15 Differences Between British & American Houses 🏠
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- čas přidán 11. 05. 2024
- Today we're introducing you to 15 major differences between British vs. American homes! From the size of the average British house vs American house, to where we put our laundry machines, this video uncovers great and small differences 😄
When it comes to British houses vs American houses, what differences have YOU noticed? Share your observations with us in the comments!
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The sub titles constantly refer to terraced housing as terrorist housing!! 😆
@@tompiper9276 Nooo! Really? 😆
@@WanderingRavens Fraid so!!
If you knock the walls down to open the front room you also open up the front room to the view of the public when opening the front door, and all the dust and muck will come straight into the front room when opening the front door! May just be me lol
Possibly something to do with before we had paved streets and drainage people use to throw the toilet outside 🤢 could you imagine walking that in your front room! 😂😂
You forgot about electric sockets in Toilets/Bathroom if i remember correctly American homes do have it whereas UK don't.
Does anybody else browse Rightmove houses that they could never afford...? 😅
Big houses with a place for everything and wonder if those rooms would fill up with clutter within 5 years too.
I prefer Zoopla
Phil Nevilles house is up for sale right now I believe.
We browse right move like most people read magazines in this house 😂
All the time, Lol!
Does anyone NOT do this at least once in a blue moon?
In the Uk, the key search factor for most people is number of bedrooms not overall size.
I was going to say the same thing - in the UK, you know roughly how big a house is going to be by the number of bedrooms it has. You also get really good at judging the size from the pictures, but that is something that comes with experience!
Yes, to both of you.
@@henryduke951 Yeah but... Simply putting a fold out bed into a tiny room that can barely accommodate it gets counted as a bedroom.
and often you can only find the surface area in the floorplan.
@@SMlFFY85 Yeah. Used to be the box room, a kind of cupboard but now, if it fits a baby cradle it's a bedroom! Lol
The idea of walking through a front door straight into a room just seems wrong to me 😬
Depends on the size of the house, usually. Smaller houses often open straight into the lounge.
it saves a lot of space though, if the house is already small then adding extra hallways is a waste of space.
It is normal in the UK but I have a hall if it is a small house you will just walk into the living room normal and if you have a medium size house then you would walk into the small hall and normal your stairs are right in front of you and they sometimes if you have a 3 bedroom onwards then you have a hall with a door to the kitchen living room and stairs
You've probably been going into someone else's house, hope this helps
Depends what you can afford!
For some clarity. We use town house in the UK. Normally to refer to a particularly tall house, often three floors or more
That's true. The terminology traditionally applied to the rather grand Georgian terraced houses found in the smarter parts of London and other major cities, which were often five or more stories tall. It's been stolen by budget builders of mass produced, dreary housing estates (think Taylor Wimpy, Barrat etc) purely for marketing reasons- selling a "town house" is easier than selling a terrace, because it sounds more aspirational.
@@spencerwilton5831 I live in Glenrothes in Fife; it's one of the Scottish "New Towns" built between the 50's and 70's. We've got areas with what we call town houses. They are all 3 storeys, terraced and with flat roofs. The ground floor has a garage, and the main living space and kitchen are on the middle floor. I don't think the term is aspirational here; if you live in an area with these town houses, you probably have somewhat limited expectations. The areas aren't terrible, but let's just say the Glenrothes Elite don't tend to live there...
The term townhouse is also used in the US
Aye, I have a townhouse property myself 🥰 I love it.
Homes in UK are more expansive than houses in the USA ?
The main thing people look for is how many bedrooms a house has. Then look at the floor plan which will have rooms sizes in described feet and inches.
The sizes should be in metres but some display both.
Most estate agents will have the square footage on the floor plans either by floor or a total for the house
@@sandraroyce5820 We do feet and inches in the UK.
@@amethyst1826 I work in the carpet industry in the UK and if we sold in feet and inches we'd be in serious trouble. The country switched to meters back in the 90s.
@@sandraroyce5820 Ok, SOME of us were brought up on feet & inches and STILL work by those!
Halls, help conserve heat. Plus opening your door to strangers halls don’t let them see you valuables etc in your livingroom xx
Exactly. This comes from a previous age when we would only heat rooms individually. The kitchen would always be heated, but the other rooms closed off and only heated with a fire on certain occasions. And of course no heat upstairs.
Thank you for saving me from typing what you did 😂
I think it’s considered a lower class home if you do t have a hall, I could be wrong
@@staceytomkinson910 only a British person, with our obsession with the class system, could have made a comment like that.
Ooo yes good point! I really don't like when the whole world can see straight into your living room every time you open the door.
I literally can't imagine the idea of doing anything social in the front garden. No privacy, I'd hate it!
We have two benches in ours. Purely for decoration. I couldn't think of anything more uncomfortable than sitting out in the front.
If we didn't have a hall, in the winter all the heat would soon escape through the front Door !
You only sit at the front if the neighbours are arguing 👀😂
It’s a chav thing!
@@don1estelle We don't have a hallway. Front door opens into our living room. And we're in Canada. Just need a good front door (storm door).
I think we have our front doors opening onto hallways instead of living rooms for privacy reasons so that when people come to the door they don’t just see right into our living space
Yes, and possibly for warmth. When the front door is opened all the cold air doesn't invade the parlour.
Stops the draft
@@Lili-xq9sn ah yes, another good reason, I suppose muddy boots can be added to the list too - basically, us Brits have the right idea on this one! 😅
😂
Also dogs ripped open mail
It always confused me as a kid watching american tv shows where all the teenagers would have double beds in their rooms. I don't know anyone in Britain who has the space for that
Same in Australia
I have a small double bed
So true. I'm 27 and still have a single bed. I could probably squeeze in a small double but I wouldn't be able to get into the room 😄😄😄
We did have rooms big enough for double beds.
But we had to share so ment two single beds instead.
Slept in a single bed until about 26
Yes me too! At 34, I've had a double bed now for slightly over a year. Previously there was never enough space for it.
The hallway is there cause it’s bloody cold and wet. My mum and I and the same layout house, except hers had the hallway ripped out and every time someone walked in in the winter you’d bloody know about it!
I concur: ripping out the wall in Eric's plan would mean the heat in the living room would dissipate into not only what was the hallway, but also upstairs. Hall and passageways are not generally maintained at the same level of warmth as living rooms (or, indeed, bedrooms).
My first house was like that open the door all the heat gone and one soaking wet visitor trampling in with their muddy shoes all over the carpet!
I hate when you open the door directly into the living room or kitchen, it makes me anxious because I don’t want nasty mud all over the floor and rain and wind and all of that stuff in my nice warm cosy house! Plus on a windy day nobody wants a bunch of leaves getting in.
@@itsreeah2663 Or someone with an umbrella dripping it all over the place.
@@susanashcroft2674 exactly! How do people in the states deal with it
Don't quote me on this, but I believe the prominence of brick houses in the UK is due to the 1666 fire of London. The houses were all made out of timber and were incredibly close together, which enabled the fire to spread quickly and destroy much of the city. I believe many of the houses were rebuilt in brick to prevent fires from spreading as much.
That makes a lot of sense! Terrace houses would burn like crazy if they were wood!
As far as I'm aware, it has more to do with an abundance of clay and regional variations due to different resources than anything else. That's why houses in different regions can look so different, too. We also don't need the flexibility a lot of the US does for earthquakes etc.
