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I can imagine that it's really disgusting. Even if your toilet doesn't overflow, the carpet must be moldy, because it never really dries out if you shower daily.
I was born 65 years ago in England and I can confirm that I have never had, or ever been anywhere that has had a carpeted bathroom where on earth have you got this "fact" from!!
What about a carpet that you can just put down for when showering / using toilet, then go wash? Like they're small enough to put in the washer, and not big enough to cover the whole bathroom.
A lot of the things on your list still exist in older homes here in the Eastern United States, such as separate taps, chain pulls, and electrical plugs in the light fixtures. Unfortunately, simply placing an electrical plug higher, doesn't make it any safer. Most of our bathroom and kitchen electrical devices use GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) technology, which switches off the power within milliseconds in the event of an electrical shock. We also have grounding pins on our plugs, and most two prong plug ends can only be inserted one way, as one blade is wider.
On the Delta King they have the chain pull thing. That's the only thing I know of. I didn't know we still had sepret sinks for hot, and cold but I don't go to old buildings much.
I live in Canada....Raised in Britain...1941-1950....I'm 79 and you brought back so many memories of things that I'd almost forgotten....thanks for the memory!
Hi, I live in Italy and we have a weird object in our bathrooms called "bidet". It is used to clean your bottom when you need the toilet. When Italians go abroad, they really miss it because it's also useful for women's period and also save a lot of water avoiding to do a shower every time.
Yeah, even in quite small bathrooms! I am astonished by how skilfully it is always put even in kinda small spaces, where it seems no additional place left - and here it is, the bidet, always in its place))
I would be able to listen to you all day long. Your accent as well as the varied vocabulary you use make your videos the most academic and entertaining in TH-cam
I enjoyed your video. I wanted to point out one thing, however. Here in the United States, we don’t have screens on our windows to prevent mosquitoes specifically. We mostly have them to prevent houseflies from coming into our homes. In my new home, I have a screen that is in desperate need of replacement, and leaves a gap on one side. Each time I leave that window open, I notice a half dozen or so insects of various types have managed to come into my bathroom.
i think what she had in mind was the mosquito screens that were kinda like curtains. my neighbor had one bc she always had her porch door open if she was awake and at home. but we live in georgia so the bugs get in however
@@rockeerockey6941 Like the euphemistically-named "Palmetto bugs" - which sounds a lot better to the Ft. Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce than "gigantic skunk roaches". Just wanting to be your friend, by spewing a foul-smelling liquid at you when threatened. It's not just Florida, almost anywhere in the USA you would be innudated with flies, mosquitos, bees, wasps, dirt daubers, spiders, lizards, scorpions, birds, etc if you didn't have screens on the windows. It's nearly inconceivable that you would just leave the windows open with no screen around here.
I live in the mountains. We don’t have AC either bc we don’t need it. It never gets over 75 degrees outside so no point. Same for UK. Doesn’t get hot. No need for AC.
67 year old US citizen here and when I was a kid we often had pill cords on ceiling lamps in bathrooms as well as other rooms. Bathroom lamps often has plug sockets (or receptacles) for shaving some other ceiiing lamps also had receptacles but for purposes other than shaving. Often the lamps with pull cords and receptacles also had wall switches, this allowed the item plugged in there to be left turned on while the light was off. I recall my grandmother having a toilet that had a chain. No carpets in the bathrooms but having grown up in Wisconsin It would have seemed great until the toilet overflowed.
When I grew up our washing machine was in the kitchen the first was an easy spin, the only electric socket was in the light over the mirror in the bathroom when I was a child I stuck a hairpin in the electrical socket and got the shock of my life, my grandmother had a pull chain toilet, yes we had two faucets for hot and cold but only in the bathroom, we did not have air conditioning we used fans the house I grew up in was built in the late 1890’s there was a coal bin in the basement, and even though it had been upgraded in the past the gas fixtures in all the rooms were still operational. As an adult I have carpet in my bathroom but not in my son’s lol
The Brit house reminds me of my grandfather's ca.1930 Chicago 3-flat. The laundry appliances and water heater were in the kitchen, as well as one of two gas (originally oil) space heaters. One bath sink had the separate taps, and a ceiling pull-chain light. (They used to advertise an adjustable pipe with an aerator, that would connect the two taps, but may have been in the '60s).
@@aspenrebel Ugh, I'm so glad that fad died off in the early 00's. I remember people having the ring seat carpeted too. As for carpeted floors? I've seen a couple houses with carpeted bathrooms and the smell of urine was always present. After all, many men tend to miss the toilet while peeing. I'm American by the way.
#9: sockets in bathrooms: U.S. code requires these to be GFI (Ground Fault Interrupt) circuits - these detect shorts instantly and trip the circuit breaker in the socket to prevent shocks.
@@dillzilla4454 The GFI breakers exist in the US, but it seems more common to have them on the outlets. This is likely because you can hit the reset button right there (instant gratification) instead of having to walk all the way to the breaker box and back to reset and be able to use the outlet.
@@EnglishwithLucy When will we hear your Spanish again. I'm delighted every time I listen to you doing it. I'm a native Spanish speaker from Colombia (maybe my name gives a hint). Love ALL your content.
I visited my niece who is stationed in the Air Force. She lived Bury St Edmonds which I thought was an adorable town! I noticed just about everything you spoke about while we were there, but I also noticed other things such as the tiny refrigerators, the charge for a bag at the store, the fact that sooo many people walked everywhere, the many tiny little goodwill type stores, how big and very bright the vegetables were, but the thing that I thought was the oddest was the only place that had an air conditioner was this tiny little bathing suit shop!! It was really warm while we were there and we wore shorts the entire time. The newspaper said it was a “heatwave” and it was only 75 degrees or so. Loved, loved, loved that little town!
I live just 20 minutes from Bury and it is not a little town😅 England is split into counties(like states), counties have towns and cities. I live in Ipswich which is the biggest town of Suffolk - the 3rd *largest* county in England… Bury St Edmunds is also in Suffolk, in fact it’s the 2nd *largest* town in the county. So, it’s the 2nd *largest* town in the 3rd *largest* county in the *entire* country. Not small at all. 😂 x
Im sorry to say, but Bury isnt really a small town. Bury st. Edmunds is where pretty much everyone i know goes if they need to go shopping because it’s the only place with shops and actual activities nearby. We live about half an hour away in a small town with about 1/4 of it’s population Bury is always the place to go to hang out with friends unless you go to a town like Mildenhall for some reason or other, which still only has a few fast food restaurants, a Sainsbury and some other small shops in the centre.
funny thought though, i almost had a heart attack when i saw ‘Bury St Edmonds’. It was such a specific town to name in all of England and i just found it quite amusing.
Thank you for this video. As an American living in the lovely UK I have noticed , of course, all that you have spoken about. The two things that baffled me were the no outlets in the bathrooms and also no screens on the windows. When I was having new windows put in I asked the window guy about screens and he just looked at me blankly. We don't have mosquitos where I live but we do have flies and bees. It would be so much better if there were window screens. As far as the bathroom plugs go, I found them to be a minor inconvenience, because in America we have plug outlets all over the bathroom, haha. Doesn't sound too safe though! Saying all of that, I LOVE the UK and wouldn't live anywhere else! Thanks again for your informative videos!
Hello! I'm American and lived in England in the early 80's. I found all the things mentioned in your video to be true for me, especially the separate taps! One thing in my house you did not mention was door handles. We have door knobs (round) and my home in England had handles/levers instead. Also the front/exterior door had neither. It had a key hole and a little metal lip to pull the door closed. I love your videos, they bring back fond memories of my time in England.
Also quite common in the Netherlands for frond doors: just a key hole and a metal lip to pull the door closed or (for older houses) a knob to close the door. The house I grew up in also had door knobs on all doors (house from 1889) and separate taps everywhere but the kitchen. It was ideal with cats. Nowadays, living in a more modern house, the cats can open the door why hanging on the door handle
I live in england and our bathrooms don't have carpet,we have push button toilets I have wall sockets with buttons ,our washing machine is in the kitchen I have light pull cords . We have shaving sockets in bathrooms
You probably live in west London, champagne socialist, liberal elite hotspot. Not England. You need to feel the damp, mouldy smell of bathroom carpets before you call it real England. After you had a shower with that box thingy to adjust your shower temperate that never works of course. Real brits have (weekly!) baths not showers of course.
Hi Lucy, I am from Australia and we have similar rules regarding electricity regulations. I think the reason why we and the UK have these rules is that we run on a 240 volt system that will kill you if you accidentally touch a wire. In the US and other countries they tend to run on a 110 volt system that will give you a shock but not kill a person who touches a wire. Regards, Tony
That's a myth. It's the amps that kill you, not the voltage. As you will know, watts = volts x amps. If an appliance draws 480 watts, then in Britain it will draw 2 amps, but in the US it will draw 480/110 = 4.4 amps. I'm English, and I moved to California 45 years ago. I had several electrical appliances that would work on either voltage at the click of a switch. What they didn't tell me is that, when you move the switch to the lower voltage you have to increase the size of the fuses, or they will blow. 240 volts is much safer than 110 volts.
The problem with half the voltage is that you have to run your appliances at twice the current so you have to use twice as much copper in your cabling and in your appliances. The odd thing is that US homes do have a 220 volt supply but they centre tap the output making it into a 2 x 110 volt supply!
@@susanbrookes9719 It’s not a real myth. Even if it is the current and not the voltage that kills you, it’s not the current running through the wires you’re touching that matters, but the current that eventually runs through your body. That depends on the resistance of your body and since the current is equal to the voltage divided by the resistance the risk of a fatal shock increases with a higher voltage.
@@susanbrookes9719 Correct...220-240 volts draws just 1/2 the amps of 110-115 V circuits, and so the electricity cost will be cheaper. Also, I changed over my wood working table saw from the standard 110V to run on 220V. The saw now draws 1/2 the amps but is more powerful and cuts through the wood a lot easier.
There was another safety reason for having separate hot and cold taps. When houses were plumber with lead pipes, the hot water could contain more lead than cold water. It was safer to drink cold water with lower lead levels. I don't know if it's still done, but electric plugs used to have fuses in the plug. Shaver sockets in bathrooms had special protection to stop electric shocks.
