đŹđ§ BRIT Reacts To OUTDOOR OBJECTS YOU ONLY FIND IN AMERICA!
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 1. 07. 2024
- đŹđ§ BRIT Reacts To OUTDOOR OBJECTS YOU ONLY FIND IN AMERICA!
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Hi everyone, Iâm Kabir and welcome to another episode of Kabir Considers! In this video Iâm Going to React To OUTDOOR OBJECTS YOU ONLY FIND IN AMERICA!
âą 7 Outdoor Objects I Ne...
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One thing about fire hydrants: Aside from all the things other people have already mentioned in the comments section, it is illegal to park your car in such a way as to block a hydrant. If you do, in an emergency, firemen are _very_ likely to just break out the windows of your vehicle and pass the hose through the windows. If the hose happens to leak and your vehicle ends up looking like a fishtank on wheels... well, it's your own damn fault, and the city and fire department owe you _nothing_ because you were blocking the hydrant. (Your insurance will even refuse to pay for the damages, so you're left on the hook for repairs, _plus_ probably a fine for blocking the hydrant in the first place.)
There is one on my parentsâ front yard. It is super annoying when we have the whole family with their cars there.
I see the red and sometimes other color fire hydrants, maybe mostly in the city or maybe just one in a subdivision. There is supposedly a hook up hose hydrants strategically placed in the front yards of our homes. Theyâre a metal, sticks up less than 6â in our front yard. Some years back, they were spray painted.
Oh, weâve got the water towers. One for each county. So it seems anyways. I suppose there could be more.
As for mailboxes in our front yards. Iâve heard itâs a federal crime to mess with someone elseâs mailbox. Canât put anything in or take anything unless you are the mailman, representing US Postal Services. Some owners do buy the boxes that only can be accessed for taking out from by the owner. Iâve only seen them for sale in maybe a Loweâs or Home Depot store.
You can also get your car towed.
You don't actually have to be a postman to put something in a mailbox.
A water tower helps, among other things, to maintain the water pressure in city water lines...
Plus the water is pumped up into the towers at night. Then gravity added to the city water system to maintain pressure.
@@davide.s.9880 This is true. But they can kick on during the day when water consumption is abnormally high. Also (at least where I am), maintenance is conducted during the day so fewer pumps are available for rapid refills. Another point is you will often find them at the highest points of a city in order to obtain maximum water pressure and assist the pumps during refilling..
Yup, in smaller towns the water tower must be higher than the tallest building. Itâs all gravity
Most of the time it's the municipality's drinking water supply, but sometimes they are also used as fire suppression dump tanks. Water is chlorinated and then sent to the tower until someone turns on a tap to flow water to their faucet. While it's in the tower, the chlorine is kills any bacteria/pathogens in the water, so consumers won't get gastrointestinal problems.
I had never seen one until I went to the Midwest. Reno, Nevada certainly doesn't have them! Since our water comes from Lake Tahoe via the Truckee River, we don't need water towers.
Yellow is the safest color and allows for fewer accidents since they are so visible.
Also handy that yellow is color code for "caution" in American traffic signage :-)
And of course itâs not just any yellow itâs National School Bus Glossy Yellow a specific color that is used for all school buses in US, and I believe in Canada as well.
All highway work machinery is yellow too. Back hoes and graters. Even John Deere
@@jarrod5179 True example. Red on our Fire Trucks and Safety Orange for safety cones.
@@pjschmid2251 Well... to be fair, the _roof_ of the bus can be (and frequently is) painted some other color. For example, where I live, the roof of the bus is usually white, because it reflects more sunlight, so the bus (which doesn't have air conditioning) stays cooler in the warmer months.
The color for school busses is very specifically made, it even has a name - "International Chrome Yellow" and while you MAY see other vehicles where it looks similar, it's actually illegal to use the color if you aren't a school district.
Also, there is a specific code for the proper display of the American flag, including the caveat that to be flown at night, it must be illuminated.
Really?
I recall seeing some damn ugly Corvettes in that New York Taxi yellow, but the school buses are very different. To my eyes, it leans toward orange.
Very true! Every school bus is the same color and it is illegal to use that color on any other vehicle
We called it the cheese bus. Looks like a block of gov cheese with windows
Im gonna say, yes you can have the same color on cars. Not only would NO ONE care if your car matches EXACTLY, but such a law would be totally unenforceable (unless cops saw you painting your car and the container said- int chrome yellow) but then they also would not likely know or care either and even if you got "busted", what's the penalty?
Mail boxes are mostly delivered by car/mail trucks. Our homes are on acreage, therefore there is no way for anyone to walk those distance. Homes in the city usually have mail delivered to the home. Also it's against Federal Law to mess with anyone's mailbox.
Though I will say homes in suburbia will still usually have mailboxes down on the street. Easy enough for someone to be poking about in mailboxes. Even then I don't think there's much of a problem with mail theft. I guess going through mailboxes looks suspicious enough and coupled with neighborhood watch programs people's mail is generally pretty safe. Especially if mail is not left in the box overnight.
@@bagnome We live in Sacramento, CA, and there is a HUGE mail theft problem. My identity was stolen twice through mail theft, and both times my mailboxes were locked. It's definitely a thing here
Yellow is indeed highly visible, and is considered a "Safety" Color.
The flag is definitely everywhere. All of us who went to public school also stared at the flag with our right hand over our heart and said the pledge of allegiance every morning and at many school assemblies. Itâs literally in every classroom.
Don't forget it's flow outside churches, outside schools, MASSIVE flags at every other car dealership, on top of highrise buildings, hanging from bridges, and stuck on cars, trucks, buses, homes, trees and those roadside mailboxes.
Foreigners would probably be shocked at the many Confederate flags you see here in the States.
