6 House Objects I Only Used After Moving to America
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ม.ค. 2023
- As work continues on my new American house, here are six house-related objects I only encountered after moving to the United States.
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Storm doors and storm windows serve a more important purpose than just protecting the main door and windows. The layer of air trapped between the two is a form of insulation.
I bought 2 panel windows. Would that work? My home is 100 years old.
Except if the sun hits a glass storm door, you can get a greenhouse effect in the space between the doors. My family used to have a house where this was a problem. The finish of the front door became damaged from getting too hot.
Also, many of them you can remove the window pane and add a screen during the warmer months,
Im a regular hood dude doing food reviews on my TH-cam channel 🦅💚
Quite true - I have a house built in the 1940s with the original windows and it has double pane windows. Specifically, two layers of separate, sliding windows that each have to be opened and closed.
Most ceiling fans can have their direction reversed. You did indeed have your fan rotating in the 'summer' direction. If you look at the base of the base closest to the ceiling, you may see a switch. If you flip it the direction will be reversed and this should set it to 'winter' mode. Ideally this pushes the hot air against the ceiling and down the walls; this will help distribute heat around the room better.
I... I live here and never realized this.....
Just made a comment about this glad someone else beat me to it
Came here to make this comment. thanks for saving me the effort. ^_^
Of note- since he has a remote controller- the "revering" might be on the remote, depending on how fancy his fan system is. ^_^
@@dragonofspades2837 Yup. Flip the switch in the winter so that the fan blows upward. Then run the fan on the LOWEST speed. It tends to push the warner air on the ceiling around and down the walls, without making a noticeable breeze.
@@19thratytt so did I, and apparently I'm about as original as I thought I was before... So, not original at all
I love when Brits move to America, they always seem to move into the most British American home they can find. My grandparents moved into the same kind of brick home, old English style interior, and small backyard
To be fair, that type of home is VERY common in cities like Chicago and St. Louis. An abundance of clay and huge German immigrant populations during the cities founding = bricks. Absolutely beautiful decorative brick work in both cities because of the skill and craftsmanship of German bricklayers. They literally don't make them like that anymore. They were very propitiatory of their knowledge and didn't train others. It is now a lost art.
@@thevirtualtraveler Not knocking it, I loved my grandparents house. Although once I hit 6 feet and beyond, everything was kind of small lol
My British grandfather had a two story wood house in New England with three lots at the end of the street for the house and for gardening. I guess the decor was pretty much old English. I was little last time I saw them. Long time ago.
Bloody 'Ell mate. This would be a quite "modern" house in Pittsburgh,PA. To be fair, In Pittsburgh we do call our mothers "Mum" and I do live in Manchester (North Side, Pittsburgh) So there's that. 👍☺️👍
Well, in Chicago, most houses are either brick bungalows or frame houses.
Speaking of gardens, Americans call them yards.
They reserve "garden" for an enclosed area within a yard for growing vegetables or flowers, and even then, often flower gardens are called flower beds.
That’s because gardens aren’t culturally a “thing,” they’re a place and a degree of intention is implied. Plus, a patch of non-native grass cut extremely short does not a garden make.
So someone who cares a lot about their plants and design might call their yard, their garden - indicating it’s an intentional place for ornamental or edible plants that they enjoy - whereas someone who has a few plants for curb appeal or landscaping purposes, but mainly uses their turf yard, they will not call it a garden. They’ll say they have a yard and a few garden beds. It ends up being closer to the dictionary definition of garden here, rather than calling the plot behind your house a garden even when not growing anything.
Regarding your ceiling fan in winter: check to see if it has a reverse function to push the warmer air near your ceiling downwards into the room.
You set it to pull the cold air up, and force the hot air out to the walls and down without blowing directly on you.
Yes!
that is literally the primary purpose of ceiling fans
they were invented for rooms with very tall ceilings such as churches to get the heat down to where the people were
Came here to say exactly this.
I came here to say exactly this as well. I run my fans 365 days a year. I have lived in Atlanta, Georgia all of my life and I also use my storm door throughout the entire year as well. The only storm we protect our door from is tornadoes and thunderstorms, both of which we have all year long. But mostly we have a storm door with a screen insert so that days like today when its 65 degrees outside, we have a "screen door " that is really a storm door. For crying out loud. How did we get on this subject? Oh. Right. The married guy, with stalkers, who isn't from around here. Weirdo. Jk. You're actually funny. But your wife is more funny. Bet she has more stalkers too.
Regarding your mailbox, I'm surprised you didn't mention anything about it's coolest feature - The RED FLAG! It's an alert. To the mailperson. Not that there's any danger like a vicious dog, but rather that there's a letter inside for them to take. Or cookies.
@@busimagen Now that's funny, cuz that's what my husband and I often do. It's about 50 feet from the front door to the mailbox at the road. That's quite a hike when you're 87-years old (my husband - not me). Plus the snow and cold factors (we're in Chicago suburbs)
@@lindaedwards6683 ---For 25 years my mailbox was a half mile away, on a rack with 20 others. Now the nearest box is 2 1/2 miles. Although there are 85 others, IMHO it's too far away to be secure, so we rent a box at the post office 9 miles away.
@@busimagen boo! Bad neighbor! Do not mess with USPS!
@@busimagen When I was a kid we had a square of bright red metal on a chain that stayed flush against the side of the mailbox held in place by the door. So when the mailman opened the door, the metal piece fell off and dangled in the wind. So all we had to do was look outside to see if the mail had come or not. Considering how far away the box was, it was very helpful.
I came to say the same thing! I was so disturbed in taskmaster in the season with victoria coren mitchell with the challenge where they had to ride a bike and mail a thing where some people had their flag up, some down, and no one tried to turn it up to actually be mailed! Hahahahahah
The term for the outside fan for your air conditioning is a Condenser. It’s used to dissipate heat when the system is running. It is also the location of the refrigerant compressor.
I just had my furnace replaced and the called that a heat pump...🤔
@@rileysvideos2059 Second for "Heat Pump"
@@rileysvideos2059 I think "heat pump" implies it can run in reverse and heat your house as well as cool it. Though technically any A/C is a heat pump, cause it pumps heat from a cooler place (your house) to a warmer one (the outside).
@@rileysvideos2059Due to the prevalence of air conditioners compared to heat pumps, the outdoor coil is commonly called the condenser since it exclusively condenses the refrigerant in those systems. Heat pumps allow for the action of the evaporator (aka air handler) and the condenser to be reversed, enabling heat to be pumped in either direction instead of only from inside to outside. As an aside, the names "air conditioner" and "heat pump" refer to the entire system, not the individual components. Both systems use the same core components: two coils (one inside, one outside), a compressor and an expansion valve, while the heat pump also makes use of a reversing valve allowing the system to also operate in the reverse direction.
Hvac tech here came to say this same thing lol
As an American who loves to travel and catalogue my own little culture shocks like these, this was quite a fun video! Congratulations on your citizenship and your new home. One thing - many people here are advising you to switch the direction on your fan in the winter, which is quite a good suggestion; however, they are neglecting to tell you that if you do not clean the blades of the fan before switching directions, a summer's worth of accumulated dust and pet dander buildup will be thrown from them and onto your floor/bed/head/whatever else may be beneath them.
Blow down year round master race.
Surprised you’re American and type “catalogue” lol
@@apfanco I do that, too, but at some point I noticed a lot of people typed "catalog."