The reason believe it or not with having two separate taps is to do with the potential accidental back flush of contaminated water from the low pressure header tank for the hot water system (the header tanks were often open) and you could get dead rats mice etc. in them causing fouled water, if the mains pressure lines lost water supply or water pressure this could then run back into the town supply(not good at all).
@@morticiaaddams7866 After WW2 there was a drastic shortage of copper in the UK. So there was no GFI in new buildings and they needed a lot of reconstruction. So the plugs had a fuse inside. Most countries have GFI as a standard. Once a standard is set it is then bloody near impossible to change. Although China seems to be changing to the Aus/NZ plugs.
In Scandinavia, at least in Finland and Sweden, we usually have the washing machine (and tumbler) in the bathroom. One family houses normally have a utility room with washing machine etc.
And if your washing machine is leaking for some reason, there‘s no drama as there is a drain at the lowest point of the bathroom. Oh how I miss Finland!
Yes that's right. The annoying thing was that the extractor fan would keep going long after the light was switched off. As the bedroom was right next to the bathroom it was very noisy. 😂
@@freedomfighter5957 in the US you can have a timer switch on your exhaust fan instead of a plain on/off switch. The switch in the one powder room has five buttons, #1 turns fan on for 5 minutes, #2 15 minutes, #3 30 minutes, #4 is 60 minutes, the fifth switch turns the fan on or off, no timer function.
I have no socket in the bathroom or airconditioning. I live in an apartment house in Norway built in 1957 so the basin has separate taps. When I moved in, the cold tap was not working but I have not had it repaired, because I can get much colder water from it to drink than from the kitchen sink when there is no water coming to the hot tap. The toilet is quite modern but it has only one button for flushing.
When I was a kid here in Pennsylvania some of the older great aunts and uncles or great grand parents homes would have a wall mount or pedistal sink in the bathroom with a separate hot and cold tap. I believe that US homes built after the tweenies or thirties and definitely after WWII had all mixing taps like we have now.
I think the 2 taps thing is more down to the age of the house than something specific to the UK, I'm sure older homes here in Australia have them if they haven't been renovated.
@@MrMikey1273 There is a cottage in my family that was built over a century ago, and it has separate taps in the bathroom. Come to think of it my Grandparents house did too, that house was built in the 30's.
We used to have a chain pull toilet flusher in the house where I grew up (in the Netherlands). Later we moved to a house with a high mounted water tank, but you had to pull down the pipe (weird, I know) to flush. My father mounted an old doorbell with a chain right next to the water tank. Always fun when we had unexpecting guests.
I'm Spanish and I lived in Brighton for a couple of years. The first time I went to a toilet I spent like half an hour trying to find the light. How I would imagin that the light turns on pulling a cord! Never seen this before
On visiting Brussels, we checked into our hotel room at night and spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on any lights. No one had mentioned that the key card had to be placed in a specific slot by the door to engage the lights in the room. I guess this saved them money by not allowing you to go out and leave a light on in your room.
Lucy, I remember the tank in the loft contained cold water, which wasn’t safe to drink, as you describe. We once had a bird on ours too. The tank only served the bathrooms, and it was up there to create pressure. The hot water probably came from your boiler, that also heated the radiators, which wasn’t safe to drink either. The cold water downstairs was safe to drink because it came straight from the “mains”.
As an American, I completely appreciate the way you have your homes wired and the safety devices built into the way you plug in your appliances …. 240 V in household systems makes a lot more sense than the way we do it in America with 120 V . The first time I went to the UK I bought two of your outlets and two of your kettles, and in my kitchen in Texas, our electrical load center is on the back of the wall, common to a countertop in my kitchen, and I installed both outlets there, which means I have the ability to use a British kettle with British plugs and can bring a liter of water up to a boil in short order...
The Texas electric grid runs on 240, it is reduced to 120 by the circuit breaker at your electrical box in your house. If you want a 240 circuit in your house you simply need to install a different breaker, also make sure your wall wiring can handle the larger voltages before you do so.
@@lisaseah8823 Now we’ve heard from Captain obvious If you bother to even read what I said, I never even hinted that I went all that way to get a kettle Everybody knows we have similar kettles in America and have for many You should read what I wrote before you comment on things I did not write
I am an American and grew up in a home that was built in 1905. We had hot and cold separate taps in our bathroom. It had no electric outlets either. Our washing machine was in the kitchen, my mom hung clothes on a clothes line outside to dry, we did not have air conditioning either. We also had a coal furnace and a coal bin in the cellar. The coal truck would arrive with the coal it was then dispensed down a chute into through basement window into the coal bin. Hmmmm I wonder if an Englishman built our home. No this is the way most homes were in America way back when👍🏻
Hey Lucy, i live in South Carolina in the states and we always had carpet in our bathrooms. My mom was born and raised on the Eastern shore of Maryland where there was a heavy British influence. My 89 year old mom still hangs her wash outside on a clothes line.
Your mum is a clever woman. Hanging your laundry 🧺 outside is smart and economically perfect. We all ought to do the same. You’ll find lots of people doing this in many different countries.
Most people in rural areas of Australia, and many in the city also, hang their washing on the clothesline to dry. I have a drier (it's now 40 years old & still going) which I use maybe 3-4 times a year when I'm desperate.
I installed mosquito nets just to prevent bugs, wasps and bees getting in because I'm scared of them, so now I feel much more relaxed when the window is open
Ehen I lived in Brooklyn, we lived in an old house that had a chain to flush the toilet. We even had a bathtub in the kitchen that doubled as a table. It had a cover when not in use.
One of the highlights of the classic 1972 movie, The Godfather is the scene where Tessio describes "the chain thing" in the bathroom as a place to plant a gun for Michael Corleone, so he can bump off the rival mobster and the police captain who was protecting him. "Louie's Restaurant" was also in The Bronx!! :)
I'm british and remember going to my friends house for the first time and went to use the bathroom which had carpet as a floor! Thought that was very strange and my opinions not changed 15 years later lol
In Tennessee: I was talking to a old timer some years back, this guy was born probably around the turn of the century. I asked him what was the best invention he's seen come about. He thought for a minute and said one word: screens.
Many Australian appliances also have three prong plugs. Especially with high wattage appliances. The bottom prong is the earth and is used with appliances that aren't double insulated. It's a safety feature. Australian wall sockets also have an on/off switch.
Lucy, you can read me a telephonebook...your voice combined with the perfect English is so soothing. Also, I like the typical British humor that flashes every now and then. Like!
Good day Ms. Lucy. Your comment on mosquitoes makes me wonder if you have type O blood? A study that I read about hypothesized that people with type O blood attract more mosquitoes. As I have type O+ blood and live in Minnesota I can confirm that this is very true as mosquitoes absolutely love me! Just found your channel and I will be watching more of your videos in the future. You have a very lovely manner. Take care and much luck in your endeavors.
YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO BUILD THE LIFE YOU ALWAYS WANTED. BINARY / BITCOIN TRADING HAS MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO CREATE YOUR OWN WEALTH AT OWN COMFORT,.
The way I cope with the heat is to shut all the doors, windows, and curtains during the day and open them at night. A well insulated house will help to keep it cool if you shut the heat out like it keeps it warm in winter if you shut the cold out.
@@conlon4332 Doesn't work for us here in Southern Ontario and Quebec. It just doesn't cool off here at night and even if it does the humidity is very high. You either have A/C or you suffer.
In Canada we have GFCI sockets in the bathroom. Ground fault circuit interruptor, there's a circuit breaker in the socket. These shut off at the first hint of a short, like water getting in, so no one can be electrocuted.
In Mexico City we don't have air conditioning nor heater either. It is never too hot for having air condition in the house, but winter can be very chilly.
I'm Austrian: When I first went to England (nearly 40 years ago), what surprised me most about English homes was that they seemed to be poorly insulated against cold winters. I deduced that winters must be a lot milder (I did not come farther north than Oxford at that time) than back home (Alps; and closer to Siberia: minus 15 degrees C for several weeks was quite common in those days, before climate change made itself felt). Anyway, by entering through the front door you often stepped directly into the living room, with no entrance hall before that. And those typical English windows which you push up or down, they tended to have single glazing. I remember thinking, you wouldn't survive an Austrian winter in a house like that. But literally EVERYTHING about this comment has changed now. Double and even triple glazing has found its way to England, and global warming has reached us all.
Scotland could get -32c but quite often it came down to cost, but houses post 1980's had double glazing as you couldn't afford not to in winter and people wore lots of layers of clothes even to bed and had hot water bottles.
@@elultimo102 there was but back then they tended to catch fire. These days there is electric blankets and less hot water bottles, but old habits die hard, hot water bottles have the advantage or being passive while blankets continuously draw power.
I was in England one time in end of February or early March. I noticed no snow, sports fields were all green grass and being mowed, as her lawns in front of people's homes. I asked an English woman about this. She seemed perplexed by my question, and asked me what fields and lawns were like in Boston at this time of year. I told her, covered with snow and ice, dead, gray, black, mud. London is further north than Boston.
@@elultimo102 take the hot coals out of the fireplace and put them in a bed pan and stick them under the mattress. You know, that brass round pan with the flip cover and the really long wooden handle propped up next to the fire place. We use to have one of those, I wonder what happened to it.
It may seem strange, but the first household oddity I noticed in the UK was door handles. They were very rare in the US in the 70s but everywhere in the UK and Europe.
Problem is that most of what she talks about is JUST PLAIN WRONG. I am a Brit but have lived in the USA for 51 years. She is WRONG about the electrical plugs and the plumbing with 2 taps. Neither does she understand much about the USA Read my comments at the beginning of these comments.
In most places in the US, it is required to have a GFCI (IGround Fault Circuit Interrupter) outlet anywhere, such as in a bathroom or a kitchen, that one might be able to touch a water tap and an electrical outlet at the same time. Also, air conditioning is a MUST here in Arizona where we have 4 seasons: SUMMER, DECEMBER, JANUARY and FEBRUARY!