Thereâs a whole block doing a Christmas light display and most houses also have the American flag next to Frosty âïž
I didnât have to pledge to the flag ⊠every so often but not enough that I remember it well. We sang the anthem every so often too. Grew up in TN
Water towers are used pretty much everywhere in America, how they work is explained well in a video by Real Engineering but to sum it up. Water demand in cities is constantly changing and it's expensive to run pumps at full capacity all the time, especially when the water isn't needed. To add these pumps can be damaged if they are turned on or off often. So they build water towers that will fill with water during times of low demand, like late at night. Then during high demand like the morning or lunchtime any demand for water exceeding the capacity of the pumps will use water from the water tower, which also doesn't need a pump because it is so high gravity will move the water.
About mailboxes, in my experience most don't have locks but some do, also most of them are very secure in the ground so you can't really walk away you'd probably need a shovel unless it was freshly installed, also weirdly in my part of town most people have their mailbox right next to their front door. Also with stealing mail I don't know about in Britain but in the US stealing mail is a felony.
Also with the mailboxes, spme mail does occasionally get stolen, but it is not only a felony bug it is a federal felony which is much worse than a state felony. You just don't mess with the feds -- unless you're just REALLY stupid.
The water towers -- they are often seen in small towns instead of big cities. Driving on a state highway (not usually an interstate (multi-lane big highway)) going through s series of small towns every 30 or 40 miles, you'll see a water tower I'm most of these towns. They can be interesting in that they may be just plain with the name if the town or painted with some kind of logo or message. They are a thing that I always notice as I drive through a town I'm not familiar with. And since America is so big, we have literally thousands of small towns so there are a LOT of water towers. But of course, I've only been 33 states, so I could be wrong about those I've not been in.
Also, about those mailboxes on a pole, those are along the street. The mail for those boxes are delivered by people in a little truck with the steering wheel on the street side and they drive along the street, stopping at each house. So, you'll often find those in areas out more in rural areas where sometimes the house are some distance apart or maybe in an area in a city where it may have originally been more rural but got more crowded as time went by. But in the more urban areas where, generally speaking, the houses are closer together, the mail is delivered by the mail persons by walking with a bag over their shoulder. At least, that's the way it's done in my city in Kansas.
Here in western Washington State we have hills and mountains so water is held in reservoirs behind dams mostly though a few of the higher hills in cities have them also.
I think most "newer" suburbs have a community mailbox. It's a large array of little mailboxes that are individually keyed. The postal worker opens the whole thing from the back and sorts the mail into the individual boxes. There are two or three bigger boxes for packages. If you have a package they put the key for the bigger box in with your mail; the key is made so that you can't remove it from the lock once you've retrieved your package. There's also a slot to drop off letters to be mailed.
Individual mailboxes on the road are more of a rural thing.
@@cathipalmer8217 Those are usually a developer built housing where all the houses are built at once and the boxes are put up on the cheap so they don't have to do an install on each house/building. In established neighborhoods boxes are usually on the house, in the door or at curbside as each house is built. I've had all three.
Hardly any household mailbox has a lock on it. Apartment complexes, Condo associations and a few other places sometimes do have.
Yes but thatâs a totally different type of mailbox than the one he is referring to. Heâs talking about the classic American mailbox sitting on a post in the front yard.
@@pjschmid2251 That's what I was referring to as well.
Mailbox: Mail tampering may lead to imprisonment. Within many jurisdictions, mail tampering is a crime and is punishable by incarceration, fines, or a term of probation. Within the United States, tampering with mail may be a crime under state laws; however, mail fraud is a federal crime.
Not just mail fraud but tampering with the mailbox is a federal crime.
Good way to get them hands from you neighbors to
The Postmaster will arrest their own mother for mail tampering.
Just have to add, mail bashing is still a thing. I've mostly lived in rural areas where it seems to be a common thing juveniles will do, taking a baseball bat and hanging out the passenger window of a moving car trying to bash in the mailbox. Maybe it's not a thing in cities or suburbs especially with all the cameras now, but when the mailbox is a mole from your house up on the paved road....it's still a target. Now that I'm in a city the box is attached to the house by the door.
@@pjschmid2251 And think how many times we've put things in mailboxes for the homeowner. We're next on the FBI most wanted kist...haha!
Hi Kabir... when I was stationed in Elmira Heights NY I was a volunteer firefighter. Fire hydrants can actually be opened by anyone if you have the proper size wrench to do so, but in some localities it is against the law, and in others it is not necessarily a crime but you are not allowed to do it. In some cities, particularly if there is a heat wave and it is really hot in the city because of all the concrete and asphalt, the city will crack open a couple of fire hydrants for the kids to run through (and adults I guess, no one is stopping them either). Anyway, most people do not mess with the fire hydrants because everyone knows they are there in the event there is a fire. Those hydrants supply water to the fire trucks.
Mailboxes donât have locks unless you live in an apartment complex,where there will be a big local mailbox cube,with individual boxes for each apartment,the mail carrier just opens the back and fills it that way.Could you imagine a Postal Carrier having to keep track of keys to individual boxes.We also have Boxes at the Post Office you can rent if available,you just have to drive there to get your mail.Messing with the mail or mailboxes in anyway is a Federal Crime and the Post Office takes it very serious and usually prosecutes to the fullest extent.
I live in the Suburbs in SoCal and every two blocks of houses has a shared large mailbox with several small lockable compartments for individuals and one large one for large mail where your package is left(the key for that large one is left in your small mailbox with your letters) Amazon and UPS still deliver to the door of course, itâs just for USPS
If you grew up in NYC then you definitely opened a fire hydrant on a super hot day and the cops wonât usually bother you. Weâve had one open one for us - a group of like 15 kids- and yeah you run around playing in the water. But technically youâre not supposed to
FUN... we should do that in AZ.
In Detroit you can call the fire dept out to open a hydrant on a hot day. They come out and put an adapter on that makes the water spray.