@Allan Pavon honestly thought the only spelling of the word was "catalogue" for many years. Just recently have I seen it spelled "catalog". Very much American myself.
I've always looked at storm doors as insulation from the cold. Also, click the button on the fan to reverse the direction to force the heated air down towards you. Can help on the heating bill because you aren't turning up the thermostat
She’s right Lawrence, a ceiling fan direction should be changed in winter and summer. It makes a long term difference in the energy bill, even if small!
Either way the fan will move the hot air at the ceiling down to mix with the cooler air below in the room. It doesn't matter.
Good advice above about reversing the direction of the fan. Keeps air circulating and helps keep both heating and air conditioning costs down. (If you remember to change it from season to season). Also, the storm doors help keep warm air in when someone comes in from the cold. Not quite as effective as an airlock on a spaceship, but it does help.
@@virginiamoss7045 It does matter most people have their furniture around the edges of the room. Having it blow up forces the air across the ceiling and then down along the walls where people are. If it is blowing down the hot air will rise again before it gets to the edges of the room, which will remain cooler.
Lived in Texas my entire life. Around here, ceiling fans blow down in the summer (so that you actually feel the air flow) and blow up in the winter (so that you get circulation without feeling as much of the wind).
Maybe this is more evident in a large room with high ceilings (with fan in the middle).
The Chain Link fence, used to be called Hurricane Fences, specifically so wind can pass through them, and not destroy the fence. They are a Tornado Alley staple.
Good point. Midwest wind knocks down solid fences
Never thought of that even though I"d heard them called that.
Relying on a mask to stop a virus is like relying on a chain link fence to stop mosquitoes
@@hello-cn5nh Except that viruses travel on much bigger water droplets people exhale, which *do* get stopped by masks. So it's more like relying on a chain link fence to stop dogs.
Good luck getting a Florida HOA to let you put one of those up.
Stormdoors also often can be converted into screen doors in the summer by taking out the glass and changing it to a screen so you can leave your door open but still have a nice breeze blowing through without worrying about bugs or birds accidentally getting in. Or letting a cat or dog out accidentally.
Here in Texas, where it’s almost always miserably hot, I’ve only ever thought of them as screen doors.
My great aunts house had a front porch that was screened. But in the fall you took down the screens and installed storm windows. The house also still had a coal cellar, it wasn't in use any more.
There's also quite a few storm doors I've seen around where I live that have the screen built in, and essentially a window pane you can pull up to close or shut it. Also in general one point about storm doors that may be just a Southern thing, is that most of my family will leave the main door itself open during spring/summer/fall even on doors without the screen, and use the storm door as effectively a giant window for letting light in.
@@Gamer3427 We've always used them that way here in Oklahoma. It's funny, I never even stopped to think it might not be standard procedure everywhere.
@@Gamer3427 when I was younger we had a completely glass storm door but when we went to replace it we got one of the screen/glass storm doors and we live up in the north.
Those apartment mailboxes are actually much more common than you think. The traditional American mailbox that you think of is dwindling. In many suburbs there are now large mailboxes similar to those in apartments for each street due to how much easier it is for the postal workers.
In rural areas the mailboxes tend to be larger, as it provides an easy place to deliver larger packages that is a bit more secure than the porch of the house. The downside of having a rural mailbox is the threat of bored and drunk teenagers driving around and playing "mailbox baseball". I lose a mailbox about once every five years. They get hit more often, new mailboxes tend to be targets, so I generally just pound out the dents the best I can and leave it ugly. If the door gets ripped off or the post is broken off it is toast. Snowplows take their toll as well. The last time this happened I used a repurposed railroad tie as my post, and sunk it in concrete. When my neighbors mailboxes got destroyed or knocked over, I went and built a platform on my sturdy post to put all 3 of our mailboxes on. Some of my neighbors down the road have hardened mailboxes, built out of or nested in heavy gauge steel, one is built into a massive but decorative masonry structure. It got partially destroyed by a snowplow.
@@n3bruce ah yes the red brick mail bunkers lol
I hate them. You frequently have to walk quite a ways to get tothe bank of boxes and they're small so smaller packages don't fit and you usually have visit the post-office to pick them up.
@@darcy5761 My apartment thankfully has some larger boxes that hold packages at the mailboxes. They will leave a key in your primary mailbox and you just unlock the box number that is on the tag for the parcel box. You then just leave that key in the parcel box (the one you got the package out of) and it will be collected by USPS, I assume. It's been awesome, I don't have to worry about porch pirates or things having to be redelivered because I wasn't home, or going somewhere else to pick up the order.
I was disappointed to learn that the USPS won't even serve new single-home mailboxes where a community set of boxes already exists.
I just want more space in the box!
In Minnesota, Storm Doors are a method by which the Homeowner forfeits the ability to leave the house, since there is 4 feet of snow stopping the door from opening ... outwards. lol!
Not just Minnesota, Chicago too, but ...Lawrence will find that out soon enough
You just need to remove the glass and step through ( I actually used the shovel after removing the glass!😆)
RI, too, those 4 days when we have a lot of snow!
I usually avoid this issue by shoveling mid storm before it accumulates that much. I hate shoveling twice for one storm, but it happens. (I get that work and sleep get in the way of doing this every time it's needed, and that's fair)
@@squireltag1000 dude, just open it every half hour till it stops snowing and you have yourself a lively 1/4 circle step of clearance. 🤣
Chainlink used to be less expensive alternative to wood fences. Since they are usually galvanized so they hold up better than wood in wetter climates. They also help prevent escapes (or invasion) of animals that can chew through wood or squeeze between slats. It also prevents obnoxious 6 year olds from prying loose a couple of pickets and reenacting Lord of the Rings.
Lol
Exactly - midwest weather indeed subjects wooden fencing to the worst of all worlds, but chain link ones end up settling along with the ground and looking like crooked crap, are no trouble for humans or big pets to scale/jump or for small pets to dig and scoot under, so they really just end up functioning as a visual delineation of your lot. They’ve also come to be considered so “esthetically unappealing” that tyrant HOAs are increasingly banning them in favor of NO fencing, making everyone’s exposed, extensive, treeless, flat monopoly-board subdivision yards visually melt together into some giant useless communal quad. God I hate the damn burbs.
Also, chainlink fences are great for when you grow things- plants get that much more sunlight!
@@RogCBrand and certain plans can climb and grow on the chain link like a trellis
sounds like someone has personal LOTR experience! lmao, thanks for that!
Pro tip: There's a switch on the fan that will reverse the spin direction. In the summer you want it blowing air down at you to cool you off, but in the winter you can reverse it and pull air up. This updraft displaces the warm air on your ceiling and forces it to mix in with cooler lower air. Keep the speed on low and it will improve your heating efficiency without making you cold from the moving air.
When I moved from the Midwest to the Southwest, I learned about a different kind of air conditioning - "evaporative cooling" (sometimes called a swamp cooler.) Blows air across a moist pad, than sends cooled, moist air throughout the home.
It only works in low humidity environments.