@@paulwatkins2601 Or, perhaps more commonly, an RCD (Residual Current Device). Current regulations require the ring main circuits to be protected by RCDs, plus exterior sockets. For those using electrical garden tools plugged into interior sockets, it's common to use a plug-in RCD. The hope is that if there's a fault, the RCD nearest the device will trigger in preference to the one on the ring main, so you don't have half the house lose power simultaneously.
@@MrTopcat3333 you have half a house on 1 breaker? Here in the US they usually seperate by room. Stove, hot water heater, ac, dryer have there own breaker.
As a lifelong American I was looking forwards to learning some new English vocabulary. Imagine my joy in having understood every word you said! I guess watching all those episodes of Monty Phyton's Flying Circus finally paid off!
Too bad it’s wrong, the small flush is for big business and the big button is for small business.it’s bigger because you mostly go for a wee so you’ll need the bigger one more often. Not wasting so much water.
In Sweden we also have small houses and small apartments. But we put our washing machines in the bathroom, not the kitchen... If you live in a apartment you to have access to a common washing room that the tenants share so you have to book time..
And this is the weirdest thing about Sweden (where I've been living for over three years). These trips with a laundry bag - in winter, in the snow to the building with a laundry room. Nightmare!
That’s to do with Sweden’s insanely strict insurance policies for water damage. All bathrooms in Sweden must be wet rooms where all surfaces can withstand at the very least a showering of water and where the floor must withstand a leak with water sitting on the floor without leaking through. This makes the bathroom and ideal space to put the washing machine as the potential economic consequences of a leak in a living area such as the kitchen could be catastrophic-tens of thousands of pounds in renovation costs and no insurance money to cover it.
With the exception of the washer/dryer in the kitchen I've had everything you've listed in homes I've lived in here in the United States. It all depends on how old the building is. I do currently have a washer and a tumble dryer in my kitchen though. This single unit washer/dryer is rather new in the US, and hugely expensive. The first time I ever saw one of those it was in the upscale motorhomes. I have however also had a washer & dryer that was stacked, along with an old fashioned ringer washer.
As a British person, I legit forgot about the light pull cords in bathrooms. I was about to ask you wtf kind of house you grew up in, but then I remembered, I once set off the NHS alarm at my grandparents bungalow after pulling on their red NHS cord thinking it was the light switch, because my council house formerly had such a light cord in the bathroom. Not only that, but we also had the cords in bedrooms, too! Made turning lights on and off when going to sleep/waking up so easy and safe... but then the councils just had to make life harder for everyone and remove them. Get out of bed when you're finally sleepy to turn off the light... WELL DAMN, NOW I'M BLOODY AWAKE AGAIN BECAUSE I GOT OUT OF BED!!! Then there were the huge cisterns in the bathroom airing cupboards which I thankfully saw get retired. Having to flip a switch to turn hot water on, and wait an hour for the cistern to heat up so you could take a bath... not fun lol
@@andyt8216 I have a utility room separate from my kitchen and most of all my friends have their laundry rooms away from the kitchens. I’m in Northern Ireland. All new houses have them. My house is twenty years old and have a big one.
American here, with loads of British relatives. I totally agree with carpeted bathrooms, separate taps (one of my Biggest pet peeves), yucky push button toilets, switches on the plugs (me: why isn’t this light turning on?), and as for air con…I understand that, but pairing that with no window screens makes no sense!
Once in England I had to call the landlord because I couldn't open the front door of the house I rented, it was then I discovered that they turn the key in the opposite direction. 🤔
@elook “….the biggest hit of nostalgia….” I recall from the late 60s, we called that a “flashback”. Then again, there was a considerable amount of LSD going around. At the age of 69, I truly miss those days…..
In Canada, where I’ve lived on both coasts, I never lived with air conditioning until I moved to Ontario. A/C is very common in Central Canada, but elsewhere, it’s as you describe for the UK.
I was fortunate enough to travel to the UK back in 1999. We have a friend who was from Liverpool so he schooled us on a lot of the cultural differences before we went. However, the two oddest things we found were: you would sometimes have to put a pound coin in the meter to get electricity (this happened in several places), but the oddest and most confusing was in a little resort fishing town. There was a big red button on the wall between the bathroom and the living room area. We had six people staying there and four of them took either ice cold showers or took a dish pan from the kitchen filled with hot water into the bathroom and just washed that way, until someone decided to push that big red button and found that it activated the hot water in the bathroom. Crazy 😜
Many years ago I was in the loft of a very large, and very old country house. The water storage tank for the hot water boiler was huge and made of slate. In it was the skeleton of a cat, probably been there for many years. Having separate taps was a wise decision.
O K it was probably installed in the Victorian era. Water supplies were intermittent at best, and they needed storage tanks to deliver water even when the main supply was interrupted. Plus, they lacked the technology to produce cylinders that could withstand mains water pressure and yet still be reasonably light and corrosion proof. Hot water was stored in copper cylinders, which could not withstand mains pressure so was fed from a loft tank.
Its funny how I tried to explain my gf from London what a faucet is. And at some point I even started to question myself if I was even right about it. As soon as she understood what I was trying to say, she said: "We're just calling it the sink" And then I was so confused because obviously the sink is the structure that is holding the water for doing dishes. Its the place for the water to flow into. So I asked her where does the water come out from? What do you call the tube-like thing? She said: "yeah I don't know we just call it the sink" I was at the brink of giving up on this but then saw this video and went back to my gf and said very proudly: "It's a tap! The thing where the water flows out of is called a tap in the UK!" She said: "Ohw yeah I know..." Me: 🤨 (why would you call it the sink then?)
@@itsallrover6661 She might be an idiot, of course, but she might be simply very atechnical person. If it's not for our apartment renovation and constantly talking about every detail with contructors and technitians, my girlfriend also wouldn't know how to call any specific thing in a house, just like she still cannot recognize any part of the car (she constantly confuses bumper with fender) even though she has her licence for almost 20 years now.
Maybe because you said both the hit and cold water mix there and as the video explained that happens in the sink in the UK. Maybe she had never seen a tap with both hot and cold together?
I live in Michigan in the US. It’s the state that looks like a mitten. We have screens on our windows and doors not so much for mosquitoes but for flys, hornets, wasps and birds. I also thing spiders and other creepy crawlers we do not want in our houses. We have air conditioning. It gets jungle hot and humid here in our summers and it get unbearable. I enjoy your videos. My family name is from England. My relative came to the USA back in the pilgrim days. I would love to visit the motherland one day. Till then pip pip and cheerio.
American here. One of the many houses I grew up in was a Victorian farm house and it had the original chain pull toilet in the down stairs bathroom with the original wooden tank and wooden seat/lid. It literally roared when you flushed it. Whenever guests would come over for the first time they would get startled when it flushed, some people screamed it scared them so bad. One woman absolutely refused to use that toilet because she was petrified on it and ALWAYS used the upstairs toilet (which also had a wooden seat to match) and if it was in use she would hold it until it was her turn instead using the roaring toilet. My family and I thought this toilet was hilarious because of their reactions. Frankly I miss this toilet, it was so freaking cool. Side note: the current house I’m living in has the high flush and low flush buttons on top and I love it. Unfortunately they aren’t very practical for the 77yr old disabled family member living with us as it hurts him to turn around to flush.
The whole "lack of screens" thing blew me away when I visited the UK a few years back. Here in Winnipeg, Canada, if you didn't have screens on your windows your home would be infested with mosquitoes, flies, bees, fruit-flies, spiders, Beatles and every other insect imaginable within a few hours.
Lots of fly’s in Britain, so screaming the doors and windows would make sense ? But then the Brits rarely make sense , and I spent the first 35 years of my life living there.
Separate taps used to be quite common in the US . I spent my teenage years in a house where the bathroom had a sink with separate taps in addition to a clawfoot bathtub. The house was built in 1912. The bathroom also had a plug socket in the over head light. Without window screens, how do you keep flies and other insects out of the house.
I just found your channel. I’m an American so obviously understanding English isn’t a concern for me. However, I really enjoy hearing what you have to say about English culture. I’m a huge Anglophile and I hope someday to make it there.
I’ve seen most of these things in the USA. The thing I noticed when I visited my brother in the UK was how odd his kitchen was. The main part of the kitchen looked pretty normal. Cabinets, refrigerator and countertop. But there was no sink. The sink, the stove and the washer were in a separate room off of the kitchen. Odd.
I could not turn my head around why UK has 2 saperate hot and cold taps until watching your video, and my house also has light pull cord in the bathroom. Great job, Lucy
American electrican here a new rule put into practice. All new construction have to have a tamper resistant receptacles for all general use outlets that prevent foreign metal objects being inserted. All in all very interesting video thanks for sharing this information.
I’ve lived in homes that had the light switch outside the bathroom, & bathrooms that only had the outlet in the mirror. Since we don’t have switches that let us cut off the electricity supply to countertop appliances, we just leave them plugged in. Air conditioning is a must here.
Regarding Separate Taps..... Storage hot water tanks in the roof in Australia, were gravity feed, and the cold was main pressure.... thus older homes always separate taps
All those mentioned too but the thing I remember about my uncle's house in Cambridge was he had a power meter inside the house, in the hallway, that he would put coins in to keep the power on. I remember him telling me that when they were away he had to feed lots of coins into it to keep the power on for the fridge, etc. On my last visit (1985) that meter was gone.
Back in the day (50s to 80s) it was not uncommon to find carpet in a united states bathroom. My grandma had carpet in her bathroom. And also a lot of chains as switches.. Seems like a lot of UK trends didnt die out until very recently here in the US. also this house was in California.. Loved this video. I am so happy TH-cam did something right for once and recommended you to me💜🖤.
I'm in NJ and the home I grew up in during the 1970s and 80s originally had carpet in all three bathrooms as well as in the kitchen, all done by the original owners (the house was built in the mid-1960s). My parents got rid of that carpet within the first year of living there; it was NOT hygienic!
A bathroom is divided into zone 0, zone 1, zone 2 and everywhere else, the zones relating to the proximity to a source of water, such as a tap. You can place a pull cord anywhere as there is no danger involved in their use. A plate switch, however, must be placed a minimum of three meters from the boundary of all zone 1 areas as there is a closer proximity to the source of danger.