@@pinkyjones7398 here in NYC, also
Philly too!
With mailboxes, as with many things, you have to remember the size of the US and how chronically underfunded useful institutions tend to be. Postal carriers can have enormous routes thanks to understaffing and rezoning and having the box right at the street means they save a lot of time dropping off mail as they drive or walk by. And since itâs a federal crime to muck about with the mail (because itâs a federal institution) and people like their privacy you get socialized to leave mailboxes alone.
I had my mail stolen, I found out when a detective called me to say they found it when they raided a house they had under surveillance. He said there were piles of mail from random areas. They had a bank of computers & were applying for credit in mass. Everything had been declined because they didn't have intimate details, Mother's maiden name etc.
Wow, some people are so bold!
Itâs a federal crime to mess with mail/mailboxes. That being said, sometimes people vandalize them. We had a mailbox for years that looked like someone smashed it up with a baseball bat (but it was still functional, until it got too rusty). And Iâve heard stories about people knocking mailboxes over with cars/trucks.
When I was a kid I ran one over with my bike. The post was broken so I just picked up my broken bike and ran home
My parent's mailbox used to be run over about once a month, because it was across the highway from their property & the owners of the property that it was on could not drive in reverse. It didn't stop being run over until the city changed the ordenance from all mailboxes on one side of the street to each property had to have their mailbox in front of their property.
@@cridgeway666 definitely depends if you live in the city vs in the country your experience with the mailbox.
Yeah my mailbox got taken out by a snowplow.
What's funnier is when the vandalized property replaced the mailbox post with a concrete-filled steel tube and painted to look like a wooden post.
Let's just say the assailant is definitely apprehended on scene the next time they try to run over the mailbox.
There are also two types of fire hydrants, wet and dry. Wet hydrants are filled with water and are used down South and other warm parts of the country. These are the kind you see in movies where a car snaps them off and you have a 100 foot geyser.
In the North we have to use "dry" hydrants so they don't freeze up in winter. They have a 6 foot long valve stem down to the valve seat underground, you take off the caps, hook up your hoses and crank open the valve with a large socket wrench. When you are done you close the valve and an opening is uncovered which allows the hydrant to drain out.
100% American lived in the North and South & this has never come into conversation before.... you learn something new every day!
Citizens don't use them, the fire dept.
There are some dry hydrants in the rural parts of NC that I've seen.
Fire Hydrants are actually easy to open despite how they look. You just need a good solid wrench big enough for it. The sides are on screw threads and the top controls the water pressure. turn the top left to open right to close and yeah done. the fire hoses actually have a special clip to attach firmly to a hydrant. I'm not saying actually opening one as you get in trouble for it but its why you see the blocks in NYC with them spewing water as the residents use that water for whatever.
was gonna comment this ^
During summer times the fire departments will open them intentionally to test them, while also allowing the kids to have something to play in/cool off.
Back in the days before air conditioning, when heat waves could really rack up the casualties, the New York City firemen would often open the fire hydrants on city streets during very hot weather to allow people a way to cool off. They do so less often these days, but sometimes when it gets very hot, residents will just take matters into their own hands and wrench one open. It's not legal for regular civilians to do so, of course, but it happens in hot weather all the same.
We used to open them in my neighborhood growing up in Chicago, in the summers. It was so much fun.
But of course itâs of no use in fighting a fire unless you have a firehose
I remember that episode of Doctor Who (Matt Smith era) where they specifically brought in a yellow school bus to deliver Amy and Rory to the Doctor because those buses are so quintessentially American (just like red double deckers are so very British), even though it would take some wildly improbable coincidences for a school bus driver to pick up two random adult tourists and deliver them to the middle of nowhere. Since they were smart enough to not even try to explain it in episode, the audience is free to speculate on the how and why...
Mailboxes do not have locks on them. They have a door on the front that takes up the whole front of the box. A mailman can fit small boxes inside as well as letters. Some rural areas have trouble with young boys driving around smashing mailboxes with a baseball bats. But it is pretty unusual for someone to steal mail after itâs been delivered. Also, there is a red arm on the side that can be rotated. You can put letters in your mailbox and lift the arm to let the mailman know you have outgoing mail.
The 90s really killed the old smashing mailboxes with bats activity by building a brick fortress around the mailbox in many suburban neighborhoods and you weren't taking that down with a bat...
When my.
Mailbox was taken out by the snow plow one winter, I put the post 15 feet back from the road and put a long arm on a pivoting joint, and put a huge box at the end
Mine has a lock inside of it. It looks like the basic old mailboxes, but it has a smaller locked box inside.
The reason why it's rare for someone to steal mail after it's been delivered _might_ have something to do with the fact that it's a _federal offense_ to tamper with the mail. That includes smashing the mailboxes, as some young boys have discovered. Nothing discourages a night of mailbox-smashing fun more than getting caught, and discovering that _you_ are going to juvie hall, and your parents are on the hook for $15,000 per mailbox (so even when you get out of juvie, your parents will ground you for the rest of eternity).
I knew someone who lived in an older neighborhood 20 years ago. One winter he had homeless people taking the mail out of his mailbox and burning it for heat.
Water towers are used for a cities water supply. Since water runs downhill, as long as you store the water above where you are using it you will always have pressure in your pipes. Fun fact: many skyscrapers have water towers on their roof just for that building.
A Big wrench and some elbow grease can open just about any fire hydrant, we donât open them because you can get a huge fine
Tampering with mail is a felony in the US so people usually don't mess with it.
I did some occasional work for a local water board back in the day including digging up and repairing even replacing outdated or busted lines. Often there wouldn't be any cutoff valves to utilize during said projects, and I would have to open the nearest fire hydrant while I did my work in order to drain enough water from the pipes. Sometimes they would have to kept fully open, blasting water like mad, for several hours...nearby residents were not always happy about this, but there really wasn't anything I could do about it. While repainting the town's hydrants, I've had several people get angry because they weren't able to request a different color for the ones on or close to their properties lol
Being raised in the vast countryside of Canada, the yellow school bus was needed because cars speed by during snowstorms etc. (The stories I could tell from over a decade of riding them). The white picket fence was in the book Tom Sawyer so this has been historically around a long time.
