
@@rayaqueen9657 Because I'm old 🤣🤣
There's a little button on Yale locks that you just have to push to stop the door from locking you out if you're doing something outside in your front garden/yard.
6:54 "Is there a difference between timber and wood that I don't understand here?"
I'll just leave that there.
Timber and wood are the samething.
@@marydavis5234Well, not quite. Timber is generally the term used for unfinished wood used in construction. It is rough cut because the exterior surface won't be seen. Finished wood is used for stuff like furniture making and has a cleaner exterior finish.
😅😅😅😅
😂😂😂
Yale locks have a little switch on it that you can flip up and the door will not lock you out. plus letterboxes are not just a hole in the door it has a flap at the front and it has a draught excluder on the inside of the door [which is like a brush like plate that stops cold air getting into the house. plus it saves you having to go out in the rain and snow to collect your mail. Plus my front door is solid wood and original, the house was built in 1901.
Tyler, after an entire video just on the subject of front doors, what may we expect the next video to feature? Toilet bowls, perhaps, or maybe gazebos, or school holidays or exuents, or possibly even guttering?? 😂
There is a video comparing toilets in the two areas.
A lot of the doors that lock automatically here have a latch that you can activate that will stop the door from locking and shutting you out if you are just nipping outside for something quickly, there are also other doors that you can close that won't lock behind at all unless you use a key to lock it. We have a door that only locks with a key on our back door to the garden and the front door locks automatically but has the latch stopper if we are nipping in and out and we can set a dead bolt on the door when we leave the house so it is double locked. We don't have a letter box in the front door to our house but we have a porch door with the letter box on it so postie can post letters through into our porch and we don't lock the porch door so that any parcels that are delivered can be placed inside the porch as well. You will find some UK homes will have a metal box on the wall sometimes for mail because some people choose not to have a letter box 😊
Before 1840, most British front doors had no letter box. This is because the recipient of a letter had to pay for any mail delivered, and it was therefore necessary for the post man to speak to him/her to collect the fee. In 1840, the United Kingdom became the first country in the world to introduce the adhesive postage stamp which was paid for by the sender; and for a standard letter the stamp cost one penny no matter where in the UK the letter was sent. Other countries followed soon after, but because we were the first, the UK is still the only country in the world that doesn’t have its name on the stamp. The monarch’s head is sufficient.
After 1840, it followed that if you didn’t need to open the door to speak to the postman, a letter box was the most convenient way to receive your mail. P.S. Aluminum is how its English discoverer, Sir Humphrey Davy pronounced it back in 1808. As is often the case, our American cousins stick to older English words while we move away. Fall is another example, so is railroad. The “American” gallon is the old English one - until we changed it in 1824.
You won't find a British front door with an additional storm door or screen door.
Actually we have wooden storm doors (and called that), but they have literally never been closed, they are like those upstairs window shutters you sometimes see that have become basically decorative.
I have 2 entrances with double door/storm doors. The outer ones are uPVC and the inners are 92 year old wooden ones. A total of 3 locks per entrance can be used if we want to be really secure.
He only writes stuff to attention seek , and he has never heard of a "porch"
Yes, porch doors are a thing, although these are set further out from the main door as an additional entrance to a small lean-to before the front door. What we don't have are the additional doors that are nearly flush to the actual front door.
There's a catch on the lock which allows you to go in and out without the key but also able to shut the door
Most of front doors I've seen in the UK are wood or wood with glass panels. They're smaller than the US counterparts because our houses and entrance halls are smaller
Possibly depends where you live - most doors in my area are PVC, though some houses still have their original wooden doors from the late 1800s.
British front doors are made from upvc or wood as these are the only ones I have seen locally and other places. British homes have central heating. We don’t need air conditioning or stupid screen doors. British doors have holes cut into them for a letter box.I can’t lock myself out of my house as I have a modern lock not a silly Yale lock.
Well my front door ain’t wood and mostly of them ain’t defo if they are council places maybe private they are wood
Larger, older and posher British houses with a fair length of driveway from the gate to the front door have a letterbox in the gate or built into the gatepost.
The latest doors here in the UK do not automatically lock if closed.
