10 Weirdest & Most Confusing Things About British Homes (+ Free PDF & Quiz)

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 comment 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. 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 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 pool toilet flushes. How  

fancy are these? I went to a very old school  and I remember we had these chain pool,  

original toilets. Well I'm not sure if  they were 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 this 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 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 problem, 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 and appliance without actually having to  

unplug it. One annoying thing about these 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 on one 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 living them on the  

floor up turned. So they 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  

often have a washing machines in our kitchens.  This is because we have much less space in our  

houses. Our houses tend to be a lot smaller  than houses in America. When I went to the  

US 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 and 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 them 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, and 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 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 switch on 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 to 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're 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 metres 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 rules here. 

Number ten, 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, 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 only 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 ravaged me. We do get the odd mosquito,  

but it's not a huge problem. So at least we've got  that going for us. That is it for today's lesson.  

I hope 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 that  

definitions and their examples. It's 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 at 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. I will see you soon for another lesson. 

Why do our chargers, (beep). Creates a huge  problem. Got a quiz and it's got all of the  

vocabulary words. 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.