This is exactly what I was thinking!! Also maybe because it rains so much in the uk the wood could rot xx
True
Same here in Chicago with the great Chicago fire, almost every apartment/city house that are older are made of brick. And we have metal fire escapes but that’s mostly a NY thing
Part of the reason for having a hallway is for temperature control. Especially in the UK with cold winters. If you have an entrance straight into a common room, a lot of heat escapes. So having a hall way is a barrier. Although it is starting to become more popular for open plan living
You go up the stairs to the FIRST floor in GB and they have hallways because of the cold. It is easier (and cheaper) to heat seperate rooms and only when you use them. This is from the time one had hearths and/or stoves in the homes. Nowadays you find a lot more open plan houses with central heating.
And heat rises, so you would heat upstairs before the living room gets warm and that's another argument not to have high ceilings, unless your very tall of course.
@@zingyyellow554
The Victorian houses are usually the ones with high ceilings.
Once, my friend lived in one and was redecorating. We were in her daughters room and she was stripping wallpaper that had been there for years and years and she commented that "This strip is coming off in a nice long bit," and we both looked up to the ceiling and realised they had pasted a whole entire strip to the wall in front, the CEILING and the wall BEHIND!!
All were done like that in the house, including living room, but, unfortunately, that was the only easy strip to remove!! 🤣🤣
It feels weird to walk into a house and directly into a room. Where would we take off our dirty shoes, hang our wet coats and store our brollies? 😄
Isn't that a fundamental feature of a cottage, that its front door leads directly into the living room?
Most homes in the US have "entry ways", not halls. You may take your shoes off there, and there is generally a coat closet within a couple of feet to store coats, umbrellas, etc.
@@ricmac954 yes but in that case (as with my aunts house) you'd you the back door and enter through the kitchen
Yes whenever I watch US house renovation programmes they always have either massive open doorways from hall to living areas, or none at all, so you walk in straight from outside. Either it is very warm there, or heating is very cheap. Houses in the UK where your front door opens into living room are usually very tiny, old and cheaper houses. Open plan living is a fashion which I think will be over soon in the UK. I know a number of people who have knocked everything through and then end up living in a 'snug' because it's 'cosy'. I need separate rooms which can be heated quickly!
@@maxineallen5673 Most homes in the US have central heating and air-conditioning,, so the temperature stays constant.
In the UK we rely on the pics of houses and then we say " i thought it would be bigger" or "this is bigger than i thought"
Ah, the old Tinder method.
The hallway goes back to brick houses.
The wall is supporting the wall upstairs which is often a dividing wall to separate rooms.
Thank you for the insight!
The little glitter flecks in granite worktops are a mineral called muscovite, commonly found in igneous rocks. It used to be used as a heat proof glass alternative on cookers, furnaces etc as it has a really high melting point. We do have granite worktops in the UK but they're a luxury, most people settle for wood or laminate as they're way cheaper. Also very few granite worktops are actually made of granite, it means a very specific rock type and THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BLACK GRANITE. Sorry, geology rant over.
Quick, get out the SiO2 % - grainsize - mineralogy chart...
@Sarah Toads, Interesting thanks.
Those over-the-bed cupboard arrangements were very popular with 1970s middle class families! They were of their time. 😊
My Grandparents had this until the early 2000's
Nothing to do with class. They're ideal for small bedrooms
@@jillhobson6128 Absolutely. I was really pleased when I moved to my new house a year ago to find my bedroom had one because I have so much more storage space than I've ever had before. So many British bedrooms are small or even tiny, it just makes sense to use what space is available.
When I was a child my my grandparents had a highly-polished solid wood (burr-walnut) Victorian/Edwardian version of this in their bedroom, (with shiny brass fittings!), except it didn't span the bed, but instead bridged a vey wide polished chest of drawers with mirror behind. With one mirrored wardrobe door each side, and one unmirrored plus the overhead storage cupboard it was an imposing piece of furniture. Sadly it wasn't handed down :-(
I think hallways and porches come down to weather. It is overcast, rains or is cold a lot in the UK. A porch would not get the use. A hall stops all the heat dropping out of large rooms when you enter the house and is a great place to take off your hat, gloves and shoes before going into your warm cosy lounge/living room. I expect houses in the North of USA are quite different to the south?
Front gardens tend to be for show and the back garden with greater privacy is where people hang out. Also I've seen americans call gardens yards. Over here a yard is an enclosed concrete or paved area and different to a garden.
Many people don't even have front gardens (I don't) and if they do it's often very small and all concrete.
Apparently, many Americans on hearing you talk about your garden will assume you mean an area in which you grow fruit and/or vegetables.
@@trickygoose2 That’s what we thought at first!
Also, post-1940s building code requires all structures on the lot to be set back at least a certain distance from the edge, which means it's much harder to build a new house with a very small front lawn and most of the outdoor space privately in the back. The same era saddled us with a car-centric suburbia which has been strangling us for some time and spreading cancerous tendrils throughout our culture. 🌠
@@trickygoose2 As an American that is actually what I was just thinking. I have a front yard, a back yard, and a fenced garden to keep the deer out of my vegetables.
I love that all of these differences are not cliche like what most other CZcamsrs would mention (two taps, no electric sockets in the bathroom etc.).
Thank you! We tried to be original 😄
If you walk straight into the lounge you get all the dirt from shoes onto the carpet so a hall is a place to take your shoes off...
We have space to take our shoes off in Asia but they're generally small and only right inside the front door
And to remove your dripping wet coat as well as the shoes.
Many if not most American homes have hardwood flooring.
@@Americans4Israel4Ever noisy in a semi detached house
Perhaps some Americans leave their muddy shoes on the porch that their house is much more likely to have. Actually, UK houses that don't have halls often have small fully-enclosed porches.
Most modern, detached houses in the UK now have utility rooms near the kitchen and also built-in wardrobes in bedrooms.
And most other houses, depending on how custom the homes are and how much money someone is willing to pay.
My mums house has a utility room and built in wardrobe hers is detached also . But I live in a flat so not so lucky 😅
In the video they talked about "closets" which is more like a dressing room. Only the largest homes would have a dressing room and almost certainly only for the principal bedroom.
@@mikelovesbacon I agree with your description of a closet in British English but in American English a built-in wardrobe is known as a closet, the term wardrobe only being used for a piece of furniture.
@@phoebus007 but that's the way they were using it in the video: closet = walk-in wardrobe/dressing room, which they were correctly saying most British homes don't have
U.S toilets weirded me out a little the first few times i used them.
Was like pooing in a lake.
Very true 😂😂
Splashback! 😱
Same here! Very weird, everything felt a lot closer and more visible than I would like! 🤢
Yes but now you're prepared to poo in a lake, should the opportunity arise.
A few comments:
Firstly, you might not be able to make boats out of stone, but you can make them out of reinforced concrete.
Secondly, you have to go up two set of stairs to get to the second floor in the UK (one set to get to the first floor).
Thirdly, having a hallway means you have two doors between people in different rooms, reducing the sound carried from one room to another. Also, it means that the rooms don’t lose heat when you open the front door. And if you answer the front door, the people in the living room aren’t disturbed from what they are doing. It just makes the whole house more habitable.
Another difference is that air conditioning would be fairly rare in UK houses, but common in American ones.
