Differences between US and U.K. homes

[Youngatheart00]

Just a ponderous thread as it’s my day off and I’ve been thinking, mainly following the abundance of Netflix we’ve all watched over the past year, but also some of my travel experiences (not recently, obviously!)

Some of the differences I’ve noticed are;

• many more of the US homes seem to be fully open plan downstairs. Some don’t even seem to have doors between the rooms?

• the bathroom count / ratio to bedrooms is much higher! (Eg 3 bed / 3 bath or even 2 bed / 2.5 bath)

• heating systems, I don’t recall seeing radiators, instead vents in the floor, are these used to flip between hot and cold air depending on the time of year? How effective / efficient are they compared to our big radiator bars here?

• toilets - they seem smaller and the flushing mechanism is different

• baths - they also seem smaller, short and strangely blocky

• Space and size - all of the bathroom stuff is unusual when the overall size of homes, even cheaper ones, is so much larger. And some ‘back yards’ are absolutely huge! Obviously more land space in the US compared with the U.K. but still, notable but often not much privacy / fencing?

• waste disposal units - what ARE these?

• closets - I haven’t seen any free standing wardrobes. Are these just not used in the US?

Anyone got any others to add or any comments?

The dog park is the best thing ever. Unfortunately our girl is on a temporary suspension (imposed by us) for herding chihuahuas. Evidently, they don't like to be herded.

Loads of people in our apartment block in Boston have dogs. It’s very common to share the elevator with a dog or two. The building has a dog spa for washing and blow drying dogs. There is a constant stream of dog walkers taking dogs out through the day and before and after work lots of people walking their dogs. It’s a more dog friendly place than the U.K., IMO. My DD used to walk a dog, unfortunately he wasn’t well socialised with other dogs, he had no idea what to do at the dog park so he just stood there looking confused when the other dogs bounced up to play. We constantly had people wanting to pet him in the street and wanting their children to meet him (he was a huge fluffy white Samoyed who loved human attention more than anything except squirrels).

"I am living in the US and, hand on heart, y'all are talking nonsense about dryers and kettles..."

Really?

Yes really.

The length of time it takes to dry your hair depends on how thick your hair is, how long, whether you are trying to style it, and many other factors. DD3 can dry hers in a few minutes. DD4's takes way longer. The difference is length and thickness. DD4 was blessed by the hair gods.

And my cheapo Walmart electric kettle boils enough water to make a 5-cup pot of tea in the time it takes me to brush my teeth.

Electric kettles absolutely do take longer to boil in the USA - it's simple physics to do with the lower voltage. Whether that is too slow is a matter of opinion

I feel like we need an AIBU poll to determine if kettles take longer to boil

(I’m Team ‘it doesn’t take longer’ - credentials, New York resident for 5 years).

I can't participate in the poll because my kettle sits on my stove top. I drink about one cup of tea a week so it doesn't get much use. It's pretty though.

I really don't have much room on my kitchen counters for any more electrical appliances, what with the coffee maker, the mixer, the food processor, the air fryer, and a four slot toaster.

Kettles in the USA definitely take longer in my experience but I believe it is possible to buy rapid boil kettles.

One day I will lose all patience with my kettle and investigate further.

I'm in for a live kettle a thon! Or is it a Boil Off? We need to make sure we use the same volume of water - I am still confused but a cup being a different cup here /theeh. Then synchronize or watches and report on time to boil. That would be interesting.

I have data about U.K. kettle boiling! I did an exercise with my first year students about the power of kettles. I will look it up and post it then someone in the US can repeat the experiment.

Next time I call my sister I’ll ask her to pop the kettle on... now the question is, what temperature? My kettle has a choice.

So in my experiments around 334 g of water (about a mug full) boiled in a UK kettle with a power rating of 2.75 - 3 kW in an average time of 53 seconds. The water started at around 15 C (50 F). The end point was clear boiling (my kettle is transparent so easy to see when it is vigorously boiling). I actually waited for it to click off so the time might be slightly long (a second or two). Since I am more or less at sea level this is 100 C (if the experimenter in the US is in Denver this will be lower, around 94 C I can explain why if you want )

Can we also consider water? We are in London and it’s very hard. My sister is in the mountains and it’s very soft...

Hard and soft water boil at (very nearly) the same temperature, there isn't a high enough concentration of dissolved salts to elevate the boiling point significantly. It will affect the heat transfer from the kettle element if there is limescale on it though. You need at add around 60 g of table salt to a litre of water to raise the boiling point by 0.5 C.

OK, so I'm at home rather bored at the moment so I thought I'd try this as well.

I have a rather old Tesco 3kw kettle with a layer of limescale on the bottom (we live in a very hard water area).

334 g of water

At first I thought this was a weirdly specific amount, but then realised that it is also 12 UK fluid ounces. For any Americans trying this that's 11.5 US fluid ounces.

I only did it one time, not multiple, but that one time was 55 seconds starting from 14C (57F) - BTW Chemenger I think you got that conversion a bit wrong 14C is 59F.

So it would be interesting to hear how long it takes in the US

You are right, nickymanchester I mistyped it, it should be 59 F (for the three countries in the world who don't use SI units; the US, Liberia and Myanmar).

1.5KW kettle took 1 minute 50 seconds here in Maine. Not sure that moves the research on at all :-)

I think what it shows is that, because the voltage is half the U.K. value in the US, you can only fit a 1.5 kW element in a kettle and it therefore takes twice as long to boil the same amount of water.