In the UK most "Posties" (mailmen) do their rounds on foot or bicycle. There are vans for more rural areas, but for most UK towns and villages it's actually more efficient to walk or cycle, rather than having to get out of a vehicle every few metres, and in many streets to do so would block traffic flow.
Also, in most cases there isn't a place where you could easily put an American type mailbox. In most residential areas there is a paved footway (sidewalk) between the road and the boundary of people's property, so deliveries could never be achieved from inside a vehicle, and many properties front straight onto that sidewalk (there's no front garden)
With Yale locks there's usually a switch so if you need to go in and out you can stop it locking. Some letterboxes (I think quite rare) can be locked on the inside, and you can get boxes that go on the back of the door to catch the post if you have a dog etc.
Not all front doors have doors which lock behind you. Also all those doors have a lock latch, which keeps the door from locking.
Our front door is wood and I am told it will be the original one - so 110 years old and going strong!
Only an American could blow my mind. By saying something so ridiculous. Like. It’s like your mail is being delivered to you.🫣. All mail gets delivered…🤭🤣🤷🏻♂️🏴
It's a pity the first thought by Tyler as an American is about some bad person putting something nasty through your letterbox but fact is many UK letterboxes have spring loaded flaps making it difficult for a bad person to put things through your letterbox anyway.
An example is my letters don't drop on my hallway mat. They sit in the gap between the outside and inside spring loaded flaps because it's virtually impossible to push anything from one side, all the way through.
We do measure in metric and imperial. So yes we may understand inches, centimetres, yards, metres, miles and kilometres!
Aluminium (as we say in Swedish, and also in most other Nordic languages plus German, French and more) is one of the lighter metals. 2.7 g/cm³, is about a third of the density of iron, and also lighter than titanium. But yes, there are many materials that are lighter than aluminium.
"All the way up to the front door" that's usually about 15 feet here in the UK
Yes, the postman does walk down every driveway. However, our driveways are extremely short. I guess our postmen are more fit. One downside is that if you have a dog, a lot will attack the post if you don't get there first.
I have a strong, modern UPVC front door with a 5 bolt locking device. The letter box has a flap on the inside and well as outside with bristles in between - helps keep out any 'unwanted' items!
UPVC Doors & Windows. In uk.
No bugs in uk.
No screen doors.
Post comes in through the lettter box in the door, the post lands on your mat, you don't have go out in all weathers.
The letter box is draft sealed.
Yale locks are fading out, if you do put the latch up.
Canadian here, popping over from your Canada channel.. We have slotted front doors for mail as well. Or well, older homes do. We USED to have front door mail. Our postal service removed it in favour for community mail boxes (where there are like 30 or more in a bank you need to pick up from). They said it saved time for delivery drivers.
cluster mailboxes I just googled they seem to have several small doors and a couple of bigger ones for parcels does everyone get a key to all of them or one for the small ones and a key for the parcel one which they give notice for in the smaller one just curious I have only seen something like that is blocks of flats/apartments
@@MsKaz1000 Everyone gets a key to a small one and there is one designated to every home in that area. There will be a few large ones on the bottome for bigger packages that use DIFFERENT keys. Those are community boxes, and there are only 4 of them. What they do, is that if you have a package that needs to use one of those, they take the key for it and put it in with your mail in your normal mail slot. You then use the key on the big box to get your package, and put the key int he MAIL slot (there is an outgoing mail slot on it as well). Where the carriers collect it and take it back :)
If you live in the countryside you may find that your postman opens your front door (rarely locked) and puts your letters/parcels on your table or whatever is nearest to the front door. Gave me quite a fright the first time I stayed in my sister's countryside house (having grown up in a large town) and found the postman in the kitchen whilst I was wandering about in my pyjamas 😂😂
Never in my life have I heard this! And I’ve lived in the countryside here 🤔
Sounds like postman Pat.
Tyler: 'Every single' seconds later 'almost all'. I must be some sort of masochist - I feel my brain cells dying with every video of his I watch and with each of his comments.
Now that's an oxymoron comment
We do measure in feet/inches and lb/stones in the uk, but we also use metric system too
We in rhe UK still recognise inches, & know centimetres too. Isn't that remarkable.
UK front doors are usually solid wood, to make them secure, though now double glazed units are a bit lighter.
Aluminium is light not heavy, much lighter than wood.