Yeah but the "first floor" thing is just ridiculous. It's one of the few British things that I will never accept. The floor above the ground floor is the SECOND floor. The ground floor is the FIRST floor. This is one where Americans have us beat
@@alexanderbrown8498 You obviously don’t understand the history. A medieval house was built on the ground. You didn’t need to build a floor at ground level. If you wanted more space, you built a floor higher up, above the ground. This was the first floor. If you wanted yet more space, you built another floor, higher still. That was the second floor. When looked at this way, it’s completely logical.
Other European languages (for instance French, German, Spanish, Italian) use the same numbering as the British. It’s the Americans that are out of step.
@@jerry2357 but we aren't in medieval England. And still, even if they didn't actually build a floor and the ground, the ground is still the floor... The ground floor could literally just be mud and it would still be the FIRST floor of that house/building. An extra floor built about the original is then by default the 2nd. What if I house only has one floor? Does that mean it actually has no floors because there isn't a "1st"?
@@alexanderbrown8498 it HAS no floors, it's just on ground level. Here in Italy it's the same, the first floor (primo piano) is the one over the ground floor (piano terra, o pianterreno, so literally floor on the ground)
@@jerry2357 It's Americans who build above a hole in the ground, called a cellar, often built for food storage, and refuge in tornados and hurricanes. Brick houses in the South have cellars to keep the food cool. And to stand up to the winds. I wouldn't live in a mobile anything in the Midwest, or the South. Too. destructable.
There's always a 'floor' in American houses, and they're at 'ground' level. Newer country, newer culture.
Many of the first houses were 'dug-outs' becasue they were built into the ground to keep warm in the harsh winters, and it was fast to cut the sod, and build one faster than cutting down, sawing, and building with wood, without power tools. It was considered dirty to live with a dirt floor, (dirt poor) when there was so much wood to huild with. When they had access to trees, and better weather, they built over the dug-outs, and had the first floor, too.
Do British houses have basements? I didn't think so, but I don't really know. Just a feeling I got from the movies, I guess.
I'm a Brit living in America and one thing I like about the houses/apartments here are the bug screens! Although I wish they were easily removable, because when there's an argument or fight going on outside down the street, I can't stick my head out to have a look :(
lool
The most flies we ever had in the house (UK) at anyone time is 2.
Agreed here in New Zealand is same, we need bug screens on our windows aswel, spesh summertime!
The comment about knocking the walls down to make a bigger living room would make me want to avoid buying that house. The two things I hate are a front door that opens directly into the living room and stairs leading down into the living room 😂
And it's pretty cold too
All the heat goes out the door when you open it.
Yeah on my dad's road the houses were built without a lounge wall but some houses have them added afterwards including my dad's, it's very odd to go into a neighbour's house and see straight into their lounge!
Cold, drafty noisy house without a hall way to break up the wind.
Houses used to have multiple family's in a small terraced house, then a minimum size came in in the Victorian era. Don't forget the outside privvy in the winter rain/sleet/ice and curtains on the inside doors, snake draught excluders and ice on the insides of the windows
(single glass pane no double glazing)
Yup. All the heat goes upstairs, all the cold comes into the living room when you open the door, and people who knock at the door invade your privacy, instead of just seeing a hallway
Hallways were traditionally installed to buffer cold air coming in from drafty front doors. It also gives you an area where you can change shoes, hang jackets etc. Similar to a combined mud room and cloak room. By shutting the door from the hallway, you can heat the room you are in rather than trying to over heat the room with the fire to heat the whole house.
We went through a stage of renovating to make open plan living 'a thing', but now it seems some are now having rooms constructed again for the benefit of saving energy.
There are two times for sitting in the front garden/driveway/doorway: 1. You are the parent of children who are too young to play out without adult supervision yet, and 2. It is one of the three days of the year where the sun is out and producing heat and you have to move round the house throughout the day to make the most from it!
Love #2 😂
No2 is today
@@polkadot8788 And that's your lot until July.
Don't blame me -- I didn't write the rules.
Well now its snowing. Lol
Three days of sun ? when i were t'lad , our dad would push us up t'chimmey , to look at t'sun on midsummer's t'day...................and we were t'lucky !
Knock the walls down and as soon as you open the front door all the cold air rushes in and the heat escapes much to the discomfort of those cosily sat in the living room chillin' out. This is quickly followed by shouts of "close that bloody door!".
"Were you born in a barn?"
@@geraldmcmullon2465 or... "were you born in a field?" 😂
@@Spiritof1955 In a Nissen hut in a filed next to the air-raid shelter as it happens. Referring to leaving the door open as a barn door. Common usage in Lincolnshire.
As I usually say when USAnians mention how small our houses are, I say ‘yes, we ran out of space in the 1600s so we tried to find some more, but you wouldn’t let us keep it’
Omg I’m wheezing 🤣🤣🤣
😂👍
Maybe if we asked nicely , they would give us some? Can we have Maine , please? :)
@@richard6440 You can absolutely have Maine, but only if you also take Florida and at least one of the Virginias.
@@googiegress7459 Florida would be great :) and as many Virginias as you can spare , we've run right out of virgins here :)))
We tend to measure each room individually rather than give a size for the whole house
I am Scandinavian and I wonder; where do americans put their outerwear when they enter their home? Say the weather has been bad and your outerwear is soaking, as well as your shoes. In Scandinavia we hang the outerwear in the hallway to dry, together with the wet shoes. I bet the english do so, too.
I usually hang anything that gets that wet in the bathroom, or in a larger home, with an attatched garage, in there. With the huge reliance on cars in the US, very few people get that wet any more. If they do, they go in through the kitchen, where the floor is easily wiped.
Attatched parking is often a feature of newer homes, while old ones still have parking right next to the door. Not usually an issue for where to put wet things.
A lot of houses in the USA have a mud room. It is right when you come in from the garage sometimes near the laundry room. It has benches to sit down, hooks or built in wood lockers to hang coats and shoe racks.
I've lived in a lot of houses here in England, some with hallways, some without, and having a hallway is miles better, even those that are just a small square at the foot of the stairs are better than walking straight in to your front room , dripping all over the carpet looking like a drowned rat, and you can't warm up cos the heat evacuated the second the door opened 😂
In one bungalow the hallway lead to the three bedroom, lounge and bathroom. To get to the kitchen you had to go though the lounge. I find most houses are badly designed and getting worse with more wasted space that can not be used for anything.
Exactly, I would forego that tiny bit of space to be able to get sorted from coming in on the mostly rainy days. And the temperature thing that most people mentioned.
I'm late but I would like to.add another point to the Hallway situation that I haven't seen anyone mention. Having a hallway is also safer for fire safety reasons. If your stairs are directly in your living space and a fire broke out you would have no way of getting to the exit. We are all taught in the UK to close all doors at night downstairs. So if a fire did occur it would be contained to one room at least long enough to be able to get out.
This was literally my first thought on the hallway 😁 glad someone else wrote it
Interesting. In the States, we're supposed to keep a rope ladder in the upstairs bedroom to escape through a window during a fire.
I believe hallways were built to keep the heat in the rooms when the front door is opened
If you walk straight into the living room you let the warm air out and the cold air in the second you open the door. The hall acts as a sort of air lock to avoid that, as well as somewhere to hang your wet coats and leave your muddy boots.