I had a childhood friend who moved to Chicago after school who had never been to a city larger than Fort Worth TX. I went to visit him and as we walked the city he kept saying the pigeons will "pee" on you. Having been around many large cities myself I realized what he thought was pigeon pee was actually condensation from the AC window units hanging over the sidewalks. 🤣
That’s a cute and funny story. Dallas-Fort Worth added our 8 millionth resident last summer, so it’s not exactly that we are a much “smaller” populated area than Chicago as much as we are a “newer” area than Chicago or New York. Most of the buildings here were built with central air conditioners from the very beginning, so the idea of window units hanging above the sidewalk (pavement for Lawrence) is foreign to us. That’s still quite a cute story.
@@daviddodds30 I'm in Fort Worth and believe me, we see the growth every day! When I moved back here from Oregon it was still a small town feel with big city amenities. Not anymore. And yes, the type of AC units was the difference. He wasn't used to buildings not being built with them.
So he went from the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country to the third largest. Sounds like a hell of a difference...
@@chitlitlah I believe it was many years ago when the person moved to Chicago from Fort Worth. Probably way before Fort Worth had it's population boom.
Haha lived in Chicago for a while and that is funny, it's true though. Glad he didn't come in winter, or he may have said the pigeons drop chunks of ice on you (Ice falling off the tall buildings).
There is a switch on the ceiling fan to reverse the air direction. This is useful in cold weather to mix warm air on the ceiling and it will also reduce condensation on the windows when its really cold outside. Hint ... open the curtains
ceiling fans are rubbish. i had one and it did nothing so i removed it.
Yep, there should be a tiny switch that one direction brings the air down which is helpful in winter - Heat rises so it pulls it down to keep the heat in that area from going up to the upstairs or attic.
Then the other direction pulls the air up to keep there area cool.
Not many people know that’s how they work. They just think it’s for summer time.
@@auntiem873 Close. The switch goes to the UP position in the winter and causes the fan to blow upward. This pushes the warmer air away from the fan and down the surrounding walls to mix with the cooler air below. During the summer, the fan switch is DOWN making the fan blow downward and cool whatever is below it through surface evaporation.
@@fivish Then you weren't using it properly.
@@charlesquinlan9813 It's less of a "pull warm air/push cool air" thing and more that a fan's suction is far less concentrated than blowing. When the fan is sucking air up it can circulate air in the room without generating a particularly strong wind in the process.
The mailbox thing being rare to us outside the US is why I took tourist photos of them when I visited the states 😂
Btw first time seeing your channel, this video was fun! You’re hilarious 🙌
To be fair, the mailbox in The Lake House was actually magic.
…and Family Guy made great use of that.
And the whole focus of the movie.
It was a remake of a Korean movie and the original is sooo much better!
@@dfjulesful Hi, I watch a lot of Korean movies do you know the name of this one please.
How can I get a magic mailbox?
A good storm door is also a treat because you can lock it and leave your main door open, allowing sunlight and a broader view of the world. It's like a 7-foot window on demand.
My husband and I (in the suburbs) even do this on sunny days in the winter! it helps keep our back hall warm.
On a fun note for the ceiling fan, there is a little switch on the side (that I think you can even see in your clip) that switches them from summer to winter mode.
Summer mode is counter-clockwise to push a direct cooling breeze down at you.
Winter mode is clockwise to pull air up and circulate the heat better in the room.
The bottom part of storm doors, where the screen is torn out, has a window that can lift open so you can leave the storm door closed and the main door open to get a nice breeze while keeping bugs and rain out, kind of. Also, ceiling fans have a switch on them so they can spin in two directions, one pulls cool air up from the floor and the other pushes warm air down from the ceiling depending on how the blades rotate.
It's astounding how many people have told you about ceiling fans in the winter, but nobody has said, "Ooo Lawrence! You had to take out a restraining order on a fan?!?" (So sorry that happened to you.)
To be fair, publicly acknowledging / further discussing fan-type stalkers is widely discouraged as it risks fueling part of their motive.
The outdoor part of central air is called the compressor. Your indoor fan usually has a small switch on the side of the motor which reverses the spin of the blades to bring warmer air down from the ceiling and into the room. And on the side of the mail box is the little red flag. If you can’t get to the post office and need to mail a letter, just pop it in the mail box, raise the flag and the mailman will pick it up. Good luck in your new home!
It's more than just a compressor. It also contains the condensor coil, which puts off all the heat collected inside the refrigerant in the system. There's another coil inside the home called the evaporator in which the refrigerant absorbs heat from the air. I think in heat pump systems the coils actually reverse depending on whether heating or cooling is needed from the system -- all one unit instead of having a separate furnace for heat.
...and the A/C part inside your furnace is called the evaporator or coil.
@@evilcoleslaw The condenser gets hot, the evaporator gets cold. If you have a heat pump, then they switch roles when you're heating - the indoor unit acts as a condenser and the outdoor is the evaporator.
It's hard to get a clear picture of EXACTLY what you have. It's either a central air conditioner or a heat pump. Heat pumps are identical (and technically A/Cs are heat pumps) but with products marketed as heat pumps they are air conditioners that operate in reverse. Rather than taking heat from inside and pumping it outside it takes heat from outside when it's cold and pumps it inside.
Heat pumps are TYPICALLY more efficient than conventional electric heat which is remarkable since electric heat, the actual heat coil, is 100% efficient. Basically if it's 10C, 5C, or often 0C concentrating that "heat", let's say to 21C, is more cost effective than just making that heat, a lot more efficient above 5C than below.
We just call it the air conditioning unit.
Quick tip on the ceiling fan, there’s usually a switch on the side of it that you flip up in the winter, this will help circulate the air in your house and force the warm air down by pulling the cooler air up.
That way you get a more consistent air temperature around your home.
Another tip, the mailbox you have is designed to be mounted on a pole at the edge of your property, there are boxes specifically designed to be mounted on your house or porch railing, you can find them at any hardware store.
After 2 weeks, this is Laurence’s 8th most popular video! Congrats! Love Lost in the Pond!
FYI: the “Chain Link Fence” is commonly known as “Hurricane Fence” and was designed for privacy in yards or busniesses, mostly to keep unwanted visitors and or criminals out. The fact that hurricane winds are So Strong, they just destroyed little picket fences. So, chain link or hurricane fences were designed to be stronger and more durable. They also protect houses during hurricanes by keeping some things, blown by hurricane force winds, from hitting and damaging the house, cars, other property…ie water spigots, etc.
They are also referred to as cyclone fences. I wonder if there are any more names for them? Yes, some people think they are ugly but they don't rot like wooden fences. I've lived in my house for almost 40 years and haven't had to do any maintenance on the fence.
@@bethsojourner6798 You are correct. I think because we live in a “hurricane alley” everyone here calls them hurricane fences, plus we are talking about OLD people who don’t know that they refer to the same thing. These old people don’t know what a “cyclone “ is.
I have not heard them called that in South West PA. They are chain link fences here.
A cyclone or hurricane fence may not be aesthetically pleasing but is more practical in hurricane prone areas. After being pummeled with 125mph winds for 6 hours during Hurricane Ida, most wooden or vinyl fences were gone in my parish. Many homeowner's policies do not cover fences anymore.
LOve LOve LOve your channel!!!!!
@@drescherjm not a lot of hurricanes in PA so not really a reason to call it that lol
The storm door not only provides additional insulation in the winter. In the summer time you can switch out the glass panes and put in screen panels, that way you can open the door and get more ventilation.
Some storm doors have a built-in openable window with a screen. It was kind of hard to see, but Lawrence's might have been that kind.
@@synthiamcbride7194 yeah every one I've ever seen have been that way.