In my area of the US, people often have "HVAC" systems in their homes. The units heat, ventilate, and cool homes, so there is a measure of convenience, but when I upgraded mine--it cost me nearly $10k... Eek!
Not having a light switch inside the bathroom was something I forgot about over and over. I usually travel to the UK once a year for work and I would walk into the bathroom and close the door while I groped around on the wall in the dark looking for the switch. I felt foolish every time I forgot.
Talking about electric sockets in bathrooms, I have seen the most unbelievably location for electric socket INSIDE the shower space. That was in a small family run hotel in Kutaisi, Georgia. This hotel had other weird things, for example, the room door lock had which had the key side inside the room and the handle (key-less) side on the corridor side. Someone who built this place had too much Chacha (A Locally made alcoholic drink with 50%+ alcohol).
Older manufactured homes (trailers, mobile homes) in the US often have carpet in the bathrooms if they were never renovated. My dad still lives in the same manufactured home that he bought with my mother in 1994, and it still has the same plum carpet in both bathrooms. It's a pretty color even by today's home decor standards, but there's still an "ick" factor involved.
I like the idea of carpet in the bathroom, especially in houses like mine where it gets crazy cold. However, it's not practical. If your kid gets water on the floor while taking a bath (like most kids do) or your toilet overflows, your bathroom is ruined! At least toilet seat covers and floor mats can be washed.
Hi Lucy, I just came across your channel. Both very entertaining and very useful for improving my English. Thank you so much indeed! In my opinion, one of the weirdest but very useful things in English homes is that your windows open to the outside. I prefer the system along with being able to adjust and fix the angle of the window. Great "invention"! In Switzerland, where windows open inwards, you should never leave anything near a window, especially that crystal vase.
Well naturally. Most of us wouldn’t dream of staying in a hotel room that didn’t offer tea/coffee making facilities.....the very idea of it is totally stressful! 😊
There is a British-themed place in my country and the toilets have those high tanks with chains. I thought that they had designed them to look cool, I had no idea they were an actual British feature; now I’ll value their attention to detail even more.
Back in the 80’s we had those high tanks with chains. I think sometime starting the ‘90s we switched to the kind of water tanks we see now in modern times.
I once visited someone at their charming oak house in the British countryside and was equally confused and amused by the sight of a sink in one of the bedrooms. Lol. And it worked!
When I was growing up in Canada we had sinks in bedroom. Makes sense because you didn't monopolize the (usually) only one bathroom. Now most homes have 2 or 3 or more bathrooms.
You forgot to say that the staircase going in the UK is very narrow, so you can't place all your foot plant on a step. So especially when walking down the stairs, you can't use your toes to keep your balance. You can find that not only in private houses but also in public buildings.
We have washer/dryer combo units in the States as well, but they're extremely uncommon outside of RVs and yachts. I've never had one in a house but I did have one in my Class A RV before I sold it and I currently have one on my yacht. The one in my RV was a Smeg and it worked fairly well but the one on my yacht is Miele and it works nearly as well as my household washer and dryer.
Not sure if this has been mentioned. But in the US plugs that have two prongs, one is sometimes bigger so you can't flip them either way. And there's different three prong plugs, standard one is like the two prong but with a ground prong.
I'm from Russia too but I don't know any person who has totally carpeted bathroom flooring as the English have. We have just a piece of carpet and it's very small
As a Brit living in the UK I'll play along. 1. I have tiles in my bathroom no carpet, as for winter heating it self radiating. 2. I have separate taps in my bathroom mixed taps in the kitchen. 3. I have a normal cistern built into the wall with a normal twist handle. 4. See No.3 5. have standard UK plugs 6. I have standard plug sockets except I have usb ports built into a few. 7. I also have a utility room. 8. I have a pull cord for my bathroom light, it's next to the bathroom door. 9. I have a shaving plug socket in my bathroom cabinet. 10. I don't have air conditioning. I do have a few fans around the home for summer. Bonus. I don't either.
British homes are a bit...different! Why are there plugs in our lights? 📝 *GET THE FREE LESSON PDF* _here_ 👉🏼 bit.ly/BritishHomesPDF 📊 *FIND OUT YOUR ENGLISH LEVEL!* _Take my level test here_ 👉🏼 bit.ly/EnglishLevelTest12 👩🏼🏫 *JOIN MY ONLINE ENGLISH COURSES:* englishwithlucy.teachable.com/courses - _We have launched our B1 and B2 Complete English Programmes!_
We have or I have in my house a light switch on the outside of the bathroom and inside of bathroom
I only have it outside or a pull one
cute baby 🌸
we olso in oman 🇴🇲 have electric things like yours
I've paid Council Tax for over 10 years, living in those humid, damp hovels near Peterborough.
I llllllllllllllllove
Lucy: makes video to teach English.
me, who already knows English: watches video anyway for the cultural oddities.
I watch for Lucy, she's gorgeous
Same.
1.25 speed is nice
@@evangelist6277 simp
@@spqdz There is nothing simp about appreciating beauty
As I British person, I can confirm that carpet in the bathroom is the devils work! Not all of us do it.
I can imagine that it's really disgusting. Even if your toilet doesn't overflow, the carpet must be moldy, because it never really dries out if you shower daily.
I was born 65 years ago in England and I can confirm that I have never had, or ever been anywhere that has had a carpeted bathroom where on earth have you got this "fact" from!!
What about a carpet that you can just put down for when showering / using toilet, then go wash? Like they're small enough to put in the washer, and not big enough to cover the whole bathroom.
@@nekotranslates Like a shower mat?
@@MyRegardsToTheDodo yup
A lot of the things on your list still exist in older homes here in the Eastern United States, such as separate taps, chain pulls, and electrical plugs in the light fixtures. Unfortunately, simply placing an electrical plug higher, doesn't make it any safer. Most of our bathroom and kitchen electrical devices use GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) technology, which switches off the power within milliseconds in the event of an electrical shock. We also have grounding pins on our plugs, and most two prong plug ends can only be inserted one way, as one blade is wider.
Yup I think part of the thing with England is how much older the average house is there compared to the the average age of the US home.
On the Delta King they have the chain pull thing. That's the only thing I know of. I didn't know we still had sepret sinks for hot, and cold but I don't go to old buildings much.
@@janellcrews6108 separate taps not sinks
Same in the Midwest.
I live in Canada....Raised in Britain...1941-1950....I'm 79 and you brought back so many memories of things that I'd almost forgotten....thanks for the memory!
Have you watched lost in the pond?
Because the rest of the world moved on
Ya outside toilets which you can see to these days in very old terraced houses
Overflowing vocabulary. You're one of the most intelligent English teachers on TH-cam.
K thanks
I think she is the most beautiful teacher on TH-cam. What do you think beautiful Lucy?
Definitely💚
I disagree. She is a good teacher, but highly overrated
Absolutely
Hi, I live in Italy and we have a weird object in our bathrooms called "bidet". It is used to clean your bottom when you need the toilet. When Italians go abroad, they really miss it because it's also useful for women's period and also save a lot of water avoiding to do a shower every time.
En Argentina también tenemos gracias a ustedes... Aunque mí baño es chico para uno, nos las ingeniamos para eso.
¡En España también tenemos!
Yeah, even in quite small bathrooms! I am astonished by how skilfully it is always put even in kinda small spaces, where it seems no additional place left - and here it is, the bidet, always in its place))
Indonesian homes also have the bidet, especially the jet spray bidet. I missed this stuff when I traveling to the USA
We have bidets in many houses in Brazil.
I would be able to listen to you all day long. Your accent as well as the varied vocabulary you use make your videos the most academic and entertaining in TH-cam
I enjoyed your video. I wanted to point out one thing, however. Here in the United States, we don’t have screens on our windows to prevent mosquitoes specifically. We mostly have them to prevent houseflies from coming into our homes.
In my new home, I have a screen that is in desperate need of replacement, and leaves a gap on one side. Each time I leave that window open, I notice a half dozen or so insects of various types have managed to come into my bathroom.
i think what she had in mind was the mosquito screens that were kinda like curtains. my neighbor had one bc she always had her porch door open if she was awake and at home. but we live in georgia so the bugs get in however
Here in Florida we have screens for mosquitoes & a plethora of other insects, bugs & reptiles.
@@rockeerockey6941 Like the euphemistically-named "Palmetto bugs" - which sounds a lot better to the Ft. Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce than "gigantic skunk roaches". Just wanting to be your friend, by spewing a foul-smelling liquid at you when threatened.
It's not just Florida, almost anywhere in the USA you would be innudated with flies, mosquitos, bees, wasps, dirt daubers, spiders, lizards, scorpions, birds, etc if you didn't have screens on the windows. It's nearly inconceivable that you would just leave the windows open with no screen around here.
firssstttt
Ohhhhh huhu again
Third
Third
hurm🦍
I'm fourth apparently!
Thanks, Lucy!
The screens aren't just for Mosquitoes, they keep ALL insects out of the house. I can't imagine having no air-conditioning or screens.
Also to keep people and pets inside.
Flies. Flies eat *** and bother people.
And they carry all kinds of bacteria, germs, viruses, and other nasty *****.
I live in the mountains. We don’t have AC either bc we don’t need it. It never gets over 75 degrees outside so no point. Same for UK. Doesn’t get hot. No need for AC.
@@aerynstormcrow Er, it does. I have an air conditioner in my bedroom because it gets so hot and humid in the summer.
I live in Ireland. Never seen a mosquito here
67 year old US citizen here and when I was a kid we often had pill cords on ceiling lamps in bathrooms as well as other rooms. Bathroom lamps often has plug sockets (or receptacles) for shaving some other ceiiing lamps also had receptacles but for purposes other than shaving. Often the lamps with pull cords and receptacles also had wall switches, this allowed the item plugged in there to be left turned on while the light was off. I recall my grandmother having a toilet that had a chain. No carpets in the bathrooms but having grown up in Wisconsin It would have seemed great until the toilet overflowed.