Something worth considering is that the climate is generally cooler here in the UK, and so it costs more to heat our homes. A smaller house with smaller rooms is easier to keep warm. Also, like our roads that were built and designed before cars, much of the housing stock was created for working class people that owned fewer things in the past. They weren't really built with modern living in mind. Rooms weren't built with much closet space, because working class people didn't need it...they had little to keep in a closet. I lived in Half Moon Bay, California for a while in a house that is easily 7 or 8 times larger than my house in Wales. Most of the year we didn't need to heat it, but during the winter months it was like trying to heat an aircraft hanger. What money we saved in the warmer months in heating we spent on watering the lawn to keep it green. Here in Wales it rains so much the water is free and the grass is always green and never needs watering.
without internal walls for support, stone house falls down, thats why hallways!
and we have stone/brick houses in the UK mostly because wet wood doesn't last very long
It’s really more because we have large amounts of clay across the UK so bricks were cheap and convenient construction- then its just habit and convention. Wood can be kept dry (just look at the Tudor homes still standing all over the UK. Wood is popular in the US for the same reason - it was everywhere and easy and cheap to use. It’s just people being people and using what’s there.
@@davidshipp623 also I think the fact Stone and brick provide more insulation is a factor (which we need in the UK for our harsh winters) also wood is safer for earthquake zones (which the US has a lot more of than the UK, I live in the UK and have never experienced an earthquake in my life)
Its about available materials and what's best for the environment in which it is being built
@@LongdownConker I live in the UK too and there was an earthquake when I was on holiday with my family in the 80’s (in Shropshire I think) a tiny tremor but my parents and sister were super excited. I was taking a shower in a crappy guest house shower with a plastic shower tray so missed the whole thing - so I take your point on that one😂. Not sure someone living in a single skin Georgian brick house or a Scandinavian in a wooden house would agree with you on insulation though😂.
Here in the Netherlands, like the UK, houses have hallways, mainly to save on heating :) it's easier to heat a smaller room than a huge space, AND it keeps out the cold. In the winter we actually hang a curtain by the front door.. it really makes a difference. Can't imagine walking straight into the living room!! Hallways are also great for shoes & coats.
The hallway thing in the UK is for building support and structure of the building. There will always be one wall that goes through the middle of a house usually making a hallway to keep the floors and walls from caving in. Its also a heat thing 😁
Honestly you guys are so entertaining to watch, I always look forward to your videos. Keep it up. 😊👍
Here are a few differences for you:
1; Letterboxes. Here in the UK the letterbox is situated in the front door - over there you have those boxes on the roadside (which to my mind leave the contents open to theft!)
2: Also wall sockets are different. Here they are 3-pronged plugs while over there they are for 2 prong.
3: Over here you will not see houses with the National Flag stuck to a pole attached to the wall while over there it seems ubiquitous
4: Our electric voltage is different, Here it is 240v - which is why our kettles boil a lot quicker that US ones.
Were you aware of ant of these?
No, all the electrical outlets in the US and in Canada are three pronged . although some of the electrical cables and plugs are two, prongs and wires-no earth or ground. BTW I may be wrong but I dont think Canada has those on road mailboxes like they do in the US. However we do have community mailboxes that have individual compartments and keys.
Many American homes also receive their mail via the front door. It depends on how old your residence is. The newer residences have their boxes on the roadside.
American homes do also have a 220v supply for heavier current draw items as well as the more standard 110v as the supply is split phase, therefore both wires of a 220V outlet are live; the neutral is used to provide two 110V connections, each 180 degrees out of phase.
Here in the UK we have a single phase 220/240v supply where only the live is live and the neutral is always neutral (plus an earth return)
UK homes are also normally wired on a ring main where one fuse/circuit breaker covers multiple wall sockets, each of which is individually switched. (although you may have spurs off a ring as well as dedicated radial circuits for things such as cookers,water heaters & showers)
In the US radial circuits are more common where by each wall socket has its own fuse/circuit breaker and the actual outlet is rarely switched
on the flag front we do see flags flown on homes in the UK but typically only during the World Cup or on pikey council estates ;o)
There are differences depending on where in the UK you are.
Scotland (and to a lesser degree Wales) you are more likely to see a National flag being flown on a property, England less so.
And then of course there's Northern Ireland but we won't go there ;o)
Overall it is rare to see the Union flag being flown on houses
Theft is rarely if ever an issue with the mail here in the US. And if one does have an issue, you can get a mailbox that locks up. (It's also not much of an issue because mail theft is a federal crime in the states.)
Personally, my family has never had this issue of mail theft. And I live in a larger town. Now package theft by the front door is another issue. Things can get stolen there. (Again haven't experienced this myself) But by the road not near as much. Package theft like from Amazon isn't a federal crime like mail theft is.
The US is a 120/240-volt country to be precise. 120-volt powers just about anything you can throw at it. So 240 volt isn't all that popular since there is little need for it.
But most homes do have 240 volts for the air conditioning, large air compressors if you want, or welders in one's garage to work on your car or even 240 volts for the hot tub or stovetop/oven. (Example the 240-volt outlet we have our stove plugged into, is rated at 12,000 watts.)
Electric kettles aren't popular in the US as much as stove top ones are. The stovetop ones heat up quite fast. But I prefer the microwave personally. Kettles take up unnecessary space in my opinion. Also, my mug doesn't get insanely hot either. (Except for one that just happens to be made in China unlike the rest of my mugs.)
But otherwise, it's not much of an issue.
The US power grid is also 60hz vs 50hz for the UK. Unfortunately, this meant that Sonic the Hedgehog ran slow on European Sega Genesis consoles as did all games on any system before the PS1 and N64 era.
This is because all games were made specifically for 60hz. Today it's not an issue any more thanks to upscaling processors to counter the 50hz frequency. Electric motors ran slower in Europe as well.
All quite interesting stuff to say the least. 🙂
Generally a Town House in Britain is spread over three floors. A kitchen downstairs with maybe a bathroom or utility room. Middle floor has living room and maybe a bedroom leading off it. And the remaining bedrooms on the top floor. Of course that's a general overview and will no doubt be different for other people.
Some of the town houses on newer estates have a ground floor that is mainly made up of a garage.
Good to know!! Thank you, Lee!
The hallways don't exist in very home in the UK but they stop the spread of noise around the house as they are smaller and keep heat in each room as without them all the heat rises making it harder to keep warm in winter.
There is a fad in the UK at the moment for "open plan living" where people will knock down any walls that aren't supporting walls so the ground floor of the house is pretty much one big room. It's not to everyone's taste though, some people want the kitchen to be a separate closed off room...and personally I would hate to walk straight into a room through the front door, a hallway is a must!
Yeah, my family are cheap and we only have the heating on in rooms we're using...we'd never go for open plan!
Open plan living is also an excuse to make new builds smaller because now you live in a tiny room that combines a lounge and kitchen. And why do people want this? Do you want your sofas to smell of food? I don't.
@@mikelovesbacon Totally agree. When I was last looking at flats about five years ago I saw many that had the kitchen along one wall of the living room. Personally I don't see the attraction of that, I want my kitchen to be a separate room with a door that I can close to keep in cooking smells, and to obscure the view of the washing up! But developers seem to be catering to a certain demographic these days who think that open plan living is "cool"...probably works for them if all they ever cook is beans on toast!
Open floor plans have been the standard here in the States since the early 2000s. Any new home build will be open plan; only older homes are (somewhat) closed off. We still don't really have doors leading to a kitchen or living area, though.
