All the hot taps in my house are on the right, but it is fairly old plumbing.
Or was it, perhaps, an “artsy” shot, with the image reflected off of the bathroom mirror?
Where I live in the UK the tap water is safe to drink (as I’m sure it is elsewhere in the UK) but chlorine is added to sterilise the water. Sometimes it seems they get a little too enthusiastic when adding it, so in our house we use a filter for the water for our tea.
By the way, all the taps in our house have the hot water on the left
V
Seriously, these are the things that bothered me when I first visited the US. I was prepared for scyscrapers, yellow taxis, neon signs and McDs at every intersection. There were things I wasn’t prepared for:
- Both hot and cold water is supposed to be turned on clockwise
- Lightswitches were upside down
- Sinks in the kitchen was percelain, not stainless steel
- Toilets are wide but shallow
- Gas (as for cooking and heating) smell strange
- Carpeting with padding… eewww
- Tacky furniture. Everywhere.
- Not cleaning clothes when doing laundry - just bleaching.
- Price tag does not include VAT/sales tax
- There is some poor schmuck putting my groceries in bags (albeit not doing it right).
- Fitted sheet
- TV channels named for the actual channel
I’ll think of more anon…
- Older buildings here in NYC sometimes have that mirror thing happening - and it really annoys me, I spend precious minutes flipping between extremes of hot and cold :D.
- And that’s when they aren’t on a three-way switch, which doesn’t seem as common in Europe (in other words, the same light is on two or more different switches, which invariably end up all the wrong way).
- Would you believe that’s considered more “high end”? I think it’s ludicrous, it just stains and chips more.
- Hum, never noticed that.
- Gas here has a chemical added to make it smell Not Nice, so people won’t blow themselves to bits if they leave it on.
- Huh? Without padding it would hurt.
- This, from the country that gave us Ick-KEA. :rolleyes:
- Ewww. Where did you see this? Proctor & Gamble make far too much selling us detergent, and stain remover, and bleach, and softener, so that’s unusual.
- It’s an anti-tax thing. Seriously. The idea is to make the tax painful, rather than in Europe where it’s hidden and you don’t have the constant reminder, “I’m forking over MY MONEY so some twit can regulate tea bags in Brussels.” In fact, I understand that in many states it’s illegal to include the tax in a final price.
- The WSJ ran an article recently on the lost art of grocery bagging - a few stores still train people, but most don’t.
- An ambiguous benefit. I bought new sheets and found the fitted barely fit my 8-year-old, no-pillow-top mattress.
- You mean like “WCBS News Channel 2”? I’m guessing that with the vast distances here, our TV started out being more local when it first started out than it was in Europe. Just as our newspapers are local - only the New York Times and USA Today can really call themselves “national.” (And the latter doesn’t publish on weekends.)
Is this a recent thing? Being from the UK, when I moved to America I found the level of chlorine in the water made it taste disgusting. I’d never felt a need to buy bottled water or use a filter before, but now I do.
A plumber I know insists he’s never made a mistake, and what’s the matter, haven’t I ever heard of a hot-water toilet?
Well, some unfortunate souls get sick from changes in water in general, so I can see why these people might want to avoid the tap water in the UK and the US (assuming that’s not where they’re from originally). If you’re not one of them, no problem.
*Originally posted by OxyMoron *
- Older buildings here in NYC sometimes have that mirror thing happening - and it really annoys me, I spend precious minutes flipping between extremes of hot and cold :D.
This was in Chicago in '85. When I turn on the water, no matter if it’s two spouts or one, both knobs are clockwise for on, in Chicago, back then, it was (IIRC) clockwise for cold and counterCW for hot. Annoying.
2. And that’s when they aren’t on a three-way switch, which doesn’t seem as common in Europe (in other words, the same light is on two or more different switches, which invariably end up all the wrong way).
They’re around. Typically in staircases, hallways and bedrooms.
3. Would you believe that’s considered more “high end”? I think it’s ludicrous, it just stains and chips more.
I thought it was the cheapo choice. Seriously.
- Hum, never noticed that.
I have. TMI coming up. When sitting on an American made comode, my private parts that dingle, tend to dangle and touch the water surface. Has only ever happened in the US.
5. Gas here has a chemical added to make it smell Not Nice, so people won’t blow themselves to bits if they leave it on.
We too. But the chemical is different, so it’s another smell altogether.
6. Huh? Without padding it would hurt.
Nah. But I prefer wodden floors anyway. Carpeting is vile.
7. This, from the country that gave us Ick-KEA. :rolleyes:
Well, a lot of homes I were in, had furniture looking like rejects from a Winnebago. Faux wood, flowery upholstry, lots of synthetic stuff. I’m a fan of sleek Italian and Danish furniture. Heavy and dark wood does nothing for me.
8. Ewww. Where did you see this? Proctor & Gamble make far too much selling us detergent, and stain remover, and bleach, and softener, so that’s unusual.
I just meant that there’s a lot of bleach being used.
9. It’s an anti-tax thing. Seriously. The idea is to make the tax painful, rather than in Europe where it’s hidden and you don’t have the constant reminder, “I’m forking over MY MONEY so some twit can regulate tea bags in Brussels.” In fact, I understand that in many states it’s illegal to include the tax in a final price.
I know. And I think it’s good, but coming from here it was kinda weird the first time around. Took some getting used to.
10. The WSJ ran an article recently on the lost art of grocery bagging - a few stores still train people, but most don’t.
Things have obviously changed. Do you have to pay for grocery bags? We do.