Mine is like that, I do have to lubricate it eventually it’s getting sticky
@@malice6081 😏
Yeah he has one in the video, you can see the fluffy bits of destroyed screen on the outside. Living in Florida, I've heard anything in front of your front door be called a screen door. Even if it's one solid pane of glass, or a steel security door for bad neighborhoods
The celling fan has a reversal switch on it. That way it can pull the cold air up from the middle of the room and push the warm air down the walls facilitating the complete use of your heat conditioned air. So, Yes, you should run your celling fan during the winter.
2: Storm doors also create a section of still air between it and the regular door so that winds cannot force drafts under the regular door as easily, so your house is less drafty and is easier to heat in the winter.
3: the aircon unit outside like that is called a heat pump (usually) so it does heat as well as cold.
Growing up in a c.1900 house in New England, a twice-yearly ritual was installing and removing the storm windows, which as someone else said also provide insulation with an air gap between the two layers of glass.
The 15 or so windows were each in one of maybe 3 or 4 nominal sizes, but because of the antique hand-built construction none of the similar-looking ones were actually consistent enough to be interchangeable. So to keep them straight they had to be taken down in sequence going around the house in the same direction, stacked in that order against a particular wall in the basement, then brought back up in the reverse order six months later.
Damn…wish someone had gifted you with a permanent marker for spring and a rubbing alcohol rag for fall, dude. 😜
We have the screened/sliding pane kind meant to allow keeping up year-round, but that design just makes them harder to still end up removing annually if you want to actually WASH either/each set (not to mention that storm window glass is far thinner so most of them are cracked or broken by now)
My family had the same ritual in our 1950s home. I miss that so much living in England!!!! The end of summer British fly season is the bane of my existence. Also they have no AC, most houses don’t have ceiling fans and you have to keep windows closed to keep flys out and you can’t get any breezes. They act like window screens are a quaint thing that they don’t need. But seriously, you guys could use them too!!!
Ours were permanently installed. They were double hung with permanent screens. So they didn’t interfere with opening the main windows and no need to remove them
Why wouldn't you just leave them on year round? Seems like a lot of work to reinstall and remove every year.
@@Birdbike719 Ours replaced the screens (which had to be swapped in and out the same careful way because they were also a bespoke fit for each window) and didn't have sashes that could slide up and down like the internal panes, so you couldn't open them for airflow in the summer. So when the storm windows were on it was impossible to have any ventilation, unless you swing the outer pane out slightly and prop it open, but with no screen that lets the bugs in.
Chain link fences are pretty much the go to because they're cheap, last forever, take a lot of damage, and tend to work well for keeping kids/pets in or out of the yard to a major extent.
Always practical for a good old “triple dog dare” tongue sticking in the winter, too
Are they? I've only seen them in tract homes in the Midwest and in all regions in some rural sreas. Wooden fences are most common in housing developments in California because we want our privacy.
Edit: Before responding, read all the comments below. It's probably been pointed out and responded to.
Furthermore, my comment was in response to another comment which stated they were "pretty much the go-to" (for reasons listed). I was merely pointing out that that isn't true everywhere.
@@margefoyle6796 Most of those are the taller privacy fences, it's normally the chain link in most places that's the normal yard boundary ones.
My current yard has two sections as a picket that I keep wanting to replace because they're a pain in the rear for the gates, one side is a neighbors privacy fence and then the odd combo of rails and chain link for the rest of the sides...my yard is an oddly shaped mess because it's the center house of a cul-de-sac witha looping road around behind it with an unusually large number of sides due to the shapes, but it's a larger yard and plot than the rest due to the oddities.
@@JillWhitcomb1966 oh man, I hadn’t even thought about the chewing rodents and freaking termites!
Also, a lot of people choose them for visibility. They don't obstruct your view.
Really neat video, I'm an American born and raised here and I've never traveled outside of the country so all of these were cool to see! I had no idea about the lack of mailboxes or AC units! Also for fun, the AC units are standard here to the point where a real estate agent would have a hard time selling a home without one. I used to work in real estate and I've negotiated the price of a home based solely on the lack of AC. Those units are made for certain square footage ratings, one for a 3 bed 2 bath home could cost as much as $15,000 new or some "smart" units are even higher. maintence is no joke because each AC unit is bound to its brand of parts including the refringent! So by in large, parts are not as interchangeable as they used to be and they are making them even less so as the newer units come onto the market. Us Americans are all about convince though, so nearly everyone has one or a smaller version that fits into a window dubbed a "window unit" here. Also you'll find ceiling fans on porches here too! Especially in the south, we love our big wrap-around porches and sitting out on them!
6:35 actually it can be on in winter. there is a switch on the main hub thing of the fan that switches the blade rotation and helps circulate heat which can be particularly useful if you live in an older house that uses radiators for heating
It’s so wild that Lawrence brought up mailboxes because when you move from apartment mailboxes to the home you just purchased’ ‘mailbox… it is significant. It’s part of the American Dream to own a home and maybe thats why something as simple as a mailbox is depicted the way it is in our movies. Also, now that you’ve got a home Lawrence… you can alway put in a white picket fence of your own taste.
Sadly the US Postal Service is moving to more and more of those "glorified high school lockers" even for areas of single occupancy houses as its faster and more efficient for them
@@jessicacolegrove4152 I was surprised to see his mailbox attached to the railing. My oldest brother lived in a bungalow and there was a slot that opened into the closet, next to the front door. I'm not sure if my other brother's bungalow has the same slot, I've only been over a couple times. The church I grew up in had a similar slot, but they built it into a pull down compartment inside, if I remember correctly. It's been over 30 years since I've been in that building.
The burbs are different, we have those mailboxes at the curb which makes it a lot easier for carriers to deliver mail. They simply drive around and put the mail in the boxes. Anything that doesn't fit, goes onto the front porch. Condos and townhomes have a mailbox similar to the apartment one shown in the video, but they're in groups in an area in the complex. So you either walk to them or drive there (depending on where your unit is in relation to the box) and get the mail.
@@jessicacolegrove4152 the future of the mail delivery is curbside and the cluster boxes. they're called CBUs, or cluster box units, and yes, they are faster. I prefer them in my area. my old route had pedestal mailboxes, door slots, and a lot of the boxes were up seven or more stairs and they were all so small most of the mail got bundled and thrown on the doormat. basically the type of delivery methods carriers despise most. it's the hell route at my office and all the new carriers get assigned it, because as soon as a better route becomes available, they bid on it. my new route has mostly all the boxes on posts at the bottom of the steps, curbside delivery, and blessedly no mail slots.
@@jessicacolegrove4152 We had that communal thing in a brand new house we bought in 1992.
@@TeenDream888 Sad
Ceiling fans are supposed to be reversed during the winter so they push the warm air back down. There's a button somewhere on the fan that changes the direction. If you feel air blowing on you, you have it in summer mode.
I was about to comment this as well. This is especially true for rooms with high and vaulted ceilings.
Maybe in your second sentence you mean "winter" instead of "summer"?
It's actually to pull the cool air up to mix with the warm air.
Old school. Humor that is actually fun and funny. I can't thank you enough!
In general, chain link fences were more common in the mid-1900s than they are today. Around the 1990s, wooden fences became more common as they look a lot nicer than an old chain link fence. Any new chain link fences in neighborhoods are usually painted to keep them from rusting and blend in a bit.