Fire hydrants in the US have to be opened a specifc way. But its not uncommon to see a fite hydrant opened in various neighborhoods in NYC on a hot summer's day.
I think they have a special wrench.
I grew up in New Jersey and it wasn't summer until someone opened the fire hydrant. We used to get sprinkler caps from the fire department so as to not lower the water pressure in the area.
Yellow is a color used to indicate caution mostly on signs, and itâs easily noticeable. School buses stop frequently and kids are entering and exiting and crossing the street so drivers should be cautious and aware around them
Highway billboards in America are usually so big that you can read them from your peripheral vision while still paying full attention to the road. If you maintain a safe distance behind the car in front of you, there's no risk of crashing if you just glance at the billboard. If you're stupid enough to read a billboard as if you're reading a book, you don't deserve to have a license.
We have some localized billboards, like for instance, comedian Bill Engvall will be in town to do a live performance at the Casino. Iâve seen it in passing but the words âfinal performanceâ kinda captures my attention for an extra minute. Well, ok not really a full minute but youâre left wondering about that word final. So, some that hadnât seen that might linger on viewing it but no one in that area should be going over 45-50mph anyways unless they want to risk getting a speeding ticket.
Don't forget this guy doesn't have a drivers license!
â@@catw6998the speed limit is 65, or some places 70 mph. If you are driving less than 45 on a freeway you can get a ticket. Thats because 45 is the minimum speed limit.
@@garycamara9955 this was local to my area with ref to that show I had mentioned.
Mailbox position depends on where you live...different everywhere. It can be a box at the end of the driveway or. a box right next to the front door or a slot in the front door. For condominiums /apts you'll find mailboxes in the lobby or a bunch centrally located.
I have a white picket fence in my "front garden" that also has an American flagpole flying the flag 365 days of the year with solar lights on at night. Right outside the front garden is my mailbox so the letter carrier doesn't have to walk to the house they can remain in their truck. On my side and back yards i have chain link fence 4 feet tall and signs saying DO NOT ENTER DOG WILL BITE. Sadly the fire hydrants in my neighborhood are painted dark green, probably for esthetic reasons, but the ones in the city are red. Schools, banks, government buildings, parks, car dealerships (they have the biggest flags) all have American flags. Some also have the state flag or the flag of their ancestors. A house up the street has the American flag on one side of the porch and the Greek flag on the opposite side. Water towers here in New England seem to be the cement kind, not the metal but I noticed the metal ones were prevalent in South Carolina.
A Swiss friend of mine that I met while I was traveling in Europe always brings up the yellow school buses. That was her #1 stereotype of Americans when I asked her.
White picket fences arenât there to keep you out.
Theyâre there to say stay out.
Iâm terrified of letter boxes. Like anyone can slip something into the INSIDE of your home?! Mailbox is on a post which is usually implanted into cement and theyâre usually locked. So I find it safer than someone having access to inside of my home. Especially after the 9/11 when we had the anthrax attacks.
mail boxes have a "flag" that is raised when you have mail - you can also put this "flag" up so that our post people (letter carriers in Canada) can pick up your mail that you want to be sent out
Our postal system has different mailboxes in different types of communities. In apartments and condos, you normally have a community area with everyone's mailboxes together. Some smaller towns still have them on the side of the houses or have mail slots still. The mailboxes he is talking about are from more rural and suburban types of communities where houses are farther apart so most of the time the mail is delivered by vehicle and not on foot. One thing we do have in common with the UK is that our mail trucks are right-hand drive since we drive on the right side of the road and mailboxes are on the right side, it would require the mail person to get out at every mailbox if it was on the "normal" side.
It's a federal offense to mess with the mail.. I've never heard of any one messing with mail. It saves time to have all the mailboxes on the street for the mailman.
Bingo and to add the Postal service is recognized as a branch of of government
Yeah the penalties are crazy.
Up to five years in federal prison and fines of up to $250,000.
It is also a crime to injure, deface or destroy any mail deposited in a mailbox. For each act of vandalism, you could be imprisoned for up to three years and fined up to $250,000.
@@douglascampbell9809 damn. Knew it was illegal, but damn.
We have never had any mail taken from our mailboxes-never heard of it, but it may happen. It is just rare as the penalties are stiff and it is a federal crime. Same for accosting a letter carrier. It is considered a federal crime with automatic imprisonment. Just unheard of.
I have had a postal carrier actually steal my mail. Years ago, my husband ordered two phone cards one for him & one for me so we could call home from a payphone if we were out & didn't have any change. The mail carrier opened the envelope & took one of the phone cards & tried to run up our phone bill by making long distance calls & calling 1-900 porn lines. He also would take our magazines & read them before eventually delivering them to us a month or so later sometimes.
The "mesh" fences he referred to, in America, are called "chain link" fences in the USA. They're cheaper than wood fences so they are seen more often now than the picket fences.
I had no idea our fire hydrants were unique to the USA. Only firemen can use them, they require special wrenches and hoses to operate. Every kid has accidentally run into one of those on their bikes at some point or another!
Americans, in general, are honest people (at least, historically... this is changing though) and so mail theft didn't really used to be a thing. It's becoming more of a thing, however, stealing mail is a federal offense and you'll get into huge trouble if you're caught. You're not even allowed to go and put fliers inside of mailboxes for marketing. If you want to market people, you have to SEND them the flier or leave it in people's doorways.
I would be weirded out to have a mailman throw mail through my door. I guess that's the result of the large American personal space. We tend to like for people to stand back and that might be why we keep our mailman further away from our houses (unless it's a big delivery).
