A little while back a man came to our house asking if we wanted him to paint the numbers to our address on our front curb. We said we weren’t interested at that time, and he said alright, but informed us having the numbers painted was a good security precaution. I found that interesting, and have heard that a couple more places since–so apparently he wasn’t just trying to make a sale.
Exact how is painting your numbers on your curb a security precaution? The only thing I can think of is maybe it would make your house easier for the police to spot in an emergency. Is that the only reason? Or is/are there another/others?
That was the reason I got it done. Luminous paint that is easy for emergency vehicles to spot unlike house numbers. My brother the fireman says it is true - they use the same principle with luminous reflectors in the middle of the road where the hydrants are.
Having tried to find people’s houses in lower-income neighborhoods, I can tell you that I hope they don’t have some keel over in those houses. Unless they drag the person outside in the lawn, the ambulance may take a while to find them.
Realistically, of course, I guess you’d be out there waving them down, but what if you couldn’t, or no one else were home?
What they said. I delivered both pizzas and medical supplies during my school days. Numbers on the curb make life SO much easier. Unless you have big glowing numbers on the front of your house, bushes, trees, heck even shadows make reading them difficult. Plus, you don’t only help yourself out, you help your neighbors out too. If I’m looking for 3543 and you are 3541, I’m pretty sure I’m close.
Gold reflective numbers may look pretty and shiney in the daytime, but at night they’re as black as the house is. Sometimes people put black numbers on a brown house.
Even worse, others have a number on their mailbox, but not their house. If two houses are across from eachother, it’s sometimes difficult to figure out which is which. If there’s five boxes in a row, then you’re really screwed. Even worse, the numbers will be on the side of the box, blocked from view by the other boxes. Often times the number is only on one side of the box, the side I’m not looking at.
Around here we have these nice green reflective signs that are easy to see, unfortunatly people put them in bad places too. Often their on mailboxes, which helps the mail man out maybe, but not the pizza guy or paramedic. Other smart people put the sign on it’s own stick in their yard, if they’re really smart they won’t put it in an ambiguous location like between their driveway and their neighbors. Others stick these signs on their house, which is helpful, but only if you pull out a flashlight and shine it at the house. By the road is best.
As for curb numbers, I don’t even look for them. Most people don’t have them, and when they do, they’re so faded that they’re practically unreadable at night anyway.
Only about 1/3 of the houses I go to have visable numbers. The only thing that saves the rest is that after dealing with this for a long time you tend to become good at guessing which house is the correct one. Needless to say, a paramedic who goes to far fewer houses than a pizza guy is going to need more help finding the house. And I still get screwed sometimes when there’s eight houses in a row with no number on a street that doesn’t follow any sort of numbering pattern.
I was a pizza guy for about a year over in a super rich neighborhood in dallas…
of course everything you guys say is correct, downright pain in the ass. at night its impossible, hell even in the daytime it was hard as hell, you definitely had to guess half the time, as people would put their numbers in such great locations as:
on the front of the house, but behind a bush!
in a flowerbed, with tall flowers!
on the TOPS of steps leading up to the house!
and my favorite, in their ass!
So many hosues had no visible numbers it was amazing… i swear it is a law in texas that you have to have visible numbers… i dont know for sure but wow, it should be. With 2 and 3 family mansions around, it really sucked to have to disturb 3 or more people just to find the right person.
so, for the love of god, put your numbers on both curbs on your driveway edges, or right on the curb right infront of your house.
if you dont have curbs, put a small reflective sign in your yard close to the street… dont hide it behind plants or be cutesy by putting it on your mailbox… cause your mailbox is most likely way too far away to actually see correctly
I deliver pizzas part-time (it’s a really fulfilling job… cough) and numbers on the curb are fantastic, especially when on a main road. On side streets you can cruise along at 15kmh trying to divine what the houses’ numbers are, but on a main road you have no hope unless you want to annoy everyone behind you. Half the time I have to keep circling in concentric circles until I eventually see the number hidden away.
I’d expect it would apply for the emergency services as well. Plus you won’t have irate pizza deliverers when you combine this with no light on!
That’s what I was thinking, herman and/or bill. If you paint numbers on a curb, what’s to stop anyone from parking in front of it? Unless there’s a hydrant right there, or it’s a yellow curb, or something like that. Wouldn’t it be just as likely that someone would be there?
Presumably, you tell them not to. I mean, it should be the curb in front of your house, so you just can ask people not to. Do stange people regularly park in frontt of your house?
Well, I dunno about where you guys live, but the homeowner here rarely has the authoity to tell people not to park in front of his house. That’s the jurisdiction of the township.
Also, there’s nothing wrong with parking next to a driveway. It’s not illegal, certainly - although this might be different in other communities.
Around our area, local charities send out volunteers to paint your number on the curb, and in return you (the homeowner) kick back a few bucks to the charity doing the painting. Almost everyone complies and it is really helpful because the house numbers are often hard to see.
As an aside, although nearby there is a upper income village (Note: on Long Island, village != quaint, cozy, idyllic hamlet: village = suburban municipality) that, although many have little good to say about it, does seem to do something smart - many (if not most) of the homeowners attach house numbers to a tree next to the curb, these number facing, and roughly the height of, the view of a driver in an approaching car. Very easy to see, so no need to putz around on the roads looking for house numbers.
If you’re the only one in your neighborhood to have the house number on the curb, it does little good, as people won’t be looking there.
The value of having street numbers on the curb is more or less proportional to their frequency. A blocked number is completely worthless but any numbers that can be seen are clues to other addresses.
