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The British electric socket is one of the greatest inventions of all time. Seriously… the safety features are genius.

The UK standard plug is, without a doubt, the safest in the world. The plug is fused, the earth pin is longer than the other two which means it's the first to make contact and the last out. The live (+) and neutral (-) are shielded to make it difficult / impossible to touch them as you plug them in. Internally there is a substantial cