Video: "a one storey ranch style home" Me, British: 😮 a bungalow

My food disposal unit is my dog.

I love my back garden. Table chairs,, sit and chill having a cuppa coffee with the paper ,,, watching the butterfly's,,, listening to the birds .... that's why Britain has Great in the name ...

I'm in my 50s and British. Never heard the word Commonhold. Ever. And no real description of council housing or tower blocks? Not everyone is middle class or aristocracy in the UK!!!

We DON'T all have combined washer/driers in the UK ! They are too expensive to buy and run ! Nearly everyone dries their clothes OUTSIDE on the washing line. What do Americans call BUNGALOWS ? I have NEVER heard the word " commonhold" used in the UK ! It would just be called a "block of flats".

Most UK residents have local access to shops/parks/schools/towns within walking or cycling distance, so we tend not to stay in our tiny homes all day.😊

On the odd occasion when we get warm weather I never open my windows. All you are doing is letting more hot air in. I prefer the 'European' way of keeping not only the windows closed but also blinds/curtains which keeps the hot air and warm sunlight out. A nice fresh day with a gentle breeze is my ideal for flinging the windows open.

Stove top kettles are perfectly fine. Heating water in a microwave however is blasphemy.

Way before electric kettles were the norm, my grandmother always had a kettle on the gas stove, ready to make a cuppa. She lived in a terraced house two rooms upstairs, two down, a kitchen on the side and an outside loo.

You don't see separate hot and cold taps as much nowadays, especially in kitchens, the reason why they used to be separate is because the hot water used to be (and sometimes still is) gravity fed from a large water tank (header) in the loft which fed the hot water cylinder, the weight of this water pushed the hot water out when taps were opened, this meant the water coming out the hot tap had been sitting in a tank in the loft for ages so wasn't suitable for drinking (the lids on header tanks aren't sealed so all kinds of stuff can get in), plus you get poor pressure out the hot tap, nowadays the most common set up is a gas combi boiler which does heating and instant hot water or an unvented hot water cylinder both of which are fed straight from the mains cold water so you get good hot pressure and it would be safe to drink.

The Cotswolds' 'Chocolate Box house' pictured is actually in a little village called Lustleigh in Devon.

I love picking diffrent states or even countries, and going on google street view for a wee wander around different neighbourhoods just for a wee nosey lol

There's an old saying - An English mans home is his Castle.

I visited a US family living in the UK near Alconbury some years ago they were military. They had a standard English kitchen but they had their US appliances in there it looked like a dolls house with out of scale white goods, two giant step up top loader washer and dryer and a three foot wide slot in cooker. They had the standard big US truck on the drive outside. It was not cosy.

The honeycomb is called cotswold stone, it's stone mined in the cotswolds and nearby

Watching this and enjoying it from my 1880's, mid terraced house. it's showing its age a bit but then so am I.

My home is 125yrs old and it still has the same features it was built with including all the fireplaces. I have no cavity wall insulation as I only have one layer of bricks. These were built so during spring summer and early autumn they absorb the heat from the sun and release during the winter. My house when we do have our summers is cool. I never close my bedroom windows even in winter. I value land as much as the house. My home is huge and we have a lot of out buildings. I think the way UK differ most in lifestyles is we travel more than any of the Americans. You have a grill that you use outside we have grills built into our cookers. We call those outside Barbecues. People complain about the weather even when the sun is out the birds are singing and all around you is the sounds of the gardens been mowed or the kids in the gardens. It is our national pass time to moan about the weather. My gardens are our pride and joy. We take gardening very seriously in this country. I don't understand why you have a laundry room on the floor of the bedrooms. We hang washing out. I do not have a dryer to expensive to run and I don't have a dishwasher.

A lot of Laurence's videos include gross generalisations which reflect his experiences, but not the general rule. However, this one was spot on with some interesting detail.

To quote Horace Rumpole, ‘a back yard is redolent with images of a place for dustbins, bicycles and possibly a cage for ferrets’

I don't think you would get a mortgage for an American style wooden house in the uk.

Really good episode, Joel. As usual, I'm heading back to Dorset in June, staying with friends in their thatched, "chocolate-box" house dating from the 1600's. UK village life is just delightful. Residential architecture in America and Canada is almost indistinguishable, if at all, making visiting the UK even more special. In fact, many US movies and TV shows are actually filmed in Canada, subtly disguised as America. What I really enjoy in the UK is the extensive use of stone, which varies by colour across the land, e.g., almost yellow around Bath, while being quite dark grey-black in Derbyshire. Have a great week, John in Canada

Some of our houses date back before the Tudor period. The cottage I live in ... quite a large one ... dates from around 1350, i.e. around 675 years old! It's a 'crock house' which used to house animals as well as people, and originally had a fire pit. It was modernised in the Tudor period with the addition of a very robust fireplace. The house was originally built of wattle and daub, which was padded out with cob at a later date, and that is how it still stands today. The cottage still has its original wooden frame and pointy arched front door. I'm very grateful to live where I do, it so amazing. Every time I touch a bit of the wooden frame I know generations all the way back to the 14th century have touched the same piece of wood!

FOOD DISPOSAL THING. When we moved into our house 40 yrs ago, there was one of those fitted, except i'd never seen one before, and wondered what a electric switch did on the wall. so I turned it on--and a teriffic howling racket began, quickly followed by a torrent of rotten food , which showered us all. As the house had been empty for 10 months , the stink was aweful.

One house type he seemed to miss off, which would be the closest to your Ranch house, is what we call a Bungalow. Looking much like a detached house with just a ground floor. Although it's quite common for them to have loft/attic conversions.

Wish he had mentioned that when we put the kettle on here in the UK that we are easily drinking as much Coffee as Tea, the stereotype of the UK being a Tea only place is everywhere! One reason why the US has favoured Stove top kettles over plug in is the power system, sockets are much more limited than those in the UK where we can pull 13A from each our 240v sockets which is 3000w and have kettles that are very very fast to boil. I have seen videos about US load balancing, that is something we dont have to do on UK electrical systems in our homes, we can pull way more power from our system. The switch we have on our sockets is not used all the time, we generally dont use it when plugging in or unplugging and we dont routinely switch things off, we only use it when we specially want to remove power from something but wish to leave it plugged in. Combination washer dryers are a thing you can get but NOT the norm in the UK, we use separate machines, often with the dryer stacked on top but drying on a line outside or airing cupboard is very common whenever possible due to the massive cost of using a dryer plus it wears your clothes out faster.

if you ever visit England again , your welcome to pop by and have a cup of tea at mine ! you can see how the british really live

Please don't run off with the idea that we all have washer/drier machines in the UK, as they are well-known to be very expensive to run and not particualrly effective, particularly in drier mode. Families tend to prefer separate washing machines and tumble driers, but as energy prices have risen sharply over the last few years and people are becoming more aware of the environmental damage caused by excessive energy consumption, the latter have in many cases been relegated to a backup we use only during exceptionally wet periods. There is a move to cheaper, heated airers on which items can be hug or draped across - while ordinary folding airer devices have never really gone out of fashion. Years ago, we had pullies suspended from our kitchen ceilings - because kitchens were usually the warmest room; and I've even heard of people having them re-installed! As for the washing, we had twin tubs before automatic machines - a washer and a spinner, and overlapping that we had mangles - and lines suspended between poles out in our gardens - which were also used when the washing took place, either in a wee building with a big solid-fuelled boiler inside, for that very purpose - or maybe even in a communal laundry facility run by the local authority - and lines suspended between poles in the parks, for that purpose! Have you ever seen Tony Roper's "The Steamie," I wonder? It's set in such a communal facility in Glasgow, on Hogmanay of 1953. Might be one for you to watch on Patreon....

We did have stove top whistling kettles in the UK in the 1960's and 70's or in caravans!

7:14 You can easily have a house with three levels, even in Texas. It just shouldn't be made of paper mache. In Europe almost all houses are made of concrete or build with bricks. Have you seen what happened in Acapulco? Dude this city got wrecked by that heavy hurricane, but the main structures of it's buildings are just fine. All they have to do is put back glas in the windows, reconstruct fences and gardens and the houses interior if it got damaged. And thats it.

18:58 The beauty of capitalism isn't it? So you have these huge houses _with rooms which are bareley used,_ and on the other hand batalions of homeless without shelter....

The UK had sink waste disposal units but they were short lived due to breaking down so often with limitations on what you could put into them. Our current waste disposal is superb. A food waste caddy sits on the counter near the sink where just scrape food waste away then collected weekly by the local authority.

I'm British and actually bought myself a portable AC unit just for my bedroom during that summer you spoke about, because seriously, fuck that. I haven't used it a great deal since then but I really appreciate it when it's needed.

the house i grew up in was 600 yrs old !

Joel, they stopped building houses made out of wood in London after the Great Fire in 1666. Had the houses been made of brick back then it wouldn't have been such a disaster - but the Fire did dispose of the plague-carrying rats so overall it did more good than harm! But the rebuilds were brick.

It's mind boggling that you have what we call bungalows (single story houses) throughout Texas due to all those infamous tornados!!! Just like in The Wizard of Oz. 😮 🌪️ 🏠🌪️

14:39 One of my viral comments was about Electric Kettles. It turned into a forum honestly.

We’ve mostly only had these extreme heatwaves in recent years. It used to be very unusual, hence the lack of air conditioning. We’ve not adapted to global warming yet. Right now it’s springtime so flooding is the issue.

Made my own fly screens here in the U.K. 2cmx1cm wood , L brackets for the corners. Paint to appropriate colour, staple fibreglass insect mesh to frame. Use Velcro on frame and window surround. Costs about £10 per window. Cat proof too.

Speaking about English garden's ... Years ago many working families would have an outside loo ( Toilet ) in the garden. Bath time would be a tin bath in front of the coal fire.

It always baffles me how many people live in 'trailers' in the US when they are in an area that gets hurricanes and/or tornadoes on a regular basis. Surely common sense tells you it is a recipe for disaster.

My house in the UK has just 5 rooms one is the bathroom and toilet combined it is an end terraced house with a front n back garden

Feels like US homes are also big because they use cheap flimsy materials.......clapper boarding on the out side and plasterboard on the inside. I always feel I could put my fist through the wall. But most British houses are usually brick or stone ....mine is double red brick built. Solid as a rock!

The smaller size of houses in Britain are not just due to the population density. Many houses in places where there is plenty of room are not large. The reason is probably more due to the cost of heating unnecessarily large rooms.

I live in a banjo ..and where the biggest estate was built for the east Ender's in the 50s who moved from the slums .it was lovely and still had green areas of space and Kept well with beautiful paks by gardeners and park keepers and most were proud to live in a house with inside toilet and bath ...sadly this past 15 years they have passed on or moved on and those we have now do not appreciate what they have or outside surrounding areas ...we do not have regular Gardner's or street sweepers or park keepers and many leave their front gardens an eyeseore..the houses ,yes are far smaller than America ..but.never had a problem its 3 bed two rooms downstairs and normal size kitchen for terraced house . We have rotten rain damp dull weather too much

Waste disposal units are not uncommon in the UK. They have been installed in apartment blocks (yes, we use the term apartment, too) for many decades. The last apartment block I lived in (1975-1978) was built in the early 1960s. It had elevators, wood parquet floors with underfloor heating, built in closets, waste disposal units (aka garbage grinders) and each apartment had a balcony. We also had air conditioning but no one ever felt the need to use it. This was a Ministry of Defence married quarters facility to house Royal Marines and their families in Walmer in Kent.