@@MonkeyButtMovies1 most people have central heating here so you basically heat the entire house or none of it.
In the UK we look more at the room sizes in a property, total square footage wouldn't really tell us this
And how do you assess the room size without a way of measuring it?
@@capitalb5889 Property listings list the measurements for each individual room.
Also overall size is only one factor in pricing a house, in the UK , location is extremely important, also things like the size of the garden , proximity to good schools, and transport links are all very important, internal finish also matters if you have a bog standard B&Q kitchen it wouldn’t add value in the same way as a custom handmade kitchen would, then again there are factors like how far away is your house from others , do you have a private driveway is your garden landscaped ? etc etc .
@@shazwelly - goods points, although an expensive kitchen will probably not add value beyond the cost of the kitchen itself and possible not even that. A shabby kitchen will probably subtract value.
@@capitalb5889 not necessarily my kitchen cost a couple of grand but is worth about 10 because it looks nicer than the others in the area as a result people are prepared to pay more rather than actually install one them selves
I’m actually loving this educational content! Please can you do a similar one on education system differences? There are so many references in American films and TV that confuse me!
like alot of people said hallways are there to better regulate the heat but, it also has a nice secondary purpose of giving you and guests a chance to shrug out of any wet clothing, take off their shoes and give themselves a chance to look presentable before entering into the living room and meeting everyone else. its why most of the time people have a mirror there when you enter so you can make sure your wig is on right.
Like a lot of people said but I'll still repeat it anyway 🤣
@@sheenamaclean8324 just read the first line of my comment didn't you? Didn't even read the rest that actually expanded on another aspect that no one I saw had actually mentioned before. But hey... Its the Internet... Everyone has to vocally disagree with what someone else has said instead of just.... Scrolling past?
@@tobicain7816 oh yes the wig comment, how did nobody else think of that little gem of insight into British culture?
@@sheenamaclean8324 ahh, I see. You're going to utterly dart around the point I made that you can't actually argue against. You just simply want to be controversial and start a fight so pick at the low hanging fruit that isn't actually the genuine meat of the point someone is making. So, no matter what I say, what actual points I make, you're going to pick at the things that don't matter, spelling for example, a small little joke that means nothing... Things like that. So, all I'll say is enjoy yourself being a trolling idiot who hasn't got much better to do with their time.
@@tobicain7816 I thought that the wig comment was a little nugget of humour.... Perhaps I was wrong.
"The oldest American house that's made out of wood dates back to the 1600, and in the UK you guys have wooden houses dated back to the 1300s." Yes, but we also have stone houses dating back to the Stone Age 😂
We don't have any surviving houses from the stone age, only remains that have been dug up. If you're thinking of the stone houses people live in, those are mostly 16/17th century 😅
You must be thinking about castles
The oldest occupied house in America is in New Mexico and made of adobe.
America also has homes dating back to the stone age, built by Native Americans in wood, earth, and stone that still exist. North and South America were populated long before Europeans "found" it.
1000s of wooden middle ages and Tudor houes have burnt down in uk like great fire of london and huge fires in warwick excetra very sad.
Learnt something today. Condo and apartment difference. Thanks, you two!
Downstairs hallways are there because the wall often is supporting the floor above you. Also to stop drafts as most houses in the UK are old, they always used to have floor boards, open fires and single glazed windows with no insulation or central heating. And fuel (e.g. coal) was very expencive so it was common practice to only light one fire in the house and close the doors to keep the heat in that room. This was pretty common until the mid 80’s
I guess what you have to remember many British houses were built before many people has cars, so no need for a front garden. The older city terraced houses were small because of our lack of land space, and the need to build houses close to the place where work was/is. SO had to be within walking distance of work. So kitchens are small, bedrooms are small etc
"Today we are drinking Yorkshire tea". Wow, what a FANTASTIC introduction. As soon as I heard that, I knew this was going to be the BEST VIDEO EVER...and it was!!! Greetings from Yorkshire - love your vids!
The first time my English penpals came to visit me in California, they brought Yorkshire tea with them. I asked them if it was what they drink and they looked at each other and said no we just found it at the airport. But we all liked it ! 🤣
Bugger Yorkshire tea, bring on the PG Tips or now that I live in Ireland the Campbell's or Lyon's, loose leaf of course.
New shops opens in a near by village. Very smart. Check out if I could do my weekly shopping their. No loose tea. No bean coffee. Civilisation has yet to reach out here.
Hallways are there to create a transitional space where you can take off raincoats, wellingtons, store umbrellas etc. Also, the heat from the front room doesn't disappear as soon as you open the front door !
Brit contribution: the standpoint on air-drying laundry rather than tumble drying it is we often have our heating on so hanging clothes on radiators/airers makes sense to us, plus in the summer we air dry on washing lines. My childhood home has a utility room w washer and dryer so we do both :)
Hallways in the uk usually are there to help keep heat in. The UK is below 10° most of the year, so by having a separate door into the hall just helps trap the heat in!
Smaller house sizes are good. I've been watching a load of American horror shows recently and the thing I took away from them is that it's possible for the psycho killer to murder you in the basement while your family is sound asleep upstairs.
Wouldn't happen in a Brit house. It would wake the whole family and quite probably the neighbours if you lived in a terrace.
But we can actually defend ourselves here
You missed bungalows off your list of uk houses
Bungalows are still either terraced, semi detached or detached.
@@sararow7534 yeah but it's a thing we have a word for whereas, afaik, Americans just call that a house.
@@sararow7534 i dont think ive ever seen a ' terraced ' bungalow ? bungalow comes from india , when the british were coming home, they brought a style of house that they were used to living in , a Bengali style house ...over the decades bengali was changed to bungalow..........i'd be happy to see a picture of a ' terraced ' bungalow :)
@@sararow7534 Bungalow, single-storied house with a sloping roof, usually small and often surrounded by a veranda. The name derives from a Hindi word meaning “a house in the Bengali style” and came into English during the era of the British administration of India.
@@sararow7534 if you wanted to be specific, then ' all ' bungalows ( based on the bengali style ) would be detached , quite possibly described as cottages now , but a true bengali house would have a veranda around it. due to the heat. ...........so the bungalows in the uk have evolved over the years from a single storey with veranda, to semi detached , or even terraced, but i'd argue with ' any ' estate agent , that no terraced house would ever be a bungalow....a dormer would be as lose as they'd ever get.:)
As someone who lives in a townhouse in the US I do have a front small porch area with an outdoor chair but I hardly ever seat there because as much as I don’t mind my neighbors I enjoy my privacy more so the balcony porch which is a bigger porch 15 feet in the air or a lower level porch outside the basement level is where I usually am.
Edit to mention that also a lot of single family homes that have a “colonial” style have the hallway with stairs usually on the left with a parlor room on the right which would be used to have guests over for a chat but when I lived in one I just referred to it as the TV room because that’s the room that had the TV in it.
To answer your hallway question: I own a house with the same layout as you drew there (stairs on the left, kitchen through the rear and our living room through the door on the right). I love it. I used to live in a house where we knocked that wall out and it was awful - the heat all just went up the stairs, there was no privacy because you couldn't shut the door on the room where you were sitting, if you went to bed earlier than anyone else in the house you could hear the telly or conversation from downstairs in your bedroom, if you were cooking downstairs and didn't shut the kitchen door your bedroom smelled like the kitchen, and then, worse than any of the above THE FRONT DOOR IS IN YOUR LIVING ROOM! Major, major, MAJOR nono.