There are usually no locks on the mailboxes. In general, the federal offense for mail theft...for even TAMPERING with someone's mailbox...is a pretty good deterrent for most people...except for poorly raised teenagers. They've been known to drive by with baseball bats and knock them over for "fun". (At least until a wise homeowner fills the mailbox up with concrete. Then it's not so fun anymore.)
Oh yes and water towers are seen mostly in rural towns. That's the water storage for the town. I didn't know that it helped with pressure until I saw the comment below.
Watch the movie What's Eating Gilbert Grape. A water tower has a place of prominence in a particular scene in that movie.
My mailbox has a lock, but in my neighborhood there's a single large subdivided box for about 20 houses.
It's pretty mormal to have single home ones with no lock though.
Most hydrants have locks that only Firemen can access. A special tool is used to remove the caps and place a hose on it. Construction workers can also access them with a special permit and a usage guage.
This is what I was going to mention but figured someone else would beat me to it.
You need a valve wrench to open the water line to the hydrant so that you can use water out of it. Most of the time they are left open. If you use one on a construction site you need a meter to record the amount used so the city can bill you for it. A lot of the time the older valves are rusted in place and are really hard to turn unless you have a gas powered machine that is really helpful in turning the valves.
But so long as they have those things, anyone COULD use a fire hydrant
@@justindye9443 Correct Justin. That meter is provided with the permit by the city. At least in Houston it is. Then the construction company is billed at $.03 Âą per gallon. Where we get $.08Âą per gallon as a regular home. I've never understood that till a friend of mine became a city engineer. He told me that by them using the water out of the hydrant it helps keep down the forming of rust and unwanted minerals in the pipes and allows better flow to regular residencies. My answer to that was " SO YOU ARE CHARGING THEM FOR DOING YOUR JOB?" His answer was spot on. He said Yuppers! It's better than wasting the water by opening up the hydrants and allowing them to just flow into the drain system. This way we at least get paid for the sewage Made sense to me. đđ
Water tower.
Water is pumped up into it and then is gravity fed to the local community/town/small city. It's cheaper to provide the pressure required by gravity feed as the only power required is to just pump water up into the tower instead of through a whole town
Just look at the tops of all the apartments in New York City.
The Fire hydrants are also color-coded so that the firemen know which fire hydrants have how much water pressure coming out of them in case they need a higher yield of water for the fire
School busses are yellow for, exactly as you said, high visibility! You'll even see personal vehicles painted a similar shade so the owner can save on insurance. I've been all over the US, and have to say, I've only seen water towers in rural areas like my hometown and the town I went to university in. Mailboxes DON'T have any kind of security measures, so anyone can grab your mail. It IS illegal to do it, but... You know that won't stop certain people. You see in movies all the time kids busting firehydrants on a hot summer day, especially movies taking place in the Big City.
In our little Indiana Town (750 people) our Fire hydrants have all sorts of different paint designs on them, a couple years ago the town volunteer fire department had a hydrant decoration contest, the one across the road from me has car company Logos all over it, Ford, GM, subaru (local car plant) etc. Some had flame paint, a lot were painted by kids and their parents.
You nailed it as to why school buses are yellow! They stand out and are easily visible to all traffic. I grew up outside the main city limits and our school district was very large. Although our school was only about 3 miles away from our home, our school bus trip every morning took us 45 minutes to get there. We traveled for miles and miles picking up other kids who were much farther outside the city limits. We used to pile up in the back of the bus and sing all the popular songs of the day.....our most favorite was "America Pie"! We had our favorite bus drivers who used to do funny things on the trip to and from school.....it was a blast to ride the bus to school and a memory to cherish! Here in our home town, we too have an old water tower. It is located in the middle of town, and although our city is now about 100,000 population and have a totally functioning city water system, we have chosen to not take it down as it is an icon in by-gone years that we don't want to lose.
Highway billboards were never distracting to me as a driver, actually never heard any discussions about them being a distraction. It's something you are used to seeing as a child and grow up seeing , so you really don't pay them that much attention or hardly at all.
In Phoenix, Arizona area you will see many houses with cement block fences that are 6ft high. We really like to have our privacy and keep people out. Also, in many areas there are subdivisions and we have a community mail box station. This is where there are about 15 separate boxes - 1 for each house. So many areas have 2-3 in a spot. You wonât see many white picket fences.
If you want to be a cop in the Phoenix area, you have to be able to "jump" those 6-ft walls!
Picket fences are part of the "American Dream." ie Earn enough $$ to buy a house with a white picket fence. Rare in cities, all over suburbs.
Towns determine where your mailbox is situated when streets are built. Postal workers find it much easier to deliver while still in their truck & not walk around. The height & placement must be accessible for the driver. Other areas do have mailboxes set up near the front door, Some are mail slots that you are familiar with. Some "gated" communities have everyone's box set up together so driver never has to drive around, simply one stop to pop in individual boxes.
We live on a highway and our mailboxes are under the jurisdiction of the state highway department. The boxes are on break away poles. And if you need to change your mailbox, you are suppose to call the highway department and they will install your new one. Regarding fire hydrants. I got interested in these when I was a council member. Working through four fire chief, I learned thereâs suppose to be one every 500 feet. To make sure one could be reached from a fire truck to the fire. That wasnât always the case. So there are fire trucks that are loaded with water. Also, the different colors of the tops of the hydrants tell another story. If the top is black, that hydrant is dead, unusable. Yellow means it works but has low water pressure. And green means it works and has high water pressure. Even though I was only responsible for my district, I rode all over town looking at the hydrants. I was so shocked to find how in inadequate the hydrants were. Spacing and condition. I was horrified that our huge high school was not even protected by a single hydrant! And lastly, it is said that the closer your house or business is to a working hydrant, the cheaper your insurance is. Ok, thatâs my 2 cents of information. Love your videos!! đ
Some houses still use letterboxes usually the city has them
The water from the fire hydrant is almost always the same water that goes into your house. They stem up from the mainline
Most of the things mentioned are found in Canada as well. Yellow school buses, fire hydrants (usually red or yellow, occasionally maybe other colours depends on municipal or provincial choices), white picket fences, water towers (though not as prevalent as in U.S.), mailboxes are usually found in the country and in the city they are usually found attached to your house by the front door (though Canada Post has started switching over to community mail boxes) and older houses may still have letter boxes in doors.