Wood doors are normal in older homes. Only modern houses use other materials.
Some wooden doors in the UK are hundreds of years old!
They survive well, despite the weather, so she us wrong here. We don't need screen doors in the UK, as insects sre not a great problem. Older British houses often have a second door, a few feet within the first, forming a lobby or porch, which acts like an airlock between the outside weather & the inside if the house. The letter box means you don't need to leave the house to get your mail. By law the letters have to get to the person. A remote box is not secure enough. You couldn't have hundreds if mail boxes standing in every street. But people can steal from your boxes, or destroy them.
Only an idiot locks themselves out even in the UK. A Yale lock can be set to stay open when required. This means is doesn't have to lock every time you close it, there is an unlocked setting.
My current home was built in the 80s and has poly-carbonate and glass doors. My previous home was a flat built in the 90s The outer door was glass and wood, the inner doors several layers of wood for fire safety.
Last time I was locked out was when I was a teenager. I went outside for some reason leaving the door open. My sister followed my out and closed the door. Unfortunately the keys had fallen out of my pocket and were on the lounge floor so we had to wait for our parents to return.
Hi from the UK. In regards to the door locks, I would say that probably half of the uk has the lock mentioned in the video but we also use different locks that are attached to the door handle and need a key to unlock and lock, if the door accidentally shuts, its fine, we can just open it by pushing the door handle down, but with the other type, we would get locked out, unless we 'lock it' in an constant open postion, so that even if it accidentally shuts, we can just push it open.
It's obvious American doors need to be wider !
i wouldn't get too excited by this, the UK is the 2nd most obese nation in the world... infact if we had Americas 360 million people population we'd be very close in terms of the same ratio of obesity
@@paulmilner8452No it isn’t. 🤣 It’s one of the fastest in Europe apart from a few countries, but you’re out right lying saying it’s the second most obese in the world! Even the US isn’t the 1st obese country….🙄 Stop lying just for the sake of lying ffs.
Dead locks as they are know have a sliding button on them so if you are going in and out you can fasten the lock in place and the door can't lock behind you
I’m confused, wasn’t there a video a few months ago talking about letterboxes?
I thought so too.
I was thinking exactly the same!
And probably another few months before that too.
Too busy interrupting to take things in... 🤔
Wait a couple of months and he'll do another one.
Locking your letterbox is THE MOST American thing I’ve ever heard 😂
Great pub discussion: That time you locked yourself out of your home. In my case it involved getting a wire coat hanger unravelling it and poking it through the letter box and fishing for the keys from the top of the sideboard
In my case, as a young mother who locked herself out of the house, and having left her baby inside, it involved standing on the rubbish bin, reaching up to the open bedroom window and pulling myself inside - more than once! Lol
The answer to leaving keys in the house is to carry them in your pocket.
@@charlieyerrell9146 I keep mine on a chain attached to belt loop
Yale type locks have a latch that can be used to prevent the door automatically locking.
7:59 As I understand it, composite doors have PVC plastic on the outside on top of an aluminium frame for security, almost always white like PVC windows.
Our post, we call it post not mail, and since way back when we have in Britain all got a letter box/post box in our front doors.
The postman comes around every day with his post back full of letters, bills and small packages and puts them through our letter/post boxes.
It’s not weird or scary it’s how we get our post. We all live in streets of houses in a row, or on little estates of houses with a garden, and everyone has their own letterbox.
We have high rise flats that have all their post boxes on the ground floor. And a lot of our high rise flats still have their own letterbox, Our postmen/women all wear a uniform, comfy walking shoes and a post bag.
Yes, it’s usually bills that come but birthday cards come with the postman as do Christmas cards.
It’s lovely getting up on a morning picking your post up from behind the door on special occasions. Emails might be quicker and looking at comments on Facebook or instagram but nothing beats opening a card or letter that has been sent from a loved one.
Our post started back in 1859 or thereabouts, every town, city or village have a post box. You write your card or letter, put the address where you are sending it to on the envelope, put a stamp on it, then go to your neared postbox/pillar box put your post in the narrow rectangle hole and go home. That’s it, then at an allotted time a postman comes in his post van, uses a key to unlock the postbox, takes the post and goes of in his van to collect other post from postboxes on his route. Once he’s got all the post he takes it all back to the main post office where it is sorted and sent of to a large central post office. Once there it goes off to wherever it needs to be, and the postman/woman there takes it on their post route.
