10 Weirdest & Most Confusing Things About British Homes

[Music] hello everyone and welcome back to english with lucy today we're going to be talking about more weird british things in particular we are going to talk about our strange strange homes most people who travel to the uk are surprised by some of the things that they find in our homes and in our hotels we've got really strange plugs why do our plugs look like that i'll explain it why do we have carpet in our bathrooms and why do we have separate hot and cold taps so that you can either freeze your face or burn your face there is no in between the fun part of this video is finding out whether you relate to any of these whether it's the same in your country or completely different or maybe you're british and it's completely different for you as well let me know in the comments section to help the learners of english that are watching this lesson i have made it a listening and vocabulary lesson whenever i say an interesting word or phrase it will appear on screen with the definition i have also created a free pdf with further examples it's got every word and phrase used in this lesson plus much more if you'd like to download that you can click on the link in the description box and it will be sent directly to your inbox let's get started with the lesson okay the first weird thing about british homes now not all british homes in fact not so many anymore have this but in my house we do have this it wasn't my choice but it is here it is carpet in the bathroom now why oh why oh why would anyone put carpet in the bathroom a couple of reasons here in the uk it gets very cold and it's very expensive to heat our homes carpeted areas retain more heat it also feels nice under our feet it's something that you see in houses that haven't been renovated in a while or old-fashioned houses it is incredibly unhygienic i think i have mentioned this before but i have had a situation where a toilet overflowed in a carpeted bathroom and it was it was awful it was absolutely horrendous let's move on to this next one then it is separate hot and cold taps or faucets as you may call them in other countries now more modern houses have mixer taps we have one bathroom up here with a mixer tap and one bathroom with the separate hot and cold tap why are they different well one bathroom was renovated more recently whenever any of my friends come over from abroad and they see these separate taps they are flabbergasted you can either burn your hands or freeze your hands and when you wash your face you have to splash water in equal measures to not burn or freeze the answer is is that you can fill the sink with water and then splash warm water on your face but it's not practical there is a solid reason behind this though in the old days cold water came from a main supply and it was safe for drinking but hot water was stored in our attic in our loft the hot water was not safe for drinking and they didn't want them to mix at all who knows how long that water had been sitting in that tank lots of houses now still do have those tanks in the attic i think where i grew up at my parents house we had a tank in the attic and one day they found a dead bird in it so that's why a lot of people don't mix their hot and cold taps it's also something that's quite traditional to have the nice separate taps for me it's just too impractical number three is chain pull toilet flushes how fancy are these i went to a very old school and i remember we had these chain pull original toilets well i'm not sure if they're original but they were very old now you still do see the modern ones but it's kind of a mock old-fashioned style originally toilets had to have their tanks mounted up high to allow for gravity to push all the water through you would pull the chain so you didn't have to stand up whilst doing your business number four is push button toilet flushes i hate these so much because whenever i have a long thumbnail i always catch it on the edge lots of other countries have these but it is something that my foreign friends have remarked on when they come over they are designed to allow you to control how much water is used when you flush so there's a small button and a big one the big one is for big business the small one is for small business they're designed to save water but they are horrible for anyone with long nails number five let's talk about the plugs finally in the uk we have three pronged plugs and arguably they are some of the safest plugs around they might look inefficient you know you can't switch there's only one way you can put them in i know with the two prongs you can do it either way but these are all about safety in a plug socket with two holes a child could stick a fork in or something metal and they could get electrocuted with these plugs it's nearly impossible to get electrocuted this is a grounding prong and it's longer slightly longer than the other prongs when you push this into one of our sockets it lifts some flaps that are covering these two prongs that hold the current this grounding prong unlocks the socket basically another thing that people notice is that most of our wall sockets have switches on and off switches it's red when it's on and it's white when it's off the reason for this is quite obvious it allows you to switch off an appliance without actually having to unplug it one annoying thing about those sockets though is that because they've got a flat back they are so painful if you tread on them and i know with the other two pronged ones the likelihood of you treading one you know isn't as high perhaps the thought behind this is because they are so painful when you tread on them they don't want people leaving them on the floor upturned so they'd prefer them to stay in and to be switched on and off at the plug number seven something that people especially people from america seem to notice is that we have we often have our washing machines in our kitchens and this is because we have much less space in