When I grew up our washing machine was in the kitchen the first was an easy spin, the only electric socket was in the light over the mirror in the bathroom when I was a child I stuck a hairpin in the electrical socket and got the shock of my life, my grandmother had a pull chain toilet, yes we had two faucets for hot and cold but only in the bathroom, we did not have air conditioning we used fans the house I grew up in was built in the late 1890’s there was a coal bin in the basement, and even though it had been upgraded in the past the gas fixtures in all the rooms were still operational. As an adult I have carpet in my bathroom but not in my son’s lol
The Brit house reminds me of my grandfather's ca.1930 Chicago 3-flat. The laundry appliances and water heater were in the kitchen, as well as one of two gas (originally oil) space heaters. One bath sink had the separate taps, and a ceiling pull-chain light. (They used to advertise an adjustable pipe with an aerator, that would connect the two taps, but may have been in the '60s).
how about people who put "carpeting" on their toilet seat cover?
@@aspenrebel Ugh, I'm so glad that fad died off in the early 00's. I remember people having the ring seat carpeted too. As for carpeted floors? I've seen a couple houses with carpeted bathrooms and the smell of urine was always present. After all, many men tend to miss the toilet while peeing. I'm American by the way.
How fast we forget!
#9: sockets in bathrooms: U.S. code requires these to be GFI (Ground Fault Interrupt) circuits - these detect shorts instantly and trip the circuit breaker in the socket to prevent shocks.
GfI's have been standard for a long time to
I won't allow any mats around the toilet area. I call them "piss mats." Absolutely disgusting.
@@classicrock986 I have a rather elegant house from the early '80s in Arizona. No GFI's or CO / smoke alarms. Some little projects for me to complete.
If I recall correctly the UK has these at the breaker box rather than the outlet
@@dillzilla4454 The GFI breakers exist in the US, but it seems more common to have them on the outlets. This is likely because you can hit the reset button right there (instant gratification) instead of having to walk all the way to the breaker box and back to reset and be able to use the outlet.
I ADORE these cultural videos. You boost both your language and your knowledge of the culture!
thank you so much Fernando!!!!
@@EnglishwithLucy When will we hear your Spanish again. I'm delighted every time I listen to you doing it. I'm a native Spanish speaker from Colombia (maybe my name gives a hint). Love ALL your content.
@@EnglishwithLucy please 🙏 can u recommend a channel of learning how to programme for me pls🌹✨
OmG ...four likes ...and no response 💔😞
And shows how some stuff is universal. Nuts. But we all have done it.
I visited my niece who is stationed in the Air Force. She lived Bury St Edmonds which I thought was an adorable town! I noticed just about everything you spoke about while we were there, but I also noticed other things such as the tiny refrigerators, the charge for a bag at the store, the fact that sooo many people walked everywhere, the many tiny little goodwill type stores, how big and very bright the vegetables were, but the thing that I thought was the oddest was the only place that had an air conditioner was this tiny little bathing suit shop!! It was really warm while we were there and we wore shorts the entire time. The newspaper said it was a “heatwave” and it was only 75 degrees or so. Loved, loved, loved that little town!
That is so cool! Thank you you sharing!!🤩😁
I live just 20 minutes from Bury and it is not a little town😅
England is split into counties(like states), counties have towns and cities. I live in Ipswich which is the biggest town of Suffolk - the 3rd *largest* county in England…
Bury St Edmunds is also in Suffolk, in fact it’s the 2nd *largest* town in the county.
So, it’s the 2nd *largest* town in the 3rd *largest* county in the *entire* country.
Not small at all. 😂 x
It's not worth having air conditioning here. All that money for the sake of one month a year
Im sorry to say, but Bury isnt really a small town. Bury st. Edmunds is where pretty much everyone i know goes if they need to go shopping because it’s the only place with shops and actual activities nearby. We live about half an hour away in a small town with about 1/4 of it’s population Bury is always the place to go to hang out with friends unless you go to a town like Mildenhall for some reason or other, which still only has a few fast food restaurants, a Sainsbury and some other small shops in the centre.
funny thought though, i almost had a heart attack when i saw ‘Bury St Edmonds’. It was such a specific town to name in all of England and i just found it quite amusing.
Thank you for this video. As an American living in the lovely UK I have noticed , of course, all that you have spoken about. The two things that baffled me were the no outlets in the bathrooms and also no screens on the windows. When I was having new windows put in I asked the window guy about screens and he just looked at me blankly. We don't have mosquitos where I live but we do have flies and bees. It would be so much better if there were window screens. As far as the bathroom plugs go, I found them to be a minor inconvenience, because in America we have plug outlets all over the bathroom, haha. Doesn't sound too safe though! Saying all of that, I LOVE the UK and wouldn't live anywhere else! Thanks again for your informative videos!
Hello! I'm American and lived in England in the early 80's. I found all the things mentioned in your video to be true for me, especially the separate taps! One thing in my house you did not mention was door handles. We have door knobs (round) and my home in England had handles/levers instead. Also the front/exterior door had neither. It had a key hole and a little metal lip to pull the door closed. I love your videos, they bring back fond memories of my time in England.
Also quite common in the Netherlands for frond doors: just a key hole and a metal lip to pull the door closed or (for older houses) a knob to close the door. The house I grew up in also had door knobs on all doors (house from 1889) and separate taps everywhere but the kitchen. It was ideal with cats. Nowadays, living in a more modern house, the cats can open the door why hanging on the door handle
I live in england and our bathrooms don't have carpet,we have push button toilets I have wall sockets with buttons ,our washing machine is in the kitchen I have light pull cords . We have shaving sockets in bathrooms
Same no carpets in the bathroom on a towel on the floor
You probably live in west London, champagne socialist, liberal elite hotspot. Not England. You need to feel the damp, mouldy smell of bathroom carpets before you call it real England. After you had a shower with that box thingy to adjust your shower temperate that never works of course. Real brits have (weekly!) baths not showers of course.
You can buy push button toilets in the states also.
@@armosa -so basically you like to sit in your dirt while you bathe?
It's funny how they think we live 😂
Hi Lucy, I am from Australia and we have similar rules regarding electricity regulations. I think the reason why we and the UK have these rules is that we run on a 240 volt system that will kill you if you accidentally touch a wire. In the US and other countries they tend to run on a 110 volt system that will give you a shock but not kill a person who touches a wire. Regards, Tony
That's a myth. It's the amps that kill you, not the voltage. As you will know, watts = volts x amps. If an appliance draws 480 watts, then in Britain it will draw 2 amps, but in the US it will draw 480/110 = 4.4 amps.
I'm English, and I moved to California 45 years ago. I had several electrical appliances that would work on either voltage at the click of a switch. What they didn't tell me is that, when you move the switch to the lower voltage you have to increase the size of the fuses, or they will blow.
240 volts is much safer than 110 volts.
The problem with half the voltage is that you have to run your appliances at twice the current so you have to use twice as much copper in your cabling and in your appliances. The odd thing is that US homes do have a 220 volt supply but they centre tap the output making it into a 2 x 110 volt supply!
@@susanbrookes9719 It’s not a real myth. Even if it is the current and not the voltage that kills you, it’s not the current running through the wires you’re touching that matters, but the current that eventually runs through your body. That depends on the resistance of your body and since the current is equal to the voltage divided by the resistance the risk of a fatal shock increases with a higher voltage.
@@susanbrookes9719 Correct...220-240 volts draws just 1/2 the amps of 110-115 V circuits, and so the electricity cost will be cheaper. Also, I changed over my wood working table saw from the standard 110V to run on 220V. The saw now draws 1/2 the amps but is more powerful and cuts through the wood a lot easier.
Ashes to ashes dust to dust, if the voltage don't get you the ampage must.
There was another safety reason for having separate hot and cold taps. When houses were plumber with lead pipes, the hot water could contain more lead than cold water. It was safer to drink cold water with lower lead levels.
I don't know if it's still done, but electric plugs used to have fuses in the plug.
Shaver sockets in bathrooms had special protection to stop electric shocks.
Ground Fault Interrupt sockets. Common in the US.
The reason believe it or not with having two separate taps is to do with the potential accidental back flush of contaminated water from the low pressure header tank for the hot water system (the header tanks were often open) and you could get dead rats mice etc. in them causing fouled water, if the mains pressure lines lost water supply or water pressure this could then run back into the town supply(not good at all).
@@konaguzzi1 That makes sense. It's also why you're not allowed to install or modify plumbing in your house.
GFI ( ground fault interrupt) required by code in Canada.
@@morticiaaddams7866 After WW2 there was a drastic shortage of copper in the UK. So there was no GFI in new buildings and they needed a lot of reconstruction. So the plugs had a fuse inside.
Most countries have GFI as a standard. Once a standard is set it is then bloody near impossible to change. Although China seems to be changing to the Aus/NZ plugs.
In Scandinavia, at least in Finland and Sweden, we usually have the washing machine (and tumbler) in the bathroom. One family houses normally have a utility room with washing machine etc.
And if your washing machine is leaking for some reason, there‘s no drama as there is a drain at the lowest point of the bathroom. Oh how I miss Finland!
And we also have the light switch in the bathroom,i have switch near the shower,so can turn on or off while i taking a shower..lol..live in sweden
@@ylpea5170 Yes!! $18,000.00 later I now have a floor drain installed in my laundry room!!🙄🇨🇦
I'm in the UK and when I lived in my flat, the bathroom had no window. The light was turned on by a pull cord, which also set off the extractor fan.
The string is to isolate you from electric switches or the switch is outside the bathroom, so you don’t get zapped when wet after a bath or shower
In the US, we call that a vent, or fart fan lol
Yes that's right. The annoying thing was that the extractor fan would keep going long after the light was switched off. As the bedroom was right next to the bathroom it was very noisy. 😂
@@freedomfighter5957 in the US you can have a timer switch on your exhaust fan instead of a plain on/off switch. The switch in the one powder room has five buttons, #1 turns fan on for 5 minutes, #2 15 minutes, #3 30 minutes, #4 is 60 minutes, the fifth switch turns the fan on or off, no timer function.
I grew up in the States living in a home that was built in the 1920s and all of our "taps" were separate, except for the kitchen sink.
I have no socket in the bathroom or airconditioning. I live in an apartment house in Norway built in 1957 so the basin has separate taps. When I moved in, the cold tap was not working but I have not had it repaired, because I can get much colder water from it to drink than from the kitchen sink when there is no water coming to the hot tap. The toilet is quite modern but it has only one button for flushing.
@@ozsfi as long as the toilet's up to standards, right? lol. Is there much need for air conditioning in Norway? Wasn't sure how hot it gets there.
When I was a kid here in Pennsylvania some of the older great aunts and uncles or great grand parents homes would have a wall mount or pedistal sink in the bathroom with a separate hot and cold tap. I believe that US homes built after the tweenies or thirties and definitely after WWII had all mixing taps like we have now.
I think the 2 taps thing is more down to the age of the house than something specific to the UK, I'm sure older homes here in Australia have them if they haven't been renovated.
@@MrMikey1273 There is a cottage in my family that was built over a century ago, and it has separate taps in the bathroom. Come to think of it my Grandparents house did too, that house was built in the 30's.
We used to have a chain pull toilet flusher in the house where I grew up (in the Netherlands). Later we moved to a house with a high mounted water tank, but you had to pull down the pipe (weird, I know) to flush. My father mounted an old doorbell with a chain right next to the water tank. Always fun when we had unexpecting guests.
I'm Spanish and I lived in Brighton for a couple of years. The first time I went to a toilet I spent like half an hour trying to find the light. How I would imagin that the light turns on pulling a cord! Never seen this before
I lived in Brighton too.wicked place!!!👍🏽
🤣
@@quinomonte I loved Brighton, so much fun
@@quinomonte U can also see the same switch in the Chinese countryside.
On visiting Brussels, we checked into our hotel room at night and spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on any lights. No one had mentioned that the key card had to be placed in a specific slot by the door to engage the lights in the room. I guess this saved them money by not allowing you to go out and leave a light on in your room.
In Russia we often have a washing-mashine in the bathroom :)
.. the light switch is on the outside of the bathroom. :)
France here. Washing machine in garage if you're in a 🏠.
Indonesia here. The light switch in my house is also on the outside of the bathroom
Lucy, I remember the tank in the loft contained cold water, which wasn’t safe to drink, as you describe. We once had a bird on ours too. The tank only served the bathrooms, and it was up there to create pressure. The hot water probably came from your boiler, that also heated the radiators, which wasn’t safe to drink either. The cold water downstairs was safe to drink because it came straight from the “mains”.
Spot on.
As an American, I completely appreciate the way you have your homes wired and the safety devices built into the way you plug in your appliances …. 240 V in household systems makes a lot more sense than the way we do it in America with 120 V . The first time I went to the UK I bought two of your outlets and two of your kettles, and in my kitchen in Texas, our electrical load center is on the back of the wall, common to a countertop in my kitchen, and I installed both outlets there, which means I have the ability to use a British kettle with British plugs and can bring a liter of water up to a boil in short order...
The Texas electric grid runs on 240, it is reduced to 120 by the circuit breaker at your electrical box in your house. If you want a 240 circuit in your house you simply need to install a different breaker, also make sure your wall wiring can handle the larger voltages before you do so.
another progressive guy.
Litre is the correct spelling.
You know we have electric kettles here in America…. No need to buy abroad!
@@lisaseah8823
Now we’ve heard from Captain obvious
If you bother to even read what I said, I never even hinted that I went all that way to get a kettle
Everybody knows we have similar kettles in America and have for many
You should read what I wrote before you comment on things I did not write
I am an American and grew up in a home that was built in 1905. We had hot and cold separate taps in our bathroom. It had no electric outlets either. Our washing machine was in the kitchen, my mom hung clothes on a clothes line outside to dry, we did not have air conditioning either. We also had a coal furnace and a coal bin in the cellar. The coal truck would arrive with the coal it was then dispensed down a chute into through basement window into the coal bin. Hmmmm I wonder if an Englishman built our home. No this is the way most homes were in America way back when👍🏻
Whats a cellar?
@Aurora Parker you might call it a basement? It’s the room (or space) underneath the house
@@BS-ns8hb oh I don’t know what we call it I’ve forgotten might be basement but I know that’s what Brit’s call it
Hey Lucy, i live in South Carolina in the states and we always had carpet in our bathrooms. My mom was born and raised on the Eastern shore of Maryland where there was a heavy British influence. My 89 year old mom still hangs her wash outside on a clothes line.
Carpet in American bathrooms was a thing before the 80s, so it does still happen in older homes around the nation.
Your mum is a clever woman. Hanging your laundry 🧺 outside is smart and economically perfect. We all ought to do the same.
You’ll find lots of people doing this in many different countries.
@@jeannetteaugstein3793 I did this once, and ended up with insects in my laundry
@@jljordan1 yes, it can happen but not all the time.
Most people in rural areas of Australia, and many in the city also, hang their washing on the clothesline to dry. I have a drier (it's now 40 years old & still going) which I use maybe 3-4 times a year when I'm desperate.
I installed mosquito nets just to prevent bugs, wasps and bees getting in because I'm scared of them, so now I feel much more relaxed when the window is open
Same!
And the sams here!
How do stray cats and bats get in?
most UK windows open out the way so mesh's would need to be on the inside
I spent every summer there in the UK for several years and I can assure you there’s nothing confusing about any of the items you just talked about
I can't stop smiling while watching your new videos, I loved this new format. The fun of your English videos can be compared to your vlogs, amazing!
so lovely Melike! thank you!
Same! I was also smiling during the whole video! I really enjoyed it☺️
Ehen I lived in Brooklyn, we lived in an old house that had a chain to flush the toilet. We even had a bathtub in the kitchen that doubled as a table. It had a cover when not in use.
Wow, that's pretty cool =)
One of the highlights of the classic 1972 movie, The Godfather is the scene where Tessio describes "the chain thing" in the bathroom as a place to plant a gun for Michael Corleone, so he can bump off the rival mobster and the police captain who was protecting him. "Louie's Restaurant" was also in The Bronx!! :)
@Amelia Wojnicz Must have been a tall bathtub to double as a table.
I'm british and remember going to my friends house for the first time and went to use the bathroom which had carpet as a floor! Thought that was very strange and my opinions not changed 15 years later lol
In Tennessee: I was talking to a old timer some years back, this guy was born probably around the turn of the century. I asked him what was the best invention he's seen come about.
He thought for a minute and said one word: screens.
Many Australian appliances also have three prong plugs. Especially with high wattage appliances. The bottom prong is the earth and is used with appliances that aren't double insulated. It's a safety feature. Australian wall sockets also have an on/off switch.
That is because it has had British influence. All ex British colonies have British type plugs.
Half the time we only use the top two prongs on it
So spot on ! A Brazilian here married to an English man and noticed all of this .
Lucy, you can read me a telephonebook...your voice combined with the perfect English is so soothing.
Also, I like the typical British humor that flashes every now and then. Like!
Good day Ms. Lucy.
Your comment on mosquitoes makes me wonder if you have type O blood?
A study that I read about hypothesized that people with type O blood attract more mosquitoes. As I have type O+ blood and live in Minnesota I can confirm that this is very true as mosquitoes absolutely love me!
Just found your channel and I will be watching more of your videos in the future. You have a very lovely manner.
Take care and much luck in your endeavors.
I adore those culture.... You brought back memories 😊
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@@williamshobbs6802 Trading crypto currency(Bitcoin) is also a nice way to invest $1,000 and change your life
@@clairemoore6380 Bitcoin has been around for over 11 years now and have risen despite the price fluctuations it’s still going to $100,000 soon
I've got this little interest in bitcoin maybe I'll give it a try.
The way I cope with the heat is to shut all the doors, windows, and curtains during the day and open them at night. A well insulated house will help to keep it cool if you shut the heat out like it keeps it warm in winter if you shut the cold out.
Same and close the curtains. Also turning the fan on
Assuming that it cools down all that much at night.
@@rich7447 It generally does get quite a lot cooler at night. Hot days normally have clear skies which make for colder nights.
@@conlon4332 Doesn't work for us here in Southern Ontario and Quebec. It just doesn't cool off here at night and even if it does the humidity is very high. You either have A/C or you suffer.
@@conlon4332 What if it's cloudy and 30+ degrees celcius in the day and 29 at night?
Most bathrooms with separate taps have a plug that goes into the basin so you can mix the water to the desired temperature
I like to think that the plug is an intelligence test for foreigners…. Joke!
That is sooooo 1930's.
@A A Yes, the smooth ceramic basin would be riddled with germs... if only there was some way to wash it! ;)
@A A Ah yes, great. I use a flame-thrower. Then I smash the basin and have it replaced every day. It's the only way to be REALLY sure! ;)
We used to cup our hands together, turn on both taps, go to the cold first, then the hot to get the desired temperature.
In Canada we have GFCI sockets in the bathroom. Ground fault circuit interruptor, there's a circuit breaker in the socket.
These shut off at the first hint of a short, like water getting in, so no one can be electrocuted.
We have that also but we call it a fuse, if theres no fuse in your plug the appliance in nearly most if not all cases wont work
I'm obsessed with your English Lucy 💜
Thank you I’m Lucy
@@anameclips3395 lol we caught a liar
Lucy has made British ladies more charming and romantic than French ladies
In Mexico City we don't have air conditioning nor heater either. It is never too hot for having air condition in the house, but winter can be very chilly.
I'm Austrian: When I first went to England (nearly 40 years ago), what surprised me most about English homes was that they seemed to be poorly insulated against cold winters. I deduced that winters must be a lot milder (I did not come farther north than Oxford at that time) than back home (Alps; and closer to Siberia: minus 15 degrees C for several weeks was quite common in those days, before climate change made itself felt). Anyway, by entering through the front door you often stepped directly into the living room, with no entrance hall before that. And those typical English windows which you push up or down, they tended to have single glazing. I remember thinking, you wouldn't survive an Austrian winter in a house like that. But literally EVERYTHING about this comment has changed now. Double and even triple glazing has found its way to England, and global warming has reached us all.
Scotland could get -32c but quite often it came down to cost, but houses post 1980's had double glazing as you couldn't afford not to in winter and people wore lots of layers of clothes even to bed and had hot water bottles.
@@macguyfromscotland No electric blankets or mattress pads?
@@elultimo102 there was but back then they tended to catch fire. These days there is electric blankets and less hot water bottles, but old habits die hard, hot water bottles have the advantage or being passive while blankets continuously draw power.