The UK is getting hotter and hotter every year so sales in portable AC units have risen here, the last few summers

No... actually, at Joel's favourite food emporium, Tescos having coffee.... Wifi here as in many establishments. Lived in and worked on Canadian houses for three years... very much in the American style... like huge embellished "garden sheds"😂... (no disrespect to my friends over there). Due to them all being made of wood. I tend to think of a yard as a paved area and a garden where plants and grass are prevalent. Fun video nonetheless not to be taken too seriously.

Dryers are something of a luxury over here usually, especially if your poorer, as they are one of the most expensive electronics to run in a home. Lots of us tend to just dry our clothes outside (Ngl I'm from the same original town as 'Lost in the Pond' he's from the posher part, you don't have a semi detached generally if your in the poorer parts) We have stovetop and electric kettles, I have both in case I run out of electric or gas at anypoint so I can swap and change, which is something he didn't point out also, our utility's are a little different in places too, as in lots of us have top up cards and keys for gas and electric.

Council Housing does not mean all the residents are of one colour and or all are unemployed. Projects it seems in the US both of these are defined as Unemployed. People can live in a Council House here in the UK with hundreds of thousands of pounds in their banks. There is no Class Divide here in the UK compared to the Projects in the US.

US houses are like large garden sheds, made of timber and crappy shingle on the roof. UK houses are made of brick, like they should be.

Sockets not outlets

14:30 Electric kettles much _faster at heating_ with 240V vs 110V (draws more that 4x less current for similar wattage) - explains the prevalence in UK (and most of world, except the Americas North of the Equator) 🤓

Should you ever visit us again, please visit Wales. I live in Cardiff which is the capital city which is vibrant and has much to offer, especially for young people. Much night life with great clubs, pubs and restaurants. You can stay at my house with good homemade food and I would be a great guide to this magical part of the UK.

I agree in the Cotswold it’s a beautiful part of the country.

Hope your well Joel. Happy Easter

I live in a prefab cement house made with a quartz mix built in the sixty by the waterboard, though now it's a council house but at least the rent is cheap and it's a seriously solid building, I have built in wardrobes, a large attic and a front and back garden, central heating. Double glazed windows and lots of cupboard space, it doesn't even feel that small... England is the best place to live. But I'm bist 👌😹🐈👍

i love how you get our humour x

I think I would be too nervous living in a wooden American house, a real fire hazard. Give me a good old British brick house any day.

My husband installs AC and is seeing more and more households having it fitted in the UK. Hes been fitting it in shops/shopping centres since the late 80’s but it is really taking off now in houses. A lot of people in the UK think it only works on cooling but it does work on heating too and has been a cheaper heating solution for us.

I don't think newness leads to bigger houses. The newer houses tend to be smaller in the UK.

Never heard of Commonhold and I'm well stricken in years. We also have built in wardrobes, mixer taps and a separate washing machine and tumble dryer. Lucky us!

3:55 Classic wordplay 😂

Houses are getting smaller in the uk as developers want to cram as many houses as possible into the land they purchase. I lived on an estate and the developers did a land swap with another developer and they put 34 houses on the same land the previous owners planned 30. The reason being money.

I have fly screens. They're awesome! Getting AC installed next week 😉

Why would you build a wooden house in area where you get tornados? Haven’t the Americans not heard of the Three Pigs Story? 😅

Our first house in the US came with standard, uniformed landscaping. Being European the second year I replaced petunias with onions. To make the water bill worthwhile...

Well maintained waste disposal units are great for getting rid of food scraps….. the downfall is, we have an ongoing problem with fat balls in the UK sewer system. Add to these the food scraps, which can often contain melted fat; which solidifies when it gets cold…. the result….. bigger fat balls in the sewers!! Plus, if your council already recycles your food waste, then you reduce what is available to their system…. Which by the way has been constructed using public funding… ie your money….. A final thought. If you’re in a block of flats, the sludge goes into the communal waste system. When random things (or fat) blocks it and it goes wrong…. Better get your wallet ready!!! Oh and just for clarity…. I’ve used waste disposal systems for years in the UK and have experienced the good and the bad….. result….. i wont have one again 😏

In the past I have lived in high density housing in the UK. I didn’t feel that I had minimal space as I was only a number of yards from green, open spaces. Additionally, it is chilly here for many months of the year. Higher density housing is (generally) warmer. Now we live in a large house, we worked hard and saved for it. I never take my good fortune for granted.