The fact that I get to call you an American now warms my heart. I learn so much about my own country from you. Now it is official. You are a national treasure!
The amusing thing is that in the UK the POST is delivered by the Royal MAIL & in the US the MAIL is delivered by the US POSTAL Service. Oh, & Laurence, I think every door in our house has the old-fashioned 'skeleton key' sort of lock, tho' we do have deadbolt locks on the outside doors. Regarding the ubiquity of ceiling fans, I'm 75 years old & until I was 70, I had never lived in a house in the US Midwest that had ceiling fans.
I've never heard of "bug shield" before, they are "screens" and "screen doors" to me. Thanks for the episode!
Screens here, too, and like Laurence, I'm in the Midwest. I assumed "bug shield" was a British-ism.
Southerner here. "Screen doors" here do not have glass in them, only screen. It's kind of old school but also used on screened porches, another popular thing in the south. Storm doors have glass. I understand that many doors have both glass and screens, where you can raise one of the panels of glass like a window and have a screen in it's place. But the doors that have just one tall pane of glass are storm doors here.
Solid doors with glass = storm door
Door with screens instead of glass = screen door
bug shield = The clear plastic piece that goes on the front of your vehicle that is "supposed" to deflect bugs from your windshield and hood
@@tarheeldd i think up here we use both interchangeably. I've never gotten too deep into why we call it that, but then, here in Chicagoland we're used to rotten winters, tornadoes, etc. Its always storming up here, so I guess we never thought to divide mosquito weather from blizzard weather! 😆
We have them in Australia and call them fly screens.
Personally I'd say the chain link fence, or any fence is pretty situational. I have seen very few in the areas I frequent.
Probably the most magical thing about the American loaf Mailbox is that it transmits as well as receives mail. Outgoing goes in the box(with the appropriate postage attached, ofc), the flag goes up, mail is sent!
That is amazing
Regarding the indoor fan - most have a switch on them which will change the direction the blades turn. This helps circulate the air (heating or cooling) no matter the season it's being used. The easiest way to remember which direction to put it in is "heat up, cool down" - up to help circulate heat in winter, and down to help circulate cooler air in summer!
Heat rises, so wouldn't it be the other way around?
yes, in one season they mix the hot air from the ceiling with the cooler air from the floor, in the other, they mix the cooler air from the floor with the hot air from the ceiling. the real decision is to put it on down if you want to feel a draft and up if you don't.
@@ertyderty7 Yes.
@@kenbrown2808 ok, the way its worded was a little confusing at first but I think I see what you mean.
I'm so glad someone pointed this out.
I'm so happy for you and your wife for being official homeowners!!!! Y'all should be very proud of yourselves!! ♥️🤍💙
that outdoor part of the air condtioning unit is called the "condenser" or "condensing unit". It's where the refrigerant returns from the evaporator inside the house (the bit that the air flows through to get cold) condenses back into a liquid and releases the heat it absorbed from the indoor air via the fan. There's a compressor inside that compresses it and sends it back up to the evaporator
Speaking of running ceiling fans in the winter, if you reverse the direction and run it on lowest speed, it will circulate all the warm air at the ceiling downward along the walls. It will make the room warmer.
Just make sure you run it in the direction that pushes air up rather than down
I enjoyed this. Being retired from the Postal Service, I especially liked the part about the mailboxes. I thought you might find it interesting that postal employees refer to the device at your house as a mailbox and the large blue device as a collection box. And congratulations on your new citizenship and your new house!
UK: Letter = Post which is delivered by: the Royal Mail service
US: Letter = Mail which is delivered by: the US Postal Service
Go figure! 😂
I always call those post office boxes. I think I've always heard them referred to that way, but maybe I recall incorrectly.
I call the mailboxes at apartment complexes, trailer parks, and similar communities "mail banks" because several mailboxes are ganged together like PO boxes and usually a short walk away from the residences. I haven't met my mailman, so I don't know what he or she calls them.
@@gamingbud926 The Post Office Box, or PO Box, is the "mailbox" that you can rent at the post office if you don't have a permanent address, don't wish to disclose your address, or other reasons. Perhaps if you run a home business or a YT channel and don't want your fans to know where you sleep?
We call the boxes at apartments, etc, "cluster boxes" or officially, NDCBUs. "Neighborhood Delivery and Collection Box Units. 😊
I have to say that in America, the idea of being able to put outgoing mail in your mailbox is very convenient. That's something that never occurred to me before
Yeah,I never do that since some postal employees are lazy and I don't trust them to take it like they should.
A friend of my dad who lives in Lincolnshire UK was totally dumbfounded when he ask my dad why the flag was on his mailbox, it's to let the mailman know there is out going mail. He said if they did something like that back in the UK, your mail would get stolen.
Didn't you ever wonder what that red flag was for on the side?
it's also suppose to be illegal to tamper or steal from the mailbox.
@@sheilaolfieway1885 its not supposed it is illegal. Its a federal offense and for legal purposes they are called letter boxes. This is under 18 US Code 1705
You missed my favorite kind of American bathroom door lock.
There is an older, and much rarer these days, lock where instead of a button or a "switch" the entire knob pushes in towards the door and then rotates one quarter turn to lock the door.
I like them because they are very automatic to use once you learn them, but they aren't intuitive at all if you are used to the button/switch and many people won't even realize they have a lock present.
You will find them in older homes.
EDIT: the thing outside is called a Compressor, because its where your refrigerant gets compressed and cooled. Depending on the kind you have it may need to have a capacitor swapped every few years or so, other than that they are pretty maintenance free unless it has a problem.
I love the way hes so happy with things I take for granted and never give a second thought too.
Before we started watching, I asked my wife to guess what's going to be the first house object Laurence was going to name, and as quick as a flash, she replied, "indoor plumbing "
Do you think houses in England do not have indoor plumbing?
@@janetpendlebury6808 Yes, the UK is barbaric
Lol, as a native born Yorkshireman (Leeds), I occasionally regale the missus with stories of outside communal lavatories and tin baths in front of the fire because we lacked indoor plumbing where I grew up.
@@thefitnessgeezer. My mom, here in the states, her folks didn't get indoor plumbing until she was 16 (1966). They had a 4 seater outhouse... 14 kids.
Storm doors also help protect your wood floors and rugs. The storm door gets wet and opens outward. Thus your inner door stays dry and can open inward without dripping water all over your floors.
Never seen this guy before but after this video, he strikes me as one who simultaneously knows everything about things as well as having no clue about the very same things
It's quite entertaining and not something I've seen before
American AC Technician here, that funky box outside of your house is called the "Condensing unit" it's where the refrigerant is condensed and it also houses the compressor and the fan which blows the heat outside when you're in cooling mode
You can also get storm doors with screens, so you can treat them like big windows when the weather is nice.
His storm door has a screen frame, but the screen was ripped out. You can see it from the outside.
Love my screen doors in the Spring & Fall.
In parts of the Midwest, the ritual is to take out the screens on Halloween day and put the glass in on November 1. That way, on Halloween night, that leaves the open space to toss candy out to the kids who are trick-or-treating.
Chain link fencing was popular for residential use in the US in the 1960s. It is still used for commercial/ industrial purposes but not so much for residential use anymore. Most neighborhood associations forbid it because though cheap, it is ugly.
@@pamelacox540 Not the most attractive of fencing choices.