11. An ambiguous benefit. I bought new sheets and found the fitted barely fit my 8-year-old, no-pillow-top mattress.
I don’t find it too hard to fold the sheets. It was just one of those things I had never seen or even contemplated.
- You mean like “WCBS News Channel 2”? I’m guessing that with the vast distances here, our TV started out being more local when it first started out than it was in Europe. Just as our newspapers are local - only the New York Times and USA Today can really call themselves “national.” (And the latter doesn’t publish on weekends.)
Could be. Most European countries will have tv stations like this: BBC1, BBC2, TF1, TVE2, RAIuno ASF. The numbers have nothing to do with the channel. BBC2 might be on channel 32 in one town and on channel 11 in another.
Two more things that astonished me (and I know I’m turning this GQ thread into MPSIMS, sorry):
- Those brownish drinking glasses that weigh nothing
- How heavily every American tips.
I’ll just weigh in with my observations from a UK house built in the 1960s. Kitchen: hot tap on left (mixer tap). Bathroom: hot tap on right on both sink and bath.
Apartment in San Angelo, Texas, appearing to be built in the mid 70’s by the shag carpeting and wood paneling on the dining room wall.
The kitchen: right knob is cold, left knob is hot, both are counter clockwise to turn on.
Hall bathroom: same as kitchen.
Master bath: Here’s where it’s strange. Right is hot, left is cold, AND clockwise to turn it on!
Shower in master bath: one knob, counter-clockwise to turn on, starting cold, moving hotter as you turn. Not unlike a cheap radio with a volume knob that is also a power switch.
My wife’s parents house (1960): Here’s where its a killer… in the shower, it’s clockwise to turn on the hot, counterclockwise to turn on the cold. When I finish, I turn the cold off, and the hot on even higher, inadvertently scalding myself.
It would be one thing if it were the big lever style knobs, were it’s intuitive to pull both levers down/towards you. But these are regular, roundish knobs.
My parents house has the best, most usable controls, and a style which seems more standard in newer (1990+) houses. No faucet or shower has two knobs. The kitchen has the up for on, left/right for hot/cold setup. The bathrooms all have a single knob: up to change the water pressure, left/right to change the temperature… same for the showers. Essentially the same concept as the lever.
That’s my 10c worth.
Depends on the faucet manufacturer (and yes, “faucet” is the general American name; “tap” and “spigot” are regional).
C’mon, you’re just boasting. We can tell. Old joke: Three American men are pissing off a bridge into the Mississippi river. One says “That water down there sure is cold.” The second says “It’s deep, too”. The third: “And long”.
Isn’t the gas used in Europe more commonly butane instead of essentially methane?
No, but if you don’t ask for paper bags, you’ll get plastic. A few store chains tried charging for paper when plastic bags were introduced, but met too much market resistance. Most of the time, due to short staffing (“We pass the savings on to you, our customers!”), you’ll have to bag your own, anyway.
American mattresses are much thicker now, typically, but for some reason the textile manufacturers are the only ones who don’t know that yet. One of our little quirks.
Not as many of our eating establishments use those thick, heavy glass mugs that look like they hold twice as much as they really do. They’re certainly not unknown, though, and neither are their cousins, the dishes and bowls with super-wide rims that also hold much less than they appear.
Service compris is almost unknown here except on bills for large groups. Wait staff’s base pay is a pittance, about a third of the minimum wage which is already a pittance. They depend on tips almost entirely, the work is hard, and restaurant customers know it.
Maybe this one isn’t the thread you are thinking of since I put the pics in the OP. In any case, lest there be confusion, note that the picture of the UK switch is in the off position (it’s for the bathroom on the other side of the door).
Natural gas in Europe is also methane and has an odorant added to it to make it smell. I know because I have to work on odorising equipment sometimes and it is not the most pleasent stuff to work with.
Regarding two ( or three ) way switches we have them in the UK , mainly on stairways. I have come across a good alternative in France in a couple of cottages we have rented. Here , instead of a normal up and down switch, you have a push button that operates a relay located near the fuse box ( you can here it go clunk). You can have as many push buttons as you like dotted around the house and just pushing one activates the relay which switches on the light.
A slight hijack:
There is an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show where Laura (Mary Tyler Moore), gets one of her big toes stuck in a bathtub fixture. Explaining her plight to Rob (Dick Van Dyke), who is standing on the other side of the bath room door, she says she has it caught in the faucet. He then says “that’s not the faucet”. I’ve seen that episode several times over the years and I have never understood what he meant, as he never explains the remark.
Can anyone explain what he could have meant? Is this a matter of the writer’s regional dialect? Were there parts of the U.S. back in the early 1960s where people were insistent about not calling the fixture from which water pours into a bath tub a faucet?
OK, let’s suppose this is the plumbing we’re talking about. Typical shower/bathtub set. I would say that the word “faucet” refers only to the two handles that actually regulate the flow of water. What Mary got her toe stuck in was the spout.
Two of the three dictionaries at dictionary.com (American Heritage and Princeton U’s WordNet) agree with me, defining faucet as “a device for regulating the flow of a liquid.” That means the faucet is only the handle and screw mechanism, and not the spout. But the third, Webster’s Revised Unabridged, suggests that the word applies to the entire assemblage - including the spout. Since modern plumbing tends to combine everything into one set (except for shower/bathtub sets), I suspect that the broader sense will become the dominant usage.
Oh, good lord, Home Depot’s site is useless. Here are the links I meant:
A typical shower/bathtub set
A bathroom faucet
A kitchen faucet