We have an all weather flag, with a light, hanging on our porch railing all year. We have a "fancy" fringed one for Veterans Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day. We fly the flag everyday because my dad is retired Navy, my older brother is retired Marine Corps and I spent 9 yrs in the Air Force.
Firefighters are the only ones legally authorized to use a fire hydrant here in America but anyone with a wrench can still get water out of it. Now whether or not you as a regular person have a hose that would actually FIT on the thing is another matterâŠ
Fun thing about hydrants. The more snow that area gets during the winter, the taller they tend to be. At least that's what I was told to explain the different heights of them
In snowier areas they often put a slender fiberglass pole on top to mark where they hydrant is. It's then up to the property owner to clear out the hydrant within 24 hours after a storm
Where I live, near Lake Tahoe, California we get anywhere from 15 to 30 feet of snow each year. The hydrants are regular size with a long snow pole with a red stripe at the top.
It's usually bills in the mailboxđŹ. Unless it's a 70's or 80's movie where ppl are hitting them w/baseball bats, I don't see ppl bothering them.
the public can use fire hydrants, you rent a special hook up from the fire department that tracks how much water you use. Not sure if that's every where in the U.S. but I'm not sure how often people are aware of it
Ya u can. Ppl tend to use them for filling up their pools muvh quicker.
3:35 water towers are used to provide water pressure to our fresh water coming out of the tap. Because they're elevated, the gravity creates a solid level of PSI on the water so that it can reach the 4th floor of an apartment building, for example.
Basically hydrostatic pressure in a real life application.
It is illegal for an unauthorized person to use a fire-hydrant outside of a fire emergency, and they have one very simple feature to prevent tampering: the large nuts on the screws that operate the hydrant are all *PENTAGONS*. This means that you either need a special wrench that pretty much only firemen have, or a LOT of dedication and muscle to turn them.
As a certified water treatment plant operator a water towers water usually never leaves the tower it is used to maintain the pressure of the water system. There are usually two probes/switches that determine the water level when the first switch is activated the closest pump comes on to replenish the water level if both switches are on all the connected wells in the connected distribution system turn on. Mostly it happens when there is a significant fire and the fire department is sucking water out of a few fire hydrants. I have seen fire truck take so much water at a time that the pipes are "sucked" dry until the tower gets refilled usually as little as 5 minutes if your town/city has sufficient pumps.
I love videos like this because the things you donât think about everyday certain countries donât have.
And to answer your question which Iâm sure someone already has. No, no one wants to steal your mail. As a person whoâs had a mailbox all his life, no one ever stole my bills. Itâs also a federal offense to do so. Itâs not like thereâs anything valuable in it.
And yes, only the firemen can use the hydrant. It takes a special wrench to take the cap off and turn the water on. And only firemen hose can screw onto the hydrants. This differs when living in the cities.
As for the flag. Itâs not entirely true unless you live in certain states. Obviously all government building fly the flag but as far as houses, it depends on where you live. Coming from New York, I rarely see them in peoples yard.
living in the southwest desert area of the US the biggest outdoor thing I notice different to other parts of the US as well as many countries, is our use of concrete "cinder block" walls as fences. I think they fair better in the desert heat, but it is very stark looking.
They're used to give a community the pressure they need to get the water to your house so you can have a shower, have pressure in your water hose or just anywhere your water source require pressure. The ancient Romans had the water flow down from the mountains via the aqueducts allowing them to have public fountains. We pump the water up into the tower and gravity takes care of the rest.
Even during poorest of weather conditions, yellow is the safest color for moving vehicles. The school buses' black lettering stands out against the hue, and according to research, "Lateral peripheral vision for detecting yellows is 1.24 times greater than for red."
Not just the American flags, you can sometimes see college team flags, US Military flags especially the US Marine flag. If you came down South before 2015 youd see alot of Confederate battle flags.
Mesh fences are called chained link fences.and mailboxes are considered federal property, so any tampering or stealing of mail is a federal offence only a postal carrier is authorized to put anything in a mailbox.
Well, the owner can put mail in their own box. Lawrence didnât mention that the mail carrier will pick up your outgoing mail when you put it in the mailbox and put the red flag up that is on the side of the mailbox so the carrier knows you have mail that needs to be picked up and taken back to the post office to be sent out. I have never been in another country where you can do this.
@@hrussell9677 Correct, but the letter you put in the box has a stamp on it so it's legal but you can't put a package or any object in anybody's mailbox.Even when our police gave me a citation for my lawn(I let it grow past what is acceptable) he couldn't put it in the mailbox, he had to tape it to my from door.
Fire hydrants are only to be accessed by city workers or the emergency personnel
Also not many people have the tools needed to get the caps off.
Tell that to people in certain neighborhoods in NYCâŠ
Of a certain color, who consider it racism to not allow them to open those hydrants whenever they please.
@@Ira88881 please stop
@@hrussell9677 Stop what?
Youâre denying it?
Even if you could open a fire hydrant, you need the big fire hoses to direct the water. But in poorer neighborhoods sometimes someone will use a giant wrench or two to open them up an cause a spray into the street for kids to play in. It's illegal but it happens anyway whenever it gets unbearably hot.