I was in England one time in end of February or early March. I noticed no snow, sports fields were all green grass and being mowed, as her lawns in front of people's homes. I asked an English woman about this. She seemed perplexed by my question, and asked me what fields and lawns were like in Boston at this time of year. I told her, covered with snow and ice, dead, gray, black, mud. London is further north than Boston.
@@elultimo102 take the hot coals out of the fireplace and put them in a bed pan and stick them under the mattress. You know, that brass round pan with the flip cover and the really long wooden handle propped up next to the fire place. We use to have one of those, I wonder what happened to it.
It may seem strange, but the first household oddity I noticed in the UK was door handles. They were very rare in the US in the 70s but everywhere in the UK and Europe.
I'd definitely rate this video as underrated. I absolutely love these lessons.
Thank you
Problem is that most of what she talks about is JUST PLAIN WRONG.
I am a Brit but have lived in the USA for 51 years.
She is WRONG about the electrical plugs and the plumbing with 2 taps.
Neither does she understand much about the USA
Read my comments at the beginning of these comments.
Same!
In most places in the US, it is required to have a GFCI (IGround Fault Circuit Interrupter) outlet anywhere, such as in a bathroom or a kitchen, that one might be able to touch a water tap and an electrical outlet at the same time.
Also, air conditioning is a MUST here in Arizona where we have 4 seasons: SUMMER, DECEMBER, JANUARY and FEBRUARY!
In England a GFCI is called an ELCB (earth leakage circuit breaker) just FYI
@@paulwatkins2601 Or, perhaps more commonly, an RCD (Residual Current Device). Current regulations require the ring main circuits to be protected by RCDs, plus exterior sockets. For those using electrical garden tools plugged into interior sockets, it's common to use a plug-in RCD. The hope is that if there's a fault, the RCD nearest the device will trigger in preference to the one on the ring main, so you don't have half the house lose power simultaneously.
Laughing about Ariz. seasons. When I lived in Vermont, we had two seasons: snow and mud!
@@MrTopcat3333 you have half a house on 1 breaker? Here in the US they usually seperate by room. Stove, hot water heater, ac, dryer have there own breaker.
Depends on where you live.
I'm from the US and my grandparents on my mom side always lived in homes with carpeted bathrooms. It was weird. But as I kid, I thought it was normal.
As a lifelong American I was looking forwards to learning some new English vocabulary. Imagine my joy in having understood every word you said! I guess watching all those episodes of Monty Phyton's Flying Circus finally paid off!
"Small flush for small business, big flush for big business😂😂" Oh lucy!! the editing is very interactive too
Too bad it’s wrong, the small flush is for big business and the big button is for small business.it’s bigger because you mostly go for a wee so you’ll need the bigger one more often. Not wasting so much water.
Big business is "dropping anchor".
Fyi small children in the US call it a potty, & use that as a verb, ie "I need to go potty."
@@Trish.... a potty is a container toddlers use to potty plain.
Yeah, and also you can say "number one" and "number two"))
In Sweden we also have small houses and small apartments. But we put our washing machines in the bathroom, not the kitchen... If you live in a apartment you to have access to a common washing room that the tenants share so you have to book time..
And this is the weirdest thing about Sweden (where I've been living for over three years). These trips with a laundry bag - in winter, in the snow to the building with a laundry room. Nightmare!
That’s to do with Sweden’s insanely strict insurance policies for water damage. All bathrooms in Sweden must be wet rooms where all surfaces can withstand at the very least a showering of water and where the floor must withstand a leak with water sitting on the floor without leaking through. This makes the bathroom and ideal space to put the washing machine as the potential economic consequences of a leak in a living area such as the kitchen could be catastrophic-tens of thousands of pounds in renovation costs and no insurance money to cover it.
With the exception of the washer/dryer in the kitchen I've had everything you've listed in homes I've lived in here in the United States. It all depends on how old the building is. I do currently have a washer and a tumble dryer in my kitchen though. This single unit washer/dryer is rather new in the US, and hugely expensive. The first time I ever saw one of those it was in the upscale motorhomes. I have however also had a washer & dryer that was stacked, along with an old fashioned ringer washer.
As a British person, I legit forgot about the light pull cords in bathrooms. I was about to ask you wtf kind of house you grew up in, but then I remembered, I once set off the NHS alarm at my grandparents bungalow after pulling on their red NHS cord thinking it was the light switch, because my council house formerly had such a light cord in the bathroom.
Not only that, but we also had the cords in bedrooms, too! Made turning lights on and off when going to sleep/waking up so easy and safe... but then the councils just had to make life harder for everyone and remove them. Get out of bed when you're finally sleepy to turn off the light... WELL DAMN, NOW I'M BLOODY AWAKE AGAIN BECAUSE I GOT OUT OF BED!!!
Then there were the huge cisterns in the bathroom airing cupboards which I thankfully saw get retired. Having to flip a switch to turn hot water on, and wait an hour for the cistern to heat up so you could take a bath... not fun lol
Here in Spain, we have washing machines in the kitchen. It blow my mind! In Argentina, we have a room specially for laundry.
In Uruguay 🇺🇾 you find both cases.
That's good to know. Maybe it is more widespread in the rest of Europe, and not just a British thing.
@@andyt8216 I have a utility room separate from my kitchen and most of all my friends have their laundry rooms away from the kitchens. I’m in Northern Ireland. All new houses have them. My house is twenty years old and have a big one.
I have a washing machine in my kitchen and a tumble dryer outside in a cupboard. Can't imagine what foreigners think 😂😂
FYI, we have two prong plugs in Canada, you cannot plug them in either way. One prong is wider. I think you used to be able to turn them.
It’s not bout Canada mate
@@auroraparker2689, you clearly don't listen well, mate!
2:02 "in UK it gets very cold" also UK, running water lines on elevation. It is not cold unleas it passes -25C.
American here, with loads of British relatives. I totally agree with carpeted bathrooms, separate taps (one of my Biggest pet peeves), yucky push button toilets, switches on the plugs (me: why isn’t this light turning on?), and as for air con…I understand that, but pairing that with no window screens makes no sense!
Once in England I had to call the landlord because I couldn't open the front door of the house I rented, it was then I discovered that they turn the key in the opposite direction. 🤔
😂😂😂
@@faheemmajid4646
😴😴😴
My lord. I’ve just had the biggest hit of nostalgia the moment you mentioned light cord switches. I would have not remembered that any other way 😅
I haven't seen one of those in an American home since the early 80s and then the home was decades old already.
So funny! Nostalgia, when chain pull toilet flushes come around!👵
@elook “….the biggest hit of nostalgia….” I recall from the late 60s, we called that a “flashback”. Then again, there was a considerable amount of LSD going around. At the age of 69, I truly miss those days…..
In Canada, where I’ve lived on both coasts, I never lived with air conditioning until I moved to Ontario. A/C is very common in Central Canada, but elsewhere, it’s as you describe for the UK.
I live in Atlantic Canada, nearly everyone has air conditioning.
I was fortunate enough to travel to the UK back in 1999. We have a friend who was from Liverpool so he schooled us on a lot of the cultural differences before we went. However, the two oddest things we found were: you would sometimes have to put a pound coin in the meter to get electricity (this happened in several places), but the oddest and most confusing was in a little resort fishing town. There was a big red button on the wall between the bathroom and the living room area. We had six people staying there and four of them took either ice cold showers or took a dish pan from the kitchen filled with hot water into the bathroom and just washed that way, until someone decided to push that big red button and found that it activated the hot water in the bathroom. Crazy 😜
Many years ago I was in the loft of a very large, and very old country house. The water storage tank for the hot water boiler was huge and made of slate. In it was the skeleton of a cat, probably been there for many years. Having separate taps was a wise decision.
O K it was probably installed in the Victorian era. Water supplies were intermittent at best, and they needed storage tanks to deliver water even when the main supply was interrupted. Plus, they lacked the technology to produce cylinders that could withstand mains water pressure and yet still be reasonably light and corrosion proof. Hot water was stored in copper cylinders, which could not withstand mains pressure so was fed from a loft tank.
Its funny how I tried to explain my gf from London what a faucet is. And at some point I even started to question myself if I was even right about it. As soon as she understood what I was trying to say, she said: "We're just calling it the sink"
And then I was so confused because obviously the sink is the structure that is holding the water for doing dishes. Its the place for the water to flow into. So I asked her where does the water come out from? What do you call the tube-like thing?
She said: "yeah I don't know we just call it the sink"
I was at the brink of giving up on this but then saw this video and went back to my gf and said very proudly: "It's a tap! The thing where the water flows out of is called a tap in the UK!"
She said: "Ohw yeah I know..."
Me: 🤨 (why would you call it the sink then?)
She's just an idiot. We know what a faucet is xD
it's a tap. So much easier to say
@@itsallrover6661 She might be an idiot, of course, but she might be simply very atechnical person. If it's not for our apartment renovation and constantly talking about every detail with contructors and technitians, my girlfriend also wouldn't know how to call any specific thing in a house, just like she still cannot recognize any part of the car (she constantly confuses bumper with fender) even though she has her licence for almost 20 years now.
It's not actually a sink. A sink goes in the kitchen.
In the bathroom, it's a Basin.
Maybe because you said both the hit and cold water mix there and as the video explained that happens in the sink in the UK. Maybe she had never seen a tap with both hot and cold together?
I live in Michigan in the US. It’s the state that looks like a mitten. We have screens on our windows and doors not so much for mosquitoes but for flys, hornets, wasps and birds. I also thing spiders and other creepy crawlers we do not want in our houses. We have air conditioning. It gets jungle hot and humid here in our summers and it get unbearable.
I enjoy your videos. My family name is from England. My relative came to the USA back in the pilgrim days. I would love to visit the motherland one day.
Till then pip pip and cheerio.
American here. One of the many houses I grew up in was a Victorian farm house and it had the original chain pull toilet in the down stairs bathroom with the original wooden tank and wooden seat/lid. It literally roared when you flushed it. Whenever guests would come over for the first time they would get startled when it flushed, some people screamed it scared them so bad. One woman absolutely refused to use that toilet because she was petrified on it and ALWAYS used the upstairs toilet (which also had a wooden seat to match) and if it was in use she would hold it until it was her turn instead using the roaring toilet. My family and I thought this toilet was hilarious because of their reactions. Frankly I miss this toilet, it was so freaking cool.