Aussie (Ex Ireland) here! UK heat waves ROFLOL! When there it was 16-17C +/- 53F they were in shorts, sunbaking, and all in the outdoors in parks!! We were cold, coats, scarfs & gloves!!!! Even if it gets into 30Cs that is still cooler than our heatwaves! Where I live we had a high of 48C (Approx 120F), it got so hot that the spiders in our pergola joints died from the heat & fell to the ground! It was one way of getting rid of them! Of course we do have to remember that temperature is taken in the shade & not in the sun. This is because there is radiant heat from the ground etc as it is warmed up by the sun! Yes, that is why we can cook eggs etc on the roads!! Many of us have been burnt by our seatbelt clips when we get into a car that was in the Sun! BTW some of our shopping centres have build covers so that shoppers get shade when buying groceries & some have put solar panels on the top to help power the centres! BTW most Aussie houses are 1 story, but with AC!! We have bigish blocks of land!

Waste disposal. Scares the bejesuz out of me!

I’m happy in my two bed bungalow (they don’t have stairs for any Americans who don’t know - all one level) a lovely back and front garden (surrounded by woods in the back) a mountain on one side and a lake on the other. It may be small but it’s comfortable, peaceful and very pretty 😊🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Very interesting thank you! From the UK. :)

He didnt mention Bungalows, great for the retired as they only have a ground floor. Think they were a thing in the 1930sto 50s but no one builds them now. In fact, 2 near me were derelict and were knocked down and a block of flats built....2rents goes to 6!

It's horrible dull today ..bit of sun then disappears for cool breeze ..I want to weed the front but the weather is a let down ..I love my tea ..yes electric kettle ...no walk in wardrobe ..normal wardrobe.. which is just fine and normal for most .

Summer usually arrives on a Tuesday and it's autumn by the weekend. When you was here it got to 43 degrees C so was a little warm. Luckily 99% of the year doesn't go over 18 degrees and it rains - every 10 minutes. I shit you not. The south is a lot warmer than the north, good, the southerners need to sit under a bunson burner 24/7 and as soon as you hit Scotland it's either cold and sunny or 3 feet deep of snow. Think Canada, apart from 99% of the Scots are drunks. Love your videos 👏👌

He forgot to mention UK new builds come with a feature of having piss in the corner. As a joiner making these shit new houses, i can say brickies love to piss in the corners whilst building them aha

Last year i went into the back garden once to have a bbq and haven't been back since. Really hoping this 🤞 year will be better. Glad you were lucky enough to visit on a heatwave week but that's all it ever is. A week of heat then if we are lucky after a cool spell we might get another one. Our summer is blasts of sun ☀️ between the clouds.

Where are the US trailer parks? I saw some places in Miami that looked like they were made from driftwood 😳

I wish there were videos about you. You seem like such a a nice guy.

My house is only 100 years old but it's glorious. Added insulation and triple glazing and solar panels and underfloor heating it's pretty modern and comfortable. We only have 2 floors but we have a large garden outhouse which is my gym, study. My cousin that moved to the States said his house is old (but 5 years ago😂😂).

I fitted waste disposal many years ago and it was the worst thing I ever did - the waste pipe was forever getting blocked and flooding the kitchen.....I guess we're above average size wise, 1,300sq ft with just the 2 of us left living here now but it's handy when the kids visit at Christmas :) I was in Malta without aircon during their worst heatwave - 140 degrees, so I've experience HOT! I generally find the UK more oppressively hot than other countries

Being from NC living in the UK for 18 years I can say that air conditioning is a luxury that I miss during the heatwaves.