White picket fences have a great deal to do with aesthetics most white picket fences are built around the gardens of white wooden homes
yellow busses are coloured for visibility - also there are 3 black lines on the sides of the bus - one indicates the lower level of the bus, the other is for the seat, the last one if for the height of the seats - theses are for emergency purposes so that responders can use to find children in accidents.
The idea of a water tower is, all that water being held that high above the surrounding area, creates water pressure for an entire area. Especially in very flat areas.
Roadside mailboxes are typically only in low crime neighborhoods or the rural country where people have ridiculously long driveways that the mailman doesn't need to drive down for every residence they're delivering to.
While they're not locked, typically the community sense of all your neighbors means no one is going to steal each other's mail (often times we ask a trusted neighbor to collect our mail if we're gone on a vacation for a few days or weeks and just pick it up from them when we get back). Combined with the high level of felony that mail theft is, it's fairly a low risk system.
In higher crime, more densely populated, business district areas you start to e other variations. A box on the side of the house by the door, a lockable box on the outside of your house by the door, a letter slot in the door, a group of streets that have one HOA "mailbox" like many apartment complexes have where there's rows of locked boxes matching for each residence, etc.
The stereotypical mailbox is very difficult to remove though. The post is often a study 4x4 piece of lumber and dug 2-4 feet deep and typically set in concrete.
The actual door slot is less frequently used in norther states or mountainous regions where the cold draft it causes in the winter is absolutely unacceptable.
My husband is a "tanker". Tanker is what the people who build water towers call themselves. Water towers come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. My husband actually worked on (did maintenance) that Elkhart tank btw. Water towers are water storage units mostly. They also help provide water pressure to the areas they service, reason why they tend to be tall.
Yellow is the color for caution. It's used in stop lights, road signs to let us know of sharp curves and other things.
Mailboxes can't be picked up. They are cemented 2 feet into the ground, if installed properly. Most are not locked but a few are. We call our "mailmen" carriers or couriers.
*Please google âthe Gaffney peach.â* đ
Some cities get creative with their water towers.
The âPeachoidâ (- yes, really.. đ) is not a beautiful thing to behold, but it is a memorable and fun landmark. đ
(South Carolina is the #2 producer of peaches, behind California.)
This was very interesting. Most of these I would've thought they were everywhere
Tampering with someone else's mail is a federal felony! That technically includes opening your spouse's or adult children's mail. Tho most people still do it.
A chain link fence is great for keeping kids and dogs safe from roaming onto other peoples property.
Water towers are all over in the US. Where I live in a fairly large town we have three water towers one of which is just three lots away from where I live. Makes nice shade in the evening.
They are not so common in New England. They are more common in the Midwest.
The yellow color that school buses are painted is actually called "safety yellow".
Nope it's International Chrome Yellow which is a mix between yellow and orange. Maybe mixed with other stuff. Safety Yellow looks noticeably different
Water towers are used to feed towns with gravity fed water. A main pump will pump the water high up and the gravity will give the town a consistent water pressure all over.
White picket fences are usually for decoration, not so much for security. Same with hedge-rows, usually cut short. The mesh fences, here called "chain link" are more for security, especially when 2 metres + tall, (sometimes topped with barbed wire, but never at residences). Fire hydrants take a special 5-sided spanner to operate. It's not just school buses that are yellow. Heavy construction equipment (bull dozers, graders, excavators) are also painted a "Safety yellow" colo(u)r. School buses also have flashing red lights when the students are embarking and debarking. Thanks for the video. Ian
Just yesterday the postal carrier ac identity put an envelope addressed to my neighbor in my mailbox, His driveway is next to mine, but his house is a quarter mile behind mine with a soybean field between us. I drove back to his house to give him his mail.
Personally I love the way the British flag looks. Canada's too. Most European flags are boring looking.
I agree but I also am confused with the "Union Jack" because England, Scotland and Wales consider themselves to be separate countries which is bullshit.
I think the Maryland flag has the most Pazzazz of all the US states
Fire hydrants have a special pentagonal head. Regular wrenches don't really work, but a pipe-wrench or a chain wrench and cheater. A cheater is a length of pipe to add leverage. Slide it over the tool handle and pull.
On the fire hydrant there are two side caps that come off for the use of a 2 1/2 inch hose connection, the large cap or steamer cap is more today with the advent of LDH Large Diameter Hose which used more now than the 2 1/2.
When they are used for a non emergency use such as road construction the water dept will attach a water meter to it so that it can generate a water bill. Sometimes you will see the top and caps of the hydrant painted different colors and that is to indicate that hydrants pressure. The pressure differs from hydrant to hydrant.
Yes, Americans are proud of our flag.... And you NEVER EVER let one touch the ground...
In America people who deliver your mail are called Postal Workers or Letter Carriers officially.
Yeah but who actually uses the official names?
No it's the mail man, even if it's a woman.
Or, more often, the more colloquial, mailman.
Kids use fire hydrants on a hot day. After you're done playing in the water, you close it up again.
But it is against the law and the police may be called, who in turn will have the local fire station come and close it up; it is only to be opened by the fire department.
we aren't supposed/allowed to, but yea.... who hasnt danced under a hydrant rain at least once as a child haha
@@steventambon2588 me. I havenât.
@@steventambon2588 Raises hand
To answer some of your questionsâŠ.water towers are in some towns to regulate water pressure for the residents, our school buses are yellow because it is a highly visible color in all sorts of weather and there are very strict rules regarding traffic around a school bus. When the school bus is getting ready to load or unload students their lights will flash and small stop signs come out the sides and all traffic must stop at the intersection until the lights go off to ensure the safety of the students crossing the street. And if you get caught breaking the safety rules the fines are large! White picket fences nowadays arenât made of wood, but are made of vinyl. Which is nice, so you donât have to paint every two years. Fire hydrants could be opened with a wrench when I was younger by residents but it is frowned on. I lived in Philadelphia when I was young and there werenât a lot of public pools, so sometimes on really hot days an adult would open one and the kids would play in the water shooting out. But it wouldnât last for long because it really messed with the areas water pressure and people would complain so a cop or fireman would come and shut it down. Itâs rare to find mail slots in doors here, but some homes have a mailbox mounted by the front door or some have them as shown on the curb. You canât pick these up and make off with them, as theyâre sunk in the ground with cement. And if anyone is caught stealing mail itâs a federal offense with heavy jail time.