The storm door is interesting since I just call that a screen door here on the east coast, and I've never heard of it being used for storm purposes. The thing we use it for here is so that you can open the front door for extra breeze in the spring/summer while still having some sort of door and screen. Basically turns your doorway into a giant window.
im from the west coast. never heard storm door. its always been screen door
Also East Coast but yes we call it a storm door or screen door depending on its build.
I'm in the Northeast, and have lived with a "screen door" and a "storm door". The "screen door" was almost all screen on a lightweight metal frame, outside a set of glass doors that looked out onto a back deck. The "storm door" in my current house looks a lot like the one in this video and isn't nearly as useful for breezes and sunlight.
You got my subscription for the Hell in a Cell joke
I had similar culture shock visiting England. I enjoyed seeing how they solved problems and sometimes it was similar and other times really different. It’s very dry where I live and not so much in England, so towel dryers and a few interesting things in the bathroom.
I don't know about other places, but in Utah in recent years people have been getting very creative with their mailboxes. There's all sorts of custom-made mailboxes that are more like sculptures than anything. It's pretty fun!
There’s a family in my neighborhood that lives at a “T” intersection at the bottom of a hill. Their mailbox kept getting knocked over by runaway cars. After about half a dozen replacements, they built one out of cinderblocks. 😂
Florida mailboxes are extremely creative, especially in the expensive but not ultraposh areas. There's a whole industry of creating sculptures that hold mailboxes in these neighborhoods, and the sculptures even get decorated during the holidays. It's quite unique.
As long as the post office approves of the mailbox. They actually need to approve a mailbox design or you won’t get your mail.
In most places it is technically illegal to have anything other than a US postal service standard mailbox, and the post needs to be a standard construction post. The idea is that they are safety hazards for vehicles, snowplows, etc if they are anchored too well. The standard appearance makes it simple and efficient for mail delivery personnel.
best one I saw they had the opening in the backside of a dog digging in the dirt.
If you have a separate furnace for heating the A/C unit outside would be the condenser unit. If you don't have a separate furnace then it would be a heat pump. The storm door also offers some ventilation in the summer you can open the main door, and lift the bottom window in the storm door so the screen will let air in but keep bugs out...in theory at least.
This is in Chicago, so I'm guessing the house probably has natural gas heat; nearly all homes in the Midwest do. Heat pumps are fine for heating your house if you live in Georgia, but they tend to have a hard time keeping up when they're buried under several feet of snow and it's below zero out.
Canuck here. Our house has a furnace for winter and a heat pump for the other three seasons. Many of my neighbours have a furnace for winter and a condenser unit (which we simply, but possibly inaccurately, refer to as an air conditioner) for the summer.
@@canuckpagali May I ask - is does your furnace fuel on oil?
@@privatelyprivate3285 No. Some older homes are fuelled with oil, but most homes use natural gas in our part of Canada. Some homes rely solely on electricity for heat, but this isn't popular due to the price.
@@canuckpagali Yeah, during mild weather, running the air conditioner backwards (which is all a heat pump is, technically) is more efficient than natural gas heat. I'm not sure the exact temperature where it becomes impractical, maybe somewhere around 15 F, depending on the details? Or any time the condenser unit is buried in snow, of course; snow is an insulator, so that hits its efficiency pretty hard. If it's a light dusting, a cleverly designed unit can run the other direction for a few minutes to melt it off; but if you get dumped on, that becomes impractical: the people inside the house get annoyed about the AC running in winter, before the snow all gets melted off the condenser, to say nothing of what that does to efficiency. Better to turn on the natural gas heat when the snow gets seriously underway.
Lawrence describing a split AC unit is gold.
I believe that's the condenser, where the gaseous refrigerant sheds heat and condenses back into a liquid, to head back inside to take on heat, and head back out to do it all over again 😁
That huge square thing sitting outside near the house that is part of the air conditioning system is called the condensing unit or just [ the unit ]
The air-con thing outside is called a "condensor unit" if it works to heat the home as well it may be referred to as a "heat pump condensor".
Most people just call it "the AC" nerd
@@ajduker And your AC tech thinks you're stupid for it. Now they've gotta ask "inside unit or outside unit?" before clarifying that you aren't talking about the thermostat, cause people are that dumb.
Or shortened to "AC unit", "compressor" ( and variations ) such as "heat pump compressor unit". Up there, they probably have gas heat, which is cheap, and a heat pump ( reversable compressor ) does not make financial sense.
Yes. You can also call it an HVAC unit. (Heating, ventilation, air conditioning).
@@ajduker most people who work on them call them a heat pump. Also they’re badass and last like 30 years with 0 maintenance
that's an A/C condenser. The evaporator is attached to your furnace.
By the way, ceiling fans are useful in the winter as well. Ceiling fans have the ability to spin one way to push air down or the other way to pull air up. In the summer, you want to have it pulling air up off the ground to get the cooler air that settles toward the ground moving upward and in the winter you want to have it pushing down the warm air that settles on the ceiling.
Chain link fences were common in the UK at one point. Most council houses were built with them as it was cheap and quick to put up.
I came over the pond as a kid back in 77. I became a citizen in 1991. I'm surprised you didn't list garbage disposals. I'd never seen one till we moved to the states. Also automatic garage door openers are another one.
In older urban areas, like Boston and New York City, you wrap your garbage (meaning food waste) in newspaper or something and put it out for collection with the trash (paper and plastic waste.). Pretty stinky in summer.
In newer areas and suburbs garbage disposals are often required, because the trash collection service won't handle smelly biologically dirty food waste. Ground up food waste from the disposal goes into the waste water stream.
@@scottparis6355 They gave up on the food waste thing in NY. No one was doing it and it became a waste of time.
Automatic garage doors are quite popular in the UK. We have one that can be operated from the front door or from the car.
There was a terrible episode of House Hunters International where an American woman was moving with her Norwegian husband back to Norway, and she vetoed every house they looked at because they didn't have garbage disposals, even though she was told many times that they simply weren't a thing in Norway. She ended up making her husband build a new house over budget that included an expensive, imported garbage disposal.
@@jonathankleinow2073 She vetoed every house solely because of the lack of garbage disposal? Modify the kitchen sink space below if you have to and install one. I don't understand why it became the sole factor in the decision. I'm sure there were other factors in involved. Right?
Meanwhile, I'm from the US and I find letter boxes in the door charming. I remember when my family was moving to a new state and one of the houses we saw while house-hunting had a letter box like that. I tried to convince my mom to choose that house based on that feature alone. It felt fancy.
Too bad half the time USPS won't deliver to them.
@@davehood2667 Really? Well, that stinks.
My husband is a mailman and he hates door letterboxes. Pets bite thier fingers, mail can get stuck, people run extention cords out of them. Sometimes they're on a side door and he can't find it if it's a new route. And if a loose dog is present in your yard they won't go near your door unless they know your dog so your mail will not be delivered. It's always better to have a box outside a fence away from pets.
@@Blue_Star_Child yeah, they're terrible, and it's always people with the most mail who want you to shovel everything in them. I was so happy when my town started mandating new homeowners to get proper mailboxes. it also makes me feel better because small packages are now secure instead of loose on the porch. please give your husband a thank you, from one carrier to another.
While my mom decided to get the crappy house by a cemetery with baby coffins stashed in teh upper loft of the garage...
Because we apparently weren't bullied enough in school... but at least the neighbors were quiet...