We also have a milkman who along with the postman come first thing in the morning so we can have our breakfast of cereal with milk with a cup of English breakfast tea with a dash of milk in it! The first cup of tea if the day is absolutely delicious.
We didn’t start drinking coffee in this country until the 1950/60s. And then it was just a coffee with milk or black. The fancy cappuccino, lattes and all the other stuff is really quite a recent thing, maybe 40/50 years ago. People on the continent were coffee drinker but here in England tea was the most common drink!
I hope this clarifies how we used to live and still go in many places. Our red post boxes are iconic, we love them they are part of what makes us all British. Have a good day from Pauline Yorkshire
As a French person, I was unsettled when I visited and then moved to the US because of the lack of a sturdy lock on the doors. I always had two big sturdy deadbolt locks on top and bottom-ish of the door that you lock with a knob on the inside of the house and use a key from outside as well as a lock on the handle. And most doors can’t be opened even without the extra locks without the key from outside. My current door only has the one key for the lock on the handle but it activates three locking points on the door. And you can’t get in from outside without the key even when it’s not completely locked (if you didn’t turn the key to lock it) because you need it to make the bit that latches move as the outside handle is static as in it it doesn’t move.
Yes, our door are very heavy not easy for a woman to lift on her own. We also have special fire proof paint for the kitchen door 🚪Some doors are smaller. My house has two communal door one to enter then the one to our house, we never leave the doors open but in summer may open for a while. Our mail are delivered through our door if there’s a package the mail man/woman presses the doorbell to make the delivery if it cannot go through the mailbox otherwise a slip is left to collect at the post office. I locked myself out many times or locked my keys inside, the only I can get back in is asking my neighbour to allow me through so climb over their fence, I always leave my back door open. No one has access through the back of our houses otherwise.
On most locks that automatically lock there is a thing called a snib which you slide or rotate to stop it automatically locking. You "snib" the lock if you are going back and forward say to load your car or out in the garden but not far away so you are comfortable with it not being locked. 🙂
Aluminium was a popular material for houses built in the 1950 and 1960s in the UK. However, the metal was just for the outer edges of the door (and/or doorframe), the doors also featured a glass window. So the doors were not entirely aluminium.
with the Yale lock, they can be put on a latch that won't lock the door if it swings close so if you know you'll be going in and out a lot, say moving thing then you won't need a key every time, however if you slam the door shut it can knock the latch off and lock you out.
We do use inches 🤣🤷♀️ but the locks that lock automatically, there is usually a sort of switch or toggle on those locks that you flick, this stops the door locking behind you if your going in and out of your house 😊
Thank you Tyler for all the great videos and your great sence of humour you make me laugh best wishes David
A Yale latch is, well a latch. It doesn't lock, although it does keep you out like she said. A Yale secures the door so someone simply letting themselves in, but you need a deadlock, too.
I'm British, and my front door is uPVC with an aluminium frame and internal bracing. Inside is a tiled outer hall, so, say, a firecracker will not have much effect if posted though the letterbox. And I have a locking inner hall door. I was (only) once locked out by leaving the key inside the door (I'm 61 years old)/However, I now have a code-locked key safe on my front wall with a spare front door key in it, I no longer have an inner front door keyhole, so that can never happen again.
I’d say that Yale Locks are become less and less common as they aren’t the safest of locks if they’re the only lock on the door as if they haven’t been fitted properly, it can result in a door that is quite easy to kick in. Many homes that do have a Yale Lock will also have a Chubb style lock too that you have to turn the key to activate the locking mechanism.
UPVC doors are becoming more common and are often made to look like wood but there are still many many homes that have a sold hardwood front and back door. She didn’t really touch on UPVC doors, which come with a multi point locking mechanism fitted and it’s a door and frame unit that’s fitted due to the fact that the multi point locking mechanism as to slot into specific holes that are located all around the three sides of the door and frame that don’t contain the hinges. These doors don’t automatically lock themselves, you have to turn a key to activate the locks.
Those multi lock are less to do with security and more to do with keeping heat in and cold out. I wouldn't have a UPVC door.