Side note: the current house I’m living in has the high flush and low flush buttons on top and I love it. Unfortunately they aren’t very practical for the 77yr old disabled family member living with us as it hurts him to turn around to flush.
The whole "lack of screens" thing blew me away when I visited the UK a few years back. Here in Winnipeg, Canada, if you didn't have screens on your windows your home would be infested with mosquitoes, flies, bees, fruit-flies, spiders, Beatles and every other insect imaginable within a few hours.
Lord yes. Screens would be a prerequisit to me visiting. Lol. And especially with no AC!!
Lots of fly’s in Britain, so screaming the doors and windows would make sense ? But then the Brits rarely make sense , and I spent the first 35 years of my life living there.
It's spelt "beetles". The "Beatles" were a famous pop group.
@@rogeremberson6464 well, would be very interesting to see Paul and Ringo entering my house...
@@rogeremberson6464 lmao. Beetles
Separate taps used to be quite common in the US . I spent my teenage years in a house where the bathroom had a sink with separate taps in addition to a clawfoot bathtub. The house was built in 1912. The bathroom also had a plug socket in the over head light. Without window screens, how do you keep flies and other insects out of the house.
I think the uk is quite similar to my country, Malaysia. Almost everything listed here is also available here in Malaysia.
I just found your channel. I’m an American so obviously understanding English isn’t a concern for me. However, I really enjoy hearing what you have to say about English culture. I’m a huge Anglophile and I hope someday to make it there.
I’ve seen most of these things in the USA. The thing I noticed when I visited my brother in the UK was how odd his kitchen was. The main part of the kitchen looked pretty normal. Cabinets, refrigerator and countertop. But there was no sink. The sink, the stove and the washer were in a separate room off of the kitchen. Odd.
That’s pretty strange, I’m in the U.K. and have never seen that!
What? Sounds weird
That would be a utility room. They went out of fashion quite some time ago. However it's unusual for the cooker (stove) to be fitted there.
Yeah that’s common in Victorian houses
I could not turn my head around why UK has 2 saperate hot and cold taps until watching your video, and my house also has light pull cord in the bathroom. Great job, Lucy
what's the tap like in nam
Another weird thing: separate taps in the tub, no shower. Having to buy a strange rubber implement to make do!
American electrican here a new rule put into practice. All new construction have to have a tamper resistant receptacles for all general use outlets that prevent foreign metal objects being inserted. All in all very interesting video thanks for sharing this information.
"It gets very cold in the UK." Ahem. Canada would like a word ...
I haven't heard about it hitting -40°C in Old Blimey; here in the "Colonies" (Quebec) that weather can be fairly common in Winter.
@@lauroricher51 - Luleå Sweden might like to join in this conversation
As the early Canadian railroad said when they were trying to populate train stop towns, the route is about the same latitude as London.
@@EMicheleAdams I imagine the takers in July had some words about "bloody latitude" come January!
The fact is. Most Canadians have never experienced -40°C !! Most Canadians have never even experienced a "feels like" -40°C.
I’ve lived in homes that had the light switch outside the bathroom, & bathrooms that only had the outlet in the mirror. Since we don’t have switches that let us cut off the electricity supply to countertop appliances, we just leave them plugged in. Air conditioning is a must here.
Regarding Separate Taps..... Storage hot water tanks in the roof in Australia, were gravity feed, and the cold was main pressure.... thus older homes always separate taps
Same in the UK.
All those mentioned too but the thing I remember about my uncle's house in Cambridge was he had a power meter inside the house, in the hallway, that he would put coins in to keep the power on. I remember him telling me that when they were away he had to feed lots of coins into it to keep the power on for the fridge, etc. On my last visit (1985) that meter was gone.
Gas or electric meters. Always kept 50p for the meters
That's meat
Back in the day (50s to 80s) it was not uncommon to find carpet in a united states bathroom. My grandma had carpet in her bathroom. And also a lot of chains as switches.. Seems like a lot of UK trends didnt die out until very recently here in the US. also this house was in California.. Loved this video. I am so happy TH-cam did something right for once and recommended you to me💜🖤.
I'm in NJ and the home I grew up in during the 1970s and 80s originally had carpet in all three bathrooms as well as in the kitchen, all done by the original owners (the house was built in the mid-1960s). My parents got rid of that carpet within the first year of living there; it was NOT hygienic!
A bathroom is divided into zone 0, zone 1, zone 2 and everywhere else, the zones relating to the proximity to a source of water, such as a tap. You can place a pull cord anywhere as there is no danger involved in their use. A plate switch, however, must be placed a minimum of three meters from the boundary of all zone 1 areas as there is a closer proximity to the source of danger.
Why don't they simply use GFCI sockets?
@@3rdworlds Don't forget in the UK our mains voltage is 220 - 240Volts but USA is mainly 110 -120V but they do have 240V from 2 phases.
In my area of the US, people often have "HVAC" systems in their homes. The units heat, ventilate, and cool homes, so there is a measure of convenience, but when I upgraded mine--it cost me nearly $10k... Eek!
What an eloquent received pronunciation accent. I could listen to our Lucy all day.
Not having a light switch inside the bathroom was something I forgot about over and over. I usually travel to the UK once a year for work and I would walk into the bathroom and close the door while I groped around on the wall in the dark looking for the switch. I felt foolish every time I forgot.
Talking about electric sockets in bathrooms, I have seen the most unbelievably location for electric socket INSIDE the shower space. That was in a small family run hotel in Kutaisi, Georgia. This hotel had other weird things, for example, the room door lock had which had the key side inside the room and the handle (key-less) side on the corridor side. Someone who built this place had too much Chacha (A Locally made alcoholic drink with 50%+ alcohol).
😂
Older manufactured homes (trailers, mobile homes) in the US often have carpet in the bathrooms if they were never renovated. My dad still lives in the same manufactured home that he bought with my mother in 1994, and it still has the same plum carpet in both bathrooms. It's a pretty color even by today's home decor standards, but there's still an "ick" factor involved.
I like the idea of carpet in the bathroom, especially in houses like mine where it gets crazy cold. However, it's not practical. If your kid gets water on the floor while taking a bath (like most kids do) or your toilet overflows, your bathroom is ruined! At least toilet seat covers and floor mats can be washed.
@@keelyharris4600 same here, I like the idea of it but the reality of it isn’t practical.
Hi Lucy, I just came across your channel. Both very entertaining and very useful for improving my English. Thank you so much indeed! In my opinion, one of the weirdest but very useful things in English homes is that your windows open to the outside. I prefer the system along with being able to adjust and fix the angle of the window. Great "invention"! In Switzerland, where windows open inwards, you should never leave anything near a window, especially that crystal vase.
I remember going to England (from France) on vacation in the late 70s.
What intrigued me was the electric tea kettle in hotel rooms!
We need our tea fix.
Well naturally. Most of us wouldn’t dream of staying in a hotel room that didn’t offer tea/coffee making facilities.....the very idea of it is totally stressful! 😊
There is a British-themed place in my country and the toilets have those high tanks with chains. I thought that they had designed them to look cool, I had no idea they were an actual British feature; now I’ll value their attention to detail even more.
Back in the 80’s we had those high tanks with chains. I think sometime starting the ‘90s we switched to the kind of water tanks we see now in modern times.
I once visited someone at their charming oak house in the British countryside and was equally confused and amused by the sight of a sink in one of the bedrooms. Lol. And it worked!
When I was growing up in Canada we had sinks in bedroom. Makes sense because you didn't monopolize the (usually) only one bathroom. Now most homes have 2 or 3 or more bathrooms.
You forgot to say that the staircase going in the UK is very narrow, so you can't place all your foot plant on a step. So especially when walking down the stairs, you can't use your toes to keep your balance. You can find that not only in private houses but also in public buildings.
We have washer/dryer combo units in the States as well, but they're extremely uncommon outside of RVs and yachts. I've never had one in a house but I did have one in my Class A RV before I sold it and I currently have one on my yacht. The one in my RV was a Smeg and it worked fairly well but the one on my yacht is Miele and it works nearly as well as my household washer and dryer.
Your video brought up a lot of memories from my time living in the UK. Although most of the things you mention drove me crazy, I kind of miss them.
Not sure if this has been mentioned. But in the US plugs that have two prongs, one is sometimes bigger so you can't flip them either way. And there's different three prong plugs, standard one is like the two prong but with a ground prong.
yeah, some appliances have three prongs. the only example i can think of right now is hairdryers
Absolutely.
I’m a Brit and now I’m better educated then I was. Thank you Lucy.
I'm from Russia but we also have carpets in a bathroom and a washing machine in a kitchen. I know that feel
Privet
Honestly I don't know a single person who has carpeted bathrooms in the uk so idk what she's talking about
I'm from Russia too but I don't know any person who has totally carpeted bathroom flooring as the English have. We have just a piece of carpet and it's very small
I don't know when Russia, ran out of space. You have so much space unlike japan and UK , and still keep washing machine in a kitchen 😏
@@nitink.a567 I was thinking the same. Might be due to the mostly government-built apartments the size of phone booths.
Chain-pull toilet flushes were there in some toilets of the Indian Railway until recently... but I haven't seen it anywhere else!
I saw them in Malta (also ex colony)
We still have one.
Happy Ram Navami to everyone reading this😊🎆 Love from India🇮🇳
K India
As a Brit living in the UK I'll play along.
1. I have tiles in my bathroom no carpet, as for winter heating it self radiating.
2. I have separate taps in my bathroom mixed taps in the kitchen.
3. I have a normal cistern built into the wall with a normal twist handle.
4. See No.3
5. have standard UK plugs
6. I have standard plug sockets except I have usb ports built into a few.
7. I also have a utility room.
8. I have a pull cord for my bathroom light, it's next to the bathroom door.
9. I have a shaving plug socket in my bathroom cabinet.
10. I don't have air conditioning. I do have a few fans around the home for summer.
Bonus. I don't either.