3:35 Water towers can be seen anywhere regardless of climate.. And they are used not only as a reservoir, to create water pressure in the pipe system, they are also good for buffers against water hammer.
5:05 Yellow bus is a hard to miss object. They also have a stop sign on the left side. So you are supposed to yeld and respect the space of this bus, because it has kids.
5:36 Suburbs have mail boxes with no key or anything like that, anyone could open it. It also has a red flag that you can lift up, that tells the mail person that what's inside is meant to be taken to the post office. The area and times these are used, normally have very honest people around. However apartments often have a cluster of mail boxes that you need a key for.
A flag pole is one of my first purchases when I bought my home. It cost me $350 and I replace the flag every 6 months. Usually on new years and 4th of July. Most flag poles hold 2 flags with the American flag on top. My 2nd flag usually goes along with the next holiday coming up. If you live in Texas then you have to fly a Texas flag. It's the only state that home owners fly the state flag out of pride.
Here in Kansas City MO, the big water tower across the Interstate from Worlds of Fun amusement park is painted in WOF colours. The park pays the City for the right to do this.
Hell yeah! My favorite water tower! đ
And every other water tower in the area has someone's name spray-painted on it. In really bad handwriting.
@@TheCosmicGenius, Water Towers: The OTHER social media!
Back in the day we used to open the fire hydrants on super hot days. The fire fighters would pull up and shut it off but sometimes they couldn't be bothered and we would make the street a waterpark until it started to get dark. Then someone would shut it off and we'd go about our business.
In NYC people manage to open the hydrants in hot weather on side streets and let water spew into the streets for kids to play.
If the city workers shut them off they're usually going full blast soon after
You really mostly fly your flags for major sporting events? To me, that seems odd. Not that Iâm questioning anyoneâs patriotism because waving the flag does not represent patriotism. Picket fences have been around since the 1800s and represent space and boundaries. Returning soldiers found that having them around their camps helped delay an enemy charge so they liked the idea of their homes being safer with pickets around them. Now they just say âMy space begins here and keep your dog on the other side!â đ
Re: the flags, he meant fly them for major sporting events where itâs organized by country (e.g. the World Cup, the Olympics, etc). Not just a random sporting event.
Rare to have a lock or security measures for mail boxes. Where I live houses can be 1/4 Mike apart and our driveway is probably 1/8 mile from road. So mail boxes are at ends of driveway so mail carrier can just drive up to them. Their vehicles typically have steering wheel on the right side of car to reach boxes
I'm from the US and I grew up out in the country. Our mailbox was waaaaay down at the end of the lane (it was actually a bit of a walk to fetch the mail, so we usually stopped and got it on the way up the lane when we were driving home from school/work). There wasn't much trouble with mail theft, but we were always careful not to put outgoing mail in the mailbox if there were going to be checks in what we were mailing. We would post those letters in public mailboxes so they weren't accessible to thieves.
However, since then I have lived in two houses that had mailboxes attached to the front of the house, right next to the door.
Water towers do two things 1) allow you to use less expensive pumps and 2) pressurize the system. Suppose one uses 10,000 gallons of water a day, one might think a pump that can supply up to 12,000 gallons in 24 hours 500 gal/hr would be sufficient. However, 5,000 gallons are used from 6 to 8 AM, 2,000 from 6 to 9 PM and the rest spread throughout the day. You would need a 2,500 gal/hr pump to supply the morning usage. That's a much more expensive pump that will be very under utilized for most of the day. But, install a 20,000 gallon water tower and you can have it filling all day with a smaller pump so there is always plenty of water available for peak usage (2 days capacity allows for even extreme usage). It's a tower to cause the system to be gravity pressurized.
11:59
One is unlikely to see the Union Jack flown on an ad hoc basis in England. However, it seems to be de rigueur in loyalist parts of Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland (Glasgow, in particular).
"Mesh fences" I've never heard that term. In America someone is going to imaging a very different type of fence
In cities, most people here also have either slots for mail or those small letter boxes that hang on the outside wall right next to the door. You see the mailboxes on poles along the roads in rural areas and suburbs. They allow the mailman to deliver your mail without having to get out of his vehicle or take the time to find a place to park, etc. Mail delivery in rural areas would take forever if the delivery person had to drive all the way up to everyone's house. Instead, since postal delivery vehicles here have right-hand drive, the deliverer doesn't have to get out of the vehicle at all, but can just reach out the window and pop the mail in the box.
Tampering with the mail is a federal crime, and the penalties are pretty draconian. Possibly because of this, it doesn't happen very often, although bored teenagers do sometimes attack mailboxes for fun late at night. Even then, the game is usually to knock the box off its pole (usually with a baseball bat from the passenger side of a car driven by your fellow delinquent - where I grew up, this was known as "mailball"), and not to mess with the mail itself.
The Water Tower is actually a backup water supply for a town. They usually are drained out between times in a town where there's a peak in water demand. Most towns have a regular water pumping system that normally meets a town's demands. Anyways between like 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM. when people are taking showers, brushing their teeth, using water for cooking breakfast, and other uses, this is when water demand is much higher and water towers supplement this demand. The between times like 10:00 PM to 4:00 PM, the water towers are designed to refill themselves when water demands are much lower since people are usually in bed sleeping and normally only use water to typical go to the bathroom and maybe have a glass of water before they go to bed or something.