@@jpw6893 I don’t think I made any claim one way or the other about how secure a UPVC door and multi point locking system are. Though if I’m honest, I have quite severe anxiety issues and I feel far less anxious with a UPVC door than I have with many of the wooden front doors with a Yale Lock fitted but a proper sturdy old fashioned solid hardwood door almost always looks better.
@lynnejamieson2063 The locks fitted are done so usually to conform for insurance purposes, even though they are fairly weak. For example a 'multi point' lock will have an end load of about 1/4 of a ton. A decent internal lock with a single bolt can be an end load of 7.5 tons yet would be considered the weaker option. The whole thing is a joke in all honesty. We then had to conform to EU standards on bolt through. It was usually 10mm, which means 10mm of the bolt ended up in the frame. They then made it 15mm, which is worse.
@@jpw6893 all I know is that I’ve lived in a fair fee rented flats that one shove of your shoulder against the door made it open with a poorly fitted Yale lock and I’ve never experienced that with the locks on a UPVC door and to be honest, with my anxiety issues I don’t really want to know that my front door might not be as safe as I’d like.
Like I said previously, I didn’t actually comment on how secure a UPVC door was, I just stated that she hadn’t really touched upon them and they are growing in popularity. I only stated that the Yale Locks were becoming less common and that if they were badly installed that they weren’t the most secure locks around.
@lynnejamieson2063 Any lock installed badly is not a good lock. A lock surface fitted is always the strongest and yes, I would never shoulder push against a UPVC door when you just have to use a crow bar to bend it out of the frame or as some, a soldering iron which can melt it away.
My (UK) front door (actually all the external doors) are 2” seasoned oak with oak strapping to reinforce them, secured with 2 large iron bolts and a 7 lever lock. I tried to make sure that if anyone wants to try kicking it down, I’ve done my best to watch them bounce off!
The yale style locks she was referring to have a mechanism where you can basically stop it from locking for as long as you need, like if you're in the front garden you might have it that way. Not seen those locks in quite a while though, most are upvc doors now and obviously they don't have them.
Not only in the UK but all over Europe this is pretty common, just like real houses built of sturdy bricks instead of flimsy wood.
From my experience in the US, almost 70 years of it, we had mailboxes that were attached to the front of the house next to the front door. While this arrangement was not as convenient for the person living there as a mail slot would have been, it certainly beat a mailbox at the end of the driveway where you’d have to leave your house to get the mail. I guess the one was better for the mail person and the other was better for the resident. I only saw those mailboxes on posts at the end of driveways in movies. I took that to indicate that was how country folks got their mail. I always lived in cities. I know it’s different for apartment dwellers, as I lived in those as well and those buildings typically had banks of mailboxes in one wall with one box for each unit. I have no personal experience with UK mail slots. 🤭
The national curriculum requires metric units and imperial units that still remain in common usage to be taught in state schools.(Wikipedia) Not only do we learn but we convert (Big Head here)
Lived all my life in UK and Ireland. My front doors all happen to have been wooden. Never had any problems.
Screen doors.... windows were the main solutions for fresh air. Never really saw mosquitoes when I was young. The idea of a screen door would seem redundant to me, one more thing needing maintenance !
Letters .... Most front doors are easily manageable for posties.... either already right there on street, or just a couple of metres of front garden. Long driveways would be minority. In a lot of houses, the letters are pushed through the door into a letter-BOX.
Like GGL, I always ensure I can't lock myself out, by needing to have keys to lock the door in the first place.
The only bothersome insects in the UK are midges. They like cool, dark places so tend not to come indoors.
Another strange fact is that in the USA front doors seem to open straight into the living room. In most if not all of Europe the front door leads into a hallway first.
You can have a metal box fitted to the inside of the door if you are worried about random items being put through (not that I've experienced that). The US is the odd one out having external mail boxes, most other countries in the world have mail slots in the door. Yale locks can be switched with the click of a button to prevent them auto-locking.
She also didn't mention that many many places with older doors have mortice locks (which don't lock automatically)... often with a second latch added (which, by default, will lock the door when it's closed.
And for the Americans who think it's weird we don't have screen doors, we don't have screens on the windows either! But that's because we don't really have mosquitos, nor an abundance of other flying nuisances.