our houses our houses tend to be a lot smaller than the houses in america when i went to the u.s for the first time i was blown away by how big everything was the kitchen islands were so big you'd have to walk all the way around to pick up something you left on the other side especially in cities in townhouses we don't have that much space so we don't waste space on a utility room which is my dream i actually finally have a utility room for the first time ever here in this house and it is glorious but before that i washed all of my clothes in my kitchen and it was very noisy when you were trying to relax trying to cook you had your washing machine and your dryer going around and that's another thing we have washer dryers which are washing machines that also dry our clothes but i have never had one that dries properly it doesn't seem to do that good a job so now i have a separate washing machine and tumble dryer although i just tend to hang out my washing on a washing line number eight sometimes we have light pull cords in our bathrooms so you know if you go into a disabled toilet you might see a red cord that they can pull to call for help we actually have these as light switches in our bathrooms and sometimes if you have one in your bathroom and you can become so used to putting it to switching of the light if you ever use a disabled toilet which unless you need to you shouldn't it's very easy to accidentally pull the help cord so in the uk we have quite strict rules on electrics in our bathrooms people want to reduce contact with live electrical parts as much as possible so you will often find the light switch on the outside of the bathroom not inside but if that isn't available if you don't want a light switch outside of your bathroom then you can have a cord to pull yeah we have that as children in all of our bathrooms my mum yeah my mum has cords everywhere she's a very safe woman i have seen bathrooms in the uk with the light switches inside it might be to do with distance from the shower or bath let me know if you are british tell me about the light switch in your bathroom i can't believe i'm asking you that but i'm genuinely interested number nine is we don't tend to have plug sockets in our bathroom and if we do they are often in our lights and i'll tell you about that i've actually got them here in this house as well i think it's another more old-fashioned thing plug sockets are not allowed in uk bathrooms unless they can be fitted at least three meters from a shower or a bath to overcome this sometimes lights would be fitted above the mirror with a plug socket for shaving you are allowed shaving sockets i think i've seen those in bathrooms but i've never ever seen a three-prong socket in a bathroom in the uk have you i think it's illegal we've got some really strict laws here number 10 we don't have air conditioning we tend not to have any air conditioning some people might have it you do find it in offices and libraries and places of work but in our homes we don't have it because it just doesn't really get that hot here we normally have a couple of unbearable weeks in the summer and then it's just back to normality our houses are built and designed to retain as much heat as they possibly can for the winter we have to heat our homes a lot so it's very inefficient to have all the heat escaping in those hot summer weeks i don't say summer months summer weeks the houses can get unbearable in fact if you look at any video that i've posted in july or august chances are i've got a little sweat moustache and potentially some sweat patches as well because my studio gets so so so hot but we don't have any air conditioning so there is nothing i can do about it we do tend to use fans in the summer i've got one little bonus one as well we don't have mosquito screens on our windows i know that this is a very common thing to have in countries where mosquitoes are a big problem but mosquitoes i mean we do have them but it's not as severe as some of the more humid climates when i go abroad to a tropical country i get eaten alive i don't know what it is i think they can smell i'm new and inexperienced and they just ravage me we do get the odd mosquito but it's not a huge problem so at least we've got that going for us right that is it for today's lesson i hope you enjoyed it i hope you learned something don't forget to download the pdf it's got all of the key phrases and vocabulary words that i've used in this lesson along with their definitions and their examples also got a quiz that you can use to test your understanding of these new words and phrases if you'd like to download that click on the link in the description box you sign up using your name and your email address and i send the pdf directly to your inbox and because you've signed up to my mailing list you then get my pdfs every week automatically and conveniently let me know how it goes if you'd like to improve your vocabulary skills and your listening skills even further then i have my vlogging channel where i document my life here on a farm in the english countryside and all of the vlogs are fully subtitled so you can replay you can pick up new vocabulary words you can try listening without the subtitles and then once again with the subtitles to see how much you picked up on don't forget to connect with me on my social media i've got my instagram lucy and my website englishwithlucy.co.uk where i have a fantastic free pronunciation tool you can click on the phonemes and you can hear me pronounce them e no air i will see you soon for another lesson why do our charges are suck it creates a huge problem i've got a quiz and it's got all of the vocabulary words uh it's got a quiz and i don't know what's wrong with me i'm literally at the very end here come on lucy don't forget to download the quiz [Music] [Music] you

Channel: English with Lucy

Views: 1,195,464

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Id: CmTakDD3HlA

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021