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A terraced house and a town house is not the same thing. And we do have apartments here in the Uk as well as flats. The difference between then is normally about 50 grand as apartments are normally more luxurious that a flat. A lot off modern Uk homes now come with a office and a utility room.
Can you explain what the differences between a UK terraced house and a US townhouse?
A three or more storey terraced house in a large city is often referred to as a Town House particularly Georgian or Victorian ones with servants quarters as they were the town house of wealthy landowners. Only 50 grand, that won't even buy a garage in London with flats and apartments starting at half a million plus.
@@tonys1636 but not all town house are in a terrace as I live in a detached town house. And the 50 grand is the price difference between a flat and a apartment not the cost
@@tonys1636 oh, I see what you’re saying you’re saying a terraced house and a townhouse in the UK are not the same thing. But what they are saying is what you would call a terraced house in the UK would be called a townhouse in the US. There is no such thing as a terraced house in the US it’s just a term that we do not use at all.
In the UK you can have a townhouse that is also a terraced house ;o)
Also on more modern developments they tend to be called linked housing these days plus my personal favourite , the link detached house (which is a detached house joined to another detached house by a garage(s)
Sitting out the front of the house watching ppl go by is too confrontational - we Brits def prefer the back garden! 🤣
😂😂
Far better not to risk having to talk to anyone except the immediate neighbours.
Someone's never lived in the North where your local neighbours would be sat on the front step or hanging over the garden gate chatting away.
I live in a Victorian terraced house (traditional two up, two down design).
All the houses on my side of the street are the type with a hallway running down one side and becoming the stairs. Most of the houses have had the wall between the front and back rooms knocked down to make one big groundfloor room. Mine has also had the hall wall knocked down, which makes for more room but means I lose a lot of heat in the winter if I open the front door.
The house next door was the only one with the original walls all in place. The owner recently knocked down most of the hall wall, but left a short bit at the front and put in a second door, so you can go in or out without letting all the heat out. That's probably the best compromise.
All the houses on the other side of the street have a different design, where the front door opens directly into the front room, and the stairs run across the middle of the house.
The hallway thing is about the traditional use of houses in the UK. The front living room (or parlour) was often very restricted in use, essentially “kept for best” for visitors and special occasions, with most family activities happening in the back room and kitchen (often the warmest part of the house too). It’s crazy when you think how small the houses were anyway. Once established these traditions of house structure seem to change very slowly and weirdly with our current obsession with the kitchen/diner in the UK means you could argue we have come back to same point- except the visitors will be in the kitchen diner too these days😂!
House size is usually broken down per room on the floor plan or full property details. This I belive is due to the unusual shape of rooms in a lot of uk houses. You usually get an idea of space from the photos and figure out from each wall size. We focus on each room rather than the whole house. I find brits are willing to sacrifice 1 room size for a preferred room that they will want larger such as a bedroom, living room(lounge) or kitchen. Usually the bathroom is looked at for quality of fittings rather than size.
I lived in an old cottage where the front door opened into the living room, in the winter it made it colder as there was always a draft coming under the door, we would have curtains over the door and a rug up against it. A hallway keeps the cold out of the living space, and you can remove your coat, and outdoor shoes there.
The reason we have a hall and not a door that opens directly into a room is to keep the cold out and it also creates a bit of privacy. Not too many people like to have a front door that opens directly into a room. It would definitely be a deal breaker for me. I also think that there is a difference as to what Americans refer to as a porch and what most British people refer to as a porch. My porch is an enclosed part brick structure with windows and another door outside my front door. It provides me with an extra storage area for coats, shoes etc. Some people would have an open porch which just provides a bit of shelter whilst they open the front door. I think what I am saying in a very long winded way is that an American porch and an English porch serve different purposes.
About the only area where I have seen constructions big enough to be described as an American porch, is in the few posh seaside towns with suburbs like bits of Bournemouth or Sandbanks.
Brick or stone structures are dangerous in earthquake areas. Wood structures are better. I use a dehumidifier to dry laundry, more economical to use. Box cupboards aren't always necessarily poor taste, depending on the design, however great storage though as our houses are smaller.
My dry stone walling friend in North Wales will tell you otherwise. Dry stone walls (interlocked rocks) will just shift and settle in one of the frequent earthquakes. Wood or mortared brick will collapse.
@@neuralwarp they don't have many earthquakes in Wales do they..in Iceland they build a wooden framed house, insulate, then cover in a metal cladding, due to earthquakes and tremors.
I agree it would be interesting to know the square footage of a house but in the U.K. it doesn’t have much bearing on the house price which is more to do with the location and number of bedrooms.
agreed also the age of the building also play a part in the price.
by and large square footage is listed on the floor plan, but it is not often prominently featured on the listing.
I find the thing about Hallways very interesting, as it was almost number 1 on my list when buying our first home. I absolutely HAD to have at least a front hallway (luckily we ended up with front and back hallways) because I can't stand walking straight into a living room especially with carpet. For me personally, hallways are a good place to have laminate flooring and take your shoes off, before moving on to the cosy carpeted living room. I think as far as the older houses go, the reason may have been to keep other rooms separate from the wooden front door, which over time would let both cold and daylight through, making each individual smaller room easier to keep warm. But I'm not sure I just know I love me a hall 😁 x
I was always very envious of houses with kitted out basements in American films/TV shows. You're undergound dude!!! So cool!
I really don't like the idea of having storage space that I have to stand on my bed to access.
those things are chavvy
They were the 'in thing' in the 1970/80's - just old fashioned now.
@@panman1964 No, they're very practical in small bedrooms.
@@Sophie.S.. Nothing to do with fashion, they're ideal for very small bedrooms
I agree, but can see how they’re really practical for small houses with limited storage space
couldnt give a crap how big my house is, its big enough, cheap to heat
The main idea about hallways ( and also British porches which are a small extension to the front door) is to help the house stay warm in winter. I lived in an open plan house in Hungary and it was very difficult to keep it warm. I now live in Croatia and this house has a hallway with all the other rooms off. By the way, in UK the upstairs is the first floor (above the ground floor). As regards house size, in UK you can calculate the overall floor area as they give you the dimensions of each room. When looking for houses in Hungary I had no idea what a 100 square metre or 75 square metre house was like but was frustrated that the estate agents never gave the room sizes. In consequence I probably rejected houses that would have been big enough for my needs but looked a bit small in the photos.
Halls are generally to keep in heat from the front door, as well as privacy from anyone calling by.. i.e. them not being to see right into your living room from the door. I've always had a tumble dryer but never had a dishwasher.
There has been at least one incident of a child trying to say that they lived in a "terrace house" but they accidentaly said that they lived in a "terrorist house" and their teacher reported them, leading to the police raiding their house.
Nobody was raided. Don't embellish
@@simplypaul8681 It was not an embellishment.
I said that the house was raided becuase that’s what I believe to be the case and after going over some news articles related to the incident I still believe that it is reasonable to describe what happened at the boy’s house as a raid when the common meaning of raid is used but I do concede that the word raid might not be accurate if you use the legal definition (if there is one) and that the word raid may conjure up some inaccurate metal images of what happened. I assure you I did not intend to embellish the story, rather I described it the best I could in a single sentence.