We don’t have any need for screen doors .
Or so many wider doors...! Just saying 😂
No flies?
@@howardhales6325Not in any number. Few other injurious/unwanted insects, either. Although it is somewhat dependent on where you live; if your house backs onto a pig farm or a stableyard you'll likely have some flies. My home is adjacent to a nature reserve with a swamp, so if the wind is in a particular direction in summer, I get midges which are annoying but not dangerous. Of course if you have a wasp's nest next to a window, you'd better keep the window closed until the nest is dealt with ...
@@Sine-gl9ly I live in rural Canada. We have many flies.
@@howardhales6325 I am not saying you don't have flies. I am not trying to stop you having screens. I have lived and worked in countries where there are a lot of flies and other harmful insects, and where screens, nets etc are an essential part of the home.
All I am doing is explaing that here in the UK, we only vanishingly-rarely have problems with insects, thus there is rarely any need for screens on windows or doors in most homes.
We were offered a choice when fitting a new front door of what type of lock we wanted. It is possible to have the American type if we so wish but we have the slam shut type which locks automatically when pulled to. The other important fact is that modern doors have multi point locking with bolts top, bottom and side making the door ultra safe. The down side is that they are expensive.
A mail box means that someone can steal your post, where as having your mail come through the door so that nobody can steal it.
It is a federal crime to steal mail in the US, if you are found guilty, it is a $10’ 000 fin and up to 20 years in a Federal prison.
If someone wants my bills they can have them.
@@marydavis5234 And I think I'm right in saying that murder is a federal crime as well. But it doesn't stop it happening. With tighter gun control, post being delivered directly into your house, a stricter driving test and annual vehicle inspections, I hope you understand why most Brits feel much safer in the UK.
@@grahamtruckel We do have yearly vehicle test every year in the US, you can’t get your car insurance renewed without a car inspection every year.
@@marydavis5234 Thanks, good to know. And gun control - do you have that as well?
A couple of points on the door locks in the UK , the Yale lock can lock when you close the door but you can lock it in position so it does not lock and you can move in and out of the door at your leisure. The second point is that modern UK front door locks are similar to US doors must are more secure . It has a handle on both sides and you can use the door the same as an internal door , just push it down and open the door, however if you push it up it activates the triple latches into the frame , at the top middle and bottom of the door . You then lock the latches in place with the key .
I'm guessing even in USA some shop doors are aluminium and glass. Before uPVC a lot of UK homes had aluminium doors and windows. These days it is mostly sliding patio doors that are aluminium, with big double grazed panels. The uPVC doors are filled with expanding foam insulation.
I've never lived in a house that didn't have a front door made of wood, but they have always been older houses with their original doors.
Tyler, they don't even have screens for their windows.
You know what else we don't have? Loads of flying bugs that want to bite, sting or kill you.
One having a mail box at the end of your garden, anyone can steal your mail. As far as door locking is concerned i have to use a key to lock it, so I've never locked myself out, those kind of doors in my area was used in the 80s and 90s but no more unless your house is a private house that is.
I find the letter box handy in the winter, see one of the neighbours bought a council flat, but they have a leaky pipe, so during the winter I do them the favour of returning all of their water to them once it solidifies on the common walkway. Shovel it up and post it back to them. Can't seem to avoid picking up a bunch of mud though. Oh well. No matter😂. Edit: mud, not kids, pick up mid, not kids. Lol
These days some of the newer houses have secure code mail boxes by our front doors. When we want our post we just use a code and the door will release a trap door inside which then puts the post/mail in the bottom section where we can retrieve it.
Wood is used on most front doors, even in the UK, because that’s what was used traditionally, and most houses are many decades old, with many in the hundreds of years old. However, on more modern houses, or when doors on older houses need to be replaced, wood is no longer the only option, and composite or uPVC doors are much more common. In the US doors are made of wood because your whole house is made of wood - even houses which look like they’re made of brick usually have a timber frame, with a brick outer skin! Given that wood is so ubiquitous throughout the construction of the house, using anything else for your front door would seem odd, don’t you think?
There is a little catch on a yale lock that once set stops the door locking behind you.
Another thing about manual locks in the UK: you have to pull the door handle upwards before you can turn the key to lock it