AC units are generally very necessary for living in most of the US, some states get so hot during the summer months that it would be physically dangerous to live in a house without cooling. No one wants to live in a 38°C house.
There is a switch on the fan that makes it go in reverse that actually helps your house keep warm and circulated in the winter.
Note that you should use the ceiling fan in winter: just reverse the direction, there's a button on it for that. It helps spread heating and equalise temperatures :)
And more importantly, you don't need to set it to the whirlwind speed to get the benefits. Slow and steady wins the race.
Something to also keep in mind is that a lot of these things vary widely depending on which state you're in since the US is so big. For example, here in Texas (and I imagine it's the same for other states nearby), practically none of the houses have basements cause the ground's just not made for them (high water table, clay soils, and in some parts the bedrock is close enough to the surface that it just makes it more difficult to dig that deep). I've literally never seen a house here with a basement. Meanwhile in other states, pretty much all the houses have one. It's not just the houses, either. I've met people who moved down here and were genuinely surprised to find out that we do actually say "y'all" instead of "you guys" cause they figured it was more of an exaggeration seen in movies and stuff lol.
If you haven't planned to or done so already, I highly recommend visiting different regions in the US to experience the huge diversity of cultures here. You don't have to visit *every* state or even do a whole nationwide road trip or anything if you'd rather not spend hours driving in a straight line only to realize you're still in the same state, but you should still check out the major regions to get an idea of what it's like. Even just a sampling of New England, the west coast, the south (regardless of where you stand politically, the culture here is really fun and interesting), etc. will take you through a bunch of very different regions with very different people.
Also as a side note, I was honestly surprised at how many people in the comments mentioned ceiling fans with reverse functions, cause for the most part I've only ever seen fans with chains here, and even the few with remotes I've seen just let you control the speed. I didn't even know they made fans that can spin the other way till like a month ago when my parents bought a couple for their house lol.
*Tornado alley (including the party in Texas) has plenty of basements!
America truly is magnificent. Even within regions we have so much diversity. Coastal Southern is very different from Mountain Southern. And Texas is TEXAS. Technically part of the South but also it's own country. Northern Mid-West is very different from prairie Mid-West. Coastal Northwest is very different from inland Northwest. Southern CA vs Northern CA, etc
FYI, ceiling fans are usually "reversed" in the winter with a switch on the side or a button on the remote. The idea is in the summer you have the fan blowing air down in the summer and sucking air up in the winter to circulate the heat down from the ceiling. This can cave you a little money on heating, especially in rooms with high ceilings. The sucking up motion doesn't really cool you since its more indirect that the other way around.
In the winter, reverse the motor and operate the ceiling fan at low speed in the clockwise direction. This produces a gentle updraft, which forces warm air near the ceiling down into the occupied space.
I am seeing more privacy in public bathrooms. While traveling last month I noted that the bathrooms in both the SLC and Denver airports have no gaps and the doors go much closer to the floor and are also much taller.
I've seen those same kind of larger, more private stall doors in several places around Massachusetts, too. The first time I saw them I had a brief "Now how do I tell which are in use or not?" when I couldn't just look for feet, but they have a color-coded dot near the latch that changes as the lock is toggled. Which, may be an issue for Red-Green colorblind, since ALL the ones I've seen are red for busy and green for available.
Buc-ee's in Texas, at various locations off the interstates, are famous for their clean bathrooms which also have super private partitions. You could pretty much take a nap in their toilet stalls, it's so quiet in there.
@@loismiller2830 in some Buc-ee's stores they even have a hand washing sink in the stall. Can really freshen up on those trips with low level guilt, as the attendant will take care of any splashing on the floor. Very private and plenty of stalls, so noone is left waiting for you to finish.
Same in Connecticut. Bradley Airport just upgraded all the bathroom to privacy stalls, with red and green lights on the ceilings above.
Airports are like that to protect any carry on bags you have with you while using the toilet.
The Lennox "Machine" (outside of your house) is called a Condensing Unit. It has a compressor, which pumps Refrigerant through copper lines, through a "Coil" of copper pipes (above your furnace, in the metal duct)...; when the Condensing Unit is running, the fan on your furnace will run and the refrigerant that is being pumped through the Coil, cools the air being pushed through the floor/ceiling vents, providing cool, comfortable air. It is a great idea to keep the condensing unit free of debris and dirt, as dirt and debris will affect how well it works.
The outside part of the air-conditioning system is called the condenser unit or just a condenser
The mailbox you have by your porch is technically a "rural mailbox", and normally installed on a post by the street so that the postie doesn't have to get out of his van to deliver your mail. Also, that red flag on the side is something that you raise if you put a letter in the box that you want mailed, so the box works both ways.
Typically city houses had the mail slot in the door that you are used to. I guess this is less common these days. You can't post a letter from the door mail slot, and it is hard to get small Amazon packages thru the slot. It is also hard to get to a door slot if the storm door is locked.
The white fence used to be very common in the US. There was a saying: "good fences make good neighbors". They delimited the boundaries of your front and rear lawns, much as the hedges or short walls are used around the garden in the UK.
I grew up with a mail slot in NJ. My biggest memmory of it is that it made a great spy hole for anyone who wanted to look in your house. I figured that's why there might be less of them too these days.
@@GaelinW Ive seen people use them to unlock doors aswell.
The "rural mailbox" is also very typical of suburban living. Though older suburban neighborhoods may feature mailboxes mounted to the side of the house beside the front door.
I lived in coastal VA for about a decade and we had our mailbox on the front porch. It wasn't like the kind typically out in the front yard, though. It was vertical and the mail carrier didn't pick up, only drop off.
I grew up in the Midwest, though, and nearly everyone had the streetside box with the flag. I don't know if this is region or more urban vs suburban/semirural.
@@Lawrence330 - My mother's family is from Virginia. The mailboxes are at the end of the drive. I'm in Chicago now. I've seen mail slots, boxes beside the door and boxes at the curb. I'm not sure if any of it is regional so much as it's functional.
The fan box outside your house is the condenser coil. It draws the heat out of the refrigerant. It consists of a fan to move the air across the coils to take heat from the refrigerant and usually the compressor to pressurize the refrigerant.
@Lost in the Pond Been watching and liking your vids, love your British humor!
Chain link fencing is also known as hurricane fencing. It has very little wind resistance so it doesn’t blow over in high wind conditions. It’s not for privacy but to keep dogs and people inside your yard or to keep dogs and people out.
Storm doors aren’t just to protect your door from the elements. It also provides extra insulation.
ceiling fans are also useful for hanging socks and under garments to dry after washing by hand because a person forgot to do laundry, best using the lowest fan speed
2:27 Those kind of mailboxes in the US are often called, “rural mailboxes”. I have a rural mailbox at the end of my rural driveway at my rural property where my rural home is located... and it’s a big sized rural mailbox which can accommodate a fair range of package sizes Which is very convenient. It’s kind of beat up and dented but years ago, before it got dinged about, I painted it to look like an American flag, which I was very proud of at the time, partly because I used reflective tape to make the stars and the white stripes so that I could see my mailbox when I was driving home in the dark and therefore not miss my driveway if it was really stormy and foggy… Which it often is in western Oregon... And being that there’s no street lights in my rural location, the sparkly reflective tape comes in very handy.
My rural mailbox is at the end of my driveway in a Houston suburb. New suburban construction use communal mail boxes, with locked boxes for each address.