I initial believed that the incident involved the police raiding the house because when I first heard about the incident it was been discussed on The Write Stuff and they said that the house was raided. The Write Stuff was legally obligated to be pollical neutral and the presenter made a habit of correcting any “false facts” that his guests claimed to be true (which led me to trust that they were acutely describing the incident).
The police were at the boys house the next day, while I can't be certain that they came with a search warrant I do know that a laptop was examined and the boy was “questioned”; the boy was scared and the family was “shocked” by the incident. Given that the police came to the house, examined a laptop and scared the family, I think that describing the incident as a raid is reasonable.
@@patrickokeefe4603a RAID is late at night or early in the morning, designed with the element of surprise in mind. The police will be yelling and probably force the door. What happened in the case you're referring to is what we typically call an investigation
@@simplypaul8681 Why not say that in the first place, instead of "Nobody was raided."
@@uoodSJW neither of us was replying to you. Have a great day
Loved it. Spot on haha. I like in England.
in norway you also have a halway at the entrance or sometimes a room with a door. It is called a "vindfang" or "wind catcher" in english. A "wind catcher" is a small passage room adjacent to the front door of a house. The purpose is to reduce the house's heat loss, or as the word says, prevent the wind from blowing straight into the building. It is also usually used to store outdoor clothes and shoes and the floor is usually made so it can handle lots of water, as in the winter snow often gets dragged in.
having the living room separate to the hall i think is a heating thing. you can keep the living room door closed and avoid losing heat as people come in and out of the front door to the house. also means you only need to worry about heating the living room and not the hall area, up the stairs and the upstairs landing which you would have to do if you got rid of the wall like in your example.
Am I the only one who likes American houses better? Way more space and there's area to play outside for the kids. Just my opinion!
Estate agents are the people who sell houses in the UK!
There are two types of estate in English law, Real and personal , that is actual land type of estate on the one hand and personal effects on the other. The term ‘estate agent ‘ implies real estate rather than personal stuff like jewellery etc.
Thanks for letting us know!
@@ruadhagainagaidheal9398 I always wondered why Americans used the term "real estate", instead of just "estate".
1:16: A townhouse in Britain is a terraced house that's generally 4 or more storeys tall, often where the ground floor doesn't line up with the road, so you get a raised ground floor & a lower-ground floor. This was since in the past it was considered a status symbol not to have the kitchen on the same floor where you welcomed guests, but the kitchen still needed to have plenty of natural light (it's not like it's particularly easy or safe to cook in the dark).
In the UK, a flat has only one floor, while an apartment may have one or multiple floors. An apartment with multiple floors is called a maisonette.
One thing that will push down the average for house size in the UK is that the wealthy tend to prioritise location over size, so there are fewer enormous mansions. This also has the effect of massively inflating house prices in city centres. In addition, our statistics on house size are based on what properties are listed on estate agents, & the largest houses tend to be kept within the family while the smallest change hands often. Generally the rule is the more asset-rich you are, the less frequently you move. This has the effect of entrenching some of the more problematic aspects of the class system, because working-class Brits find it harder to build support networks in a particular neighbourhood.
The areas of Britain where stone is most plentiful coincide with those where wood is most plentiful, & are mostly in the west. Both are in short supply in the east, so houses there are built out of brick roofed with pantiles, while in the west they use Welsh slate. London is built on an abundance of stock clay which turns yellow when fired.
In Britain, a tumble-dryer is considered a status symbol, although gradually now everyone is getting one. When I was growing up no-one had a tumble-dryer & a dishwasher was a status symbol. Before that it was a washing machine (although I am no-where near old enough to remember that), & before that a plumbed, indoor bathroom & before that a car.
As a house gets larger, its ratio of perimeter to area decreases & therewith the room for windows. A windowless space that can only be used to store clothes starts to sound like a good idea. We Brits would reject such extravagance since it's useless as a status symbol as guests won't know it's there. Although by pointing this out I may seem to have a special obsession with conspicuous consumption, but in-fact I'm just about the only Brit willing to be frank about it: the rest of us are ashamed of it since it makes us look unconscientious, but we do it all the time. The disappearance of the super-efficient bicycle from British cities in favour of the space-wasting, polluting automobile attests to this: if you're aspirational you try to look posh in an effort to become posh, if you're not aspirational you do it to subvert the socio-cultural boundary, & if you were already high-status you already had a car, & replaced it with a Range Rover in a bid to keep one step ahead.
Porches are found in Britain. A lot of houses have the door recessed into the wall by between 2-5 feet & that is considered to be a porch. Purpose-built porches on the front of homes are a thing in the region where my mother grew up. A wrap around porch isn't considered to be a porch, it's a verandah.
A front garden is considered to be a public area & people will sometimes grow things there that look pretty to impress the neighbours. It is even somewhat acceptable for passers-by to enter the front garden for their own purposes so long as they are careful not to break anything, quiet & deferent to the resident's wishes whilst there. The back garden by contrast is considered to be a private space & people put up high fences to enforce their right not to be overlooked by their neighbours (although it should be noted that in the past many were built with only waist-high fencing between back gardens to encourage occupants to be less individualistic). If you are doing something in the back garden the neighbours will assume you want nothing to do with them. If you are doing something in the front garden the neighbours will assume you want to socialise with them. These days most front gardens have had gates added at the front & been converted into a driveway. This is since they then are legally classed as an off-road vehicle access & it is illegal for anyone to block it without your permission, giving you a parking space of your own on the road. Most neighbours acknowledge this as extremely self-centred, but don't complain about it because it would be hypocritical since they've had it done themselves.
Not having a microwave oven is considered a status symbol since it shows you always have time to cook food from scratch. The exception to this is elderly people, since many men who grew up in an era when cooking was considered a female activity don't know how to cook themselves, so they have a microwave for times when their wife needs to make a visit to hospital.
Not having a hallway is considered extremely awkward. People like having a living space separated from it since they like feeling more enclosed & private. The hallway is a public space seen by door-to-door salesmen, Jehovah's Witnesses & Amazon couriers, all people for whom you don't want to have to decide whether to turn your TV off & miss some of the programming lest they find out your tastes in television viewing.
Granite countertops were a fad here in the late 2000s. My mother had one installed.
Thank you, that was interesting! Our houses in UK can be really small. I guess that’s probably why they don’t list the size so clearly, although I notice many estate agents now include the square footage with a floor plan. Timber framed houses are also becoming more popular nowadays in new developments where the prefabricated wooden construction is cheaper and quicker to erect, and also can be warmer. However they mostly make up the internal walls with the outer house construction in bricked or concrete block. I love the open plan layout of American houses but it’s so much colder over in the UK and smaller rooms are cheaper to heat, so I think that’s probably why it’s historically not been common to have huge rooms. Hallways also stopped heat from being lost. Although I think it’s becoming increasingly likely to see large open plan kitchen living spaces in the UK. People in UK have granite worktops in fancier houses. It’s expensive, that’s why it’s not common!
Congratulations Miss Cheezinacan, you two are now back on an even footing thanks to Mr Microwavetea's confession.
😂😂
I noticed that British homes tend to have a fence or wall around the front garden but not so much in US
Or even a hedge!
gun turrets , manned by killer squirrels :)
The hallway is a draft thing, but also a privacy thing. It’s considered bizarre and undesirable to open the door directly into a room. Means anyone who you open the door to is immediately “invading” your private space.