Most people here in the UK have fans, either on their ceilings or just stand ones and maybe the odd people with the portable AC which isn’t as popular but we do have them and it’s quite common to have one because we are wimps and can’t handle the heat we get once a year lol.. Also I love how our houses are brick and not wood, our houses are properly built but I do love how big the American ones are, you can also buy a big house in America probably for the same price you would pay for a normal one here but I guess it’s because our houses aren’t cheap to build.

offices and commercial is commonly air-conditioned surrey/ london its getting more popular but just small freestanding plug in units i got it for my animals not myself, you should find some videos of britain's luxury homes or areas such as the burwood estate or st georges hill both in surrey they a lot larger and more american but rarely get any light

This is so true, everything is bigger in America "it did not help that one of my first chances to experience this was a Skyscraper" but from cars, roads, houses in comparison it's just soo huge. How you doing Doc?

We have mixed taps in bathrooms and in kiitchens. When was the last time he came to the uk. Not everybody has washerdryer we have washing and dryers.

Traditionally, we haven't needed air conditioning in the UK, if it ever got hot it was only for short periods. We are definitely starting to need it now tho with climate change. I have to work in an un-airconditioned room facing the midday-afternoon sun and during summer it's now oppressive, with the computer fans screaming. Air conditioning will definitely become more common in the UK.

In UK we have 230 volts supply, which means a 3KW kettle only draws 13 amps, while in USA a 3KW kettle would draw 26 amps, which would melt those ridiculously flimsy and dangerous plugs right off the wall and set fire to the ( wooden ) house...

Living in the Scottish Highlands, I find houses particularly in England look really small compared to houses in the Highlands, particularly new builds. Even the old houses here are much larger than in England. In Scotland our houses were traditionally built from local stone, whilst English houses are mostly brick.

Joel we dont get rain 5 times a day, not normally, wish we did as I hate the heat. That year you came with the heat wave on was awful, could have done with lots of rain then.

I think domestic garbage disposal units are now illegal across Europe - an ecological problem but most things from the US are……

The houses in the past were built of local materials, so the Cotswolds which is where I live now, has the older houses made of the local limestone, with stone tiles on the roof. Stone tiles are very very expensive now and many houses were reroofed with concrete tiles. There was a period in the 1980s where you could get a grant for a new roof and in my village a lot of people had concrete replace the stone. The stone was not thrown out though it was recycled on to houses in more preserved villages. I don't think Lost in the Pond showed a Cotswold house, as not many are thatched. It looked more like a cob house, like those in Dorset. These are made of mud and a fibrous material like straw or animal hair and maybe lime, basically a mud hut with a thatched roof of reeds. Where I used to live the predominant original building material was oak, and the traditional houses were half timbered with wattle and daub in between, wattle being woven sticks and daub being the old mix of mud, hair and maybe lime. Cottages were timber framed with weatherboard or brick with tile hung walls. In areas near rivers, clay was used to make bricks.

my house is terraced and was built in 1950 made of concrete

What is it with the single taps I don’t have any in my UK house mine are all mixed taps

How dare you! we only get rain once a week, and it lasts for 7 days typically

I expected Lawrence to highlight that in the UK we have ground floors, first floors, second floors etc. whereas in America, the bottom/ground floor is called the "first floor". Very confusing. We rarely have "basements" in the UK although some terraced houses have "cellars" which are now mainly used for storage. Cellars were originally used to store coal and food items that needed to be kept cool so they didn't spoil, like cheese, milk, vegetables and meat. This was in Victorian days before the invention of refrigerators.

If you didn`t have a proper British wardrobe, how would you get to Narnia?

I like the idea of insect screens as they keep the houseflies out that crap on your paintwork and just want to walk all over your food and you! Not many houses here have them. 🇬🇧

LOL, that background music has put Pink Floyd's "Fearless" into my head

Our Houses in the UK are built with Bricks and Mortar not all WOOD which are not solid..