On our street new residents have to have a mailbox at the street, instead of one at the house as existing customers did.
@@jasonwoods5326 Hate those things. The USPS can't be bothered to bring mail to houses anymore.
@@jasonwoods5326 Yeah I have noticed that trend happening in Oregon as well. Not for truly rural locations but definitely for suburban areas. Unfortunately we live in a world where people are more willing to steal than they used to be. But yeah, at least in Oregon, it’s still just good old rural mailboxes, although some people have purchased locking ones for themselves. Touchwood don’t boast, but I have never had anything stolen yet.
@@tomfields3682 Irritating for you!
The condenser is the part of your AC unit that sits outside. You will have evaporator coils inside the house somewhere. There are some package units that sit outside that have both condenser and coils in one unit called a package unit. Package units are more common in mobile homes (house trailers)
You should also use your ceiling fan in the winter to reduce your heating costs since heat rises. Most ceiling fans have a reverse button on them so instead of using the forward clockwise direction to pull warm air up in the summer you use it in reverse to push the warm air down. Great video. New sub. 😊
You might have screens for your storm door for the summer (replacing the glass with screen) so you can have the door open to let air in without having the house open
I always thought I had a pretty good idea of the differences between America and the UK due to the sheer amount of British television programs I've consumed. But it's in conversation with my English friend that I realize I'm sorely mistaken. Especially when he stopped me and asked what I meant by "screen door". 🤷♀️
I guess Brits don’t get the saying “don’t let the screen door hit ya where the good lord split ya”
@Sheila Rough we just say door, however, that isn't a common phrase here anyway 🤣
@@sheilarough236 Lol, I never heard that, either! I love regional cleverness.
@@grovermartin6874 It’s one of the many Southern U.S. phrases I love. I’m from Texas and I think my favorite from there is “That ______ is slicker than whale snot on a doorknob.”
@@Debbie338 Hahaha!😂 That caught me off guard, and a burst of laughter, thanks!!
Is there some central collection point for all those great expressions? Love 'em!!
3:57 It's called a condenser. And you really should take a water hose to yours. It looks like it's getting clogged with dirt and dust build up and spider webbing. Keeping the condenser unit clean will help keep your power bill down as your system won't need to work as hard to keep the house cool.
Wait till you realize the ceiling fan has a switch on the side above the lights. This switch reverses the push pull of the fan. This allows you to use the fan to circulate warm air in the winter(pushes up, to drive warm air down). Great video, stay awesome.
Most ceiling fans have a reverse switch on them so you can use them in the winter to help circulate the air. It actually helps a lot of you have one particular room that tends to get a little warmer than the others when the heat is on.
You should use the fans in the winter. Just change the direction of the blades
Reverse move the hot air near the ceiling back down where you are.
Big shields work great. You just don't realize how many bugs *could* be in your home.
It isn't that they don't keep the bugs out. There are just sooooo many bugs.
So I’m a maintenance man in the United States, and I busted out laughing as soon as I heard this dude call AC unit compressor a generator of some sort 5:30
I bought a house without locks on the bathroom doors and the first thing I fixed was the locking situation. Even before the broken air conditioner (and I live in the desert).
Within a month of moving to a house with locks on the bathroom doors, my dad had to break the lock to the bathroom because my then 4 year old sister accidentally locked herself in the bathroom and couldn’t get it unlocked
Previous owners might have had little kids at one point - back when the “push whole knob in + rotate” type of bathroom lock was popular (70s-80s), kiddos found them as easy to accidentally lock as they found them impossible to UNlock (causing many panicked meltdowns!)
Bathroom doors usually have some form of lock in the UK.
@@privatelyprivate3285 Those locks are super easy to pick. Just stick a toothpick in the hole of the knob on the outside/ locked side and then push.
@@brynagleich6223 I thought that too until I moved to an area where a bunch of them didn’t have the hole! I was baffled and annoyed - how else am I supposed to sneak in to chuck a cup ice water on my showering spouse?!!!!
I will never hear the phrase "ceiling fan" in the same way. Also, I actually do have a white picket fence. They are great in theory. In practice, a whole lot of painting is involved.
Fellow UK expat here, been in the US for 26 years.
- The outside unit for the AC is the compressor/condenser - It takes the heat from the refrigerant flowing the through the skinny copper lines and uses the fins to radiate it into the outside air. There is a matching unit inside the house called the evaporator which uses similar fins to absorb heat from the air flowing through the ducts and puts it into the refrigerant. Some can revise the flow and actually pull heat from outside and put it into the house - these are called Heat Pumps.
- Screen doors always baffled me. They don't stop bugs. We can only leave doors and windows open for a few weeks a year, the rest of the year the outside temp is uncomfortable for indoor spaces so we run the AC or heat.
- The lock on bedroom doors is for people who are getting dressed, supposedly. When we bought our current house one of the kids' bedrooms had the lock reversed so the parent could lock the kid into the room. That was quickly fixed. (after my wife let me out of the room again)
- Ceiling fans are a side-effect of the more extreme temperature ranges and the need to spend more energy heating and cooling the inside space. Moving the air around stops the air from 'stratifying' with all the heat at the top of the room and the floor being cold. I see one or two (or 348) comments about reversing the direction in the winter. Either direction works in summer or winter to mix up the air, but in winter you don't usually want to feel the air flowing against you becaase it feels more cooling. Reversing the fan blows the air outwards across the ceiling and down the walls of the room so the air feels less like it is 'blowing'.
- Chain link fences are ugly. I'm sure you have found that people make the front of the house look posh and the back of the house is cheap. Picket fencing is posh. Chain-link fencing is cheap.
- Mailboxes for the house make more sense out in the boonies where the letter carrier has to drive. The nearest blue collection box to me is 6 miles west of my house.
One huge advantage of chain link over the white picket fence (or wooden fences in general) is that they hold up better to the weather. Wind just blows right through them, since they are galvanized steal they don't rust or rot when they get wet, and if you are in an area where ice on the roads is common, they are really easy to repair when a car goes sliding through them (I'm actually not speaking from experience on that one, but one of my neighbors at least once a winter will have a car go through their fence, and with chain link it is just a matter of replacing the metal ties that hold the lattice to the poles).
Mailboxes are based on the age of the house. Originally mail was delivered to a mailbox next to the front door. Then new houses got curbside delivery, to a mailbox at the curb next to the driveway. Now the newest houses have cluster boxes, about a dozen boxes placed together (or a bank of boxes like an apartment building).
Where I'm from it's more to do with location. Have a house with a short drive way in a established neighborhood, the mail box is on the house. Live in a house with a long drive way or/and in the country with not a lot of homes, then the mail box is at the end of the driveway. The community mail box is for areas that have a lot(or enough) of people living close together but is still in development so there's room to place a community mail box (so not just new developments have them but older ones too where they want to cut back going door to door to save time).
Last house we rented in Raleigh had a mailbox built onto the front door, and a shelf built into an alcove on the kitchen wall for the telephone and giant book that went with it
the house I grew up in had a mail box at the end of the driveway. A few years ago, the local post office required everyone to switch to cluster boxes. That old house now has i think 10 mailboxes at the end of the driveway. The rest are somewhere near the end of a nearby street. I remember my mom being kinda mad about it because now someone has to walk to the other end of the block just to get their mail, but she couldn't really do anything because the post office already put in the cluster box.