I can confirm what you said about the garden .... it is private, nice and I think is another consequence of a smaller footprint of houses (only having typically one side access) that we stay in the back garden
A Flat originally referred to accommodation in a building that was divided up 'on the flat'.ie by floor rather than into terraced houses. An 'Apartment' was accommodation in building that was used for another purpose, i.e. the managers apartment in a theatre or shop or the royal apartment in a palace. Flats are either 'rented', they belong to someone else you just pay to live there or they are 'Leasehold' were you own the flat in a building that belongs to someone else. There is 'Commonhold' were all the occupants of the flats hold the freehold of the property in common together (like a condominium) but I think this is rare in England.
Joint freeholds owned by each flat owner are becoming increasingly common. Probably because leasehold owners of entire buildings often misused their ownership to charge all sort of ridiculous fees.
Hi guys. I am an architect and I have been designing homes since I was 14 years old, so now that is 46 years of home design.
Most reasons for the hallways in houses is historic. Hallways prevent the spread of fires to all other areas of the house and provides a protected passage from the top of the house, down the staircase and to the front door.
Most houses used to have a pantry as a standard feature, but with the advent of fitted kitchens, people had the pantry removed. Pantries are making a comeback.
As a child, we had a laundry/utility room, a garage, and a ground floor loo (toilet).
I design a lot of new houses with all of the above and including indoor swimming pools and sauna/steam rooms. The new houses my clients are building are mostly include built-in wardrobes/closet (cupboards) in all bedrooms and walk-in wardrobes.
There are many people who have washing machines that are also tumble dryers and are called washer/dryers
And we call the first floor 'the ground floor'. The second floor in the UK is therefore called the first floor.
Anything else you want to know about homes, drop me a mail.
Aloha. Thanks for the info. Can you comment on airing cupboards please. What are they? Where are they usually located? Etc.
@@Lili-xq9sn Airing cupboards are usually where the hot water tank is. They often have slotted shelves above the tank to allow the hot air from the tank to flow around. Towel and bedsheets plus other items were kept in them to ensure they were completely dry.
@@andyp5899 Thanks!
This was an incredibly insightful comment! Thank you for taking the time to share your expertise with us, Antonia!
About the hallway fire-escape passage - was that intentional? Or was that a positive accidental result of building fire-resistant homes?
@@Lili-xq9sn traditionally they are where the hot water cylinder is located and has open slatted shelves for the drying of damp (not wet) laundered clothes or more often, bed sheets and towels
All of my rooms in my house have built in wardrobes and one thing I absolutely NEEDED when buying my home was a hallway! I like have a separate space to take off your shoes without inviting everyone into your home. If someone is dropping something off or for whatever reason they’re not staying, you can have your living room separate and not have everyone trampling through the whole space. A separate living room is great
The hallway is considered a "protected means of escape". In the event of a fire, the hallway provides an escape route from the bedrooms upstairs. Many modern homes have an open plan living room/kitchen and because fires usually start in kitchens it is illegal to have to escape through it unless there is some other means of fire and smoke suppression such as misting.
So glad to see I'm not alone in not knowing the size of my house. Thought I was unusual but apparently am in the majority here in the UK!
In one way, we kind of do, as estate agent particulars usually include the size of rooms, and even sometimes include a room plan with wall and window sizes. Quite important for furnishing and carpet sizes. Though not the areas of a property, no. But you could roughly work it out with a bit of mental arithmetic if you know the room sizes. For example, the little bungalow I live in has about 170m2.
As you said, most of the things you pointed out are to do with space, we have a 5th of your population in a space a 40th the size and if you take off the great swathes of almost empty countryside, particularly in the Scottish Highlands, the space is even smaller. I believe we are one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, especially if you just take England into account.
Also, a couple of things you mentioned are, in my mind at least, to do with privacy. Socialising in the back garden is simply to do with this, you don't want randomers constantly walking past when you're trying to have a quiet, private chat with friends, or have the next door neighbour whom you're not particularly keen on, interrupting you.
A big factor for the hallway is privacy as well. Say a couple of family members are watching a film in the living room, they don't want to be constantly interrupted by others wandering up and down the stairs and in and out of the kitchen, or people coming in the door, taking wet coats and shoes off, muttering about the rain, causing a massive disturbance. Mentioning clothing there as well, the hall is a good place to dump wet or muddy items of outdoor wear so you aren't walking that stuff further into the house. A lot of country houses have a boot room, like a utility room on the back of the kitchen where you can dump such things.
My own house has just 5 rooms (6 if you count the hall as a room), a living room, a kitchen, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. The hall is just a small square at the bottom and top of the stairs. The garden is quite large though and wraps round two sides of the house and extends a decent way back. It is an end terrace. Also I do not have a clue about the square metre size. As others have said, houses here tend to be sold on number of bedrooms.
Another great videos guys! 👍
That is the standard layout for terrace & semi-detached houses! I know some people have the wall removed but kept the wall in ours as it keeps the living room feeling more private and cosy
The UK does have porches, though they are a little different. They are usually an extension of your front door that will be covered in a mat. This is where you can take off your shoes, and store them before entering the hallway/main house.
I think. The lack of tumble dryers. Is largely down to, the cost of electricity.
The small rooms. Are down to the cost of heating.
I think in the UK tumble dryers and dishwashers are still regarded as luxury items rather than essentials. Plus we don't have the space.
the small rooms are down to the cost of land, and of building more so than the cost of heating- coal was abundant and cheap when much of the UK housing stock was constructed, and gas is cheap today, land, especially in or near cities has never really been cheap in this country.
At a guess the square footage thing was just never a priority here because our cities are so old we just had to use the available space between existing buildings, and the size was at most a secondary issue.
In America your cities are still very new, you have essentially the luxury of a clean slate rather than conforming to an existing map, and so you can focus more on things like square footage.
There are actually wood-build houses here (as in modern ones, not historical ones that have teams of people preserving them!) but for some reason they're phenomenally hard to get a mortgage on, so they're very rare.
I think our damp climate might be the main reason. As good a material as wood is, I don't think it would be as long lasting here as in most parts of America.
I think there are probably two reasons for that hallway thing. That wall might be load-bearing, supporting the weight of the floor above, plus separating the house into smaller rooms makes it easier and more efficient to heat. We're back to the climate again! It could also be a fire-control measure. Splitting a building into smaller compartments helps contain flames and allows people a few more precious moments to escape in an emergency. This is possibly why that floorplan is more common in older houses, that would once have been heated with open fires and even lit by gaslight.
Those hallways served several purposes.
1. You'll often find coat hooks, shoe racks and umbrella stands in there. Who want's to be taking those wet wellies into the living room?
2. Privacy. Should anyone come to the front door they cannot see into the living space.
3. They also serve as an aide to keeping the house warm. They do this by preventing draughts from the front door cooling down the living space which, because it is in itself smaller, is easier to heat.
I also want to add that my tiny kitchen which measures (118" X 68") has a dishwasher. It's me with a bottle of detergent, a dish cloth and hot and cold running water. Though so do buck the UK norm and wash the pots in soapy water first before passing them through again to remove detergent residue.
At 4:43 The Red Phone Box is in Grassmarket/West Bow Edinburgh. Dates back to 1160 AD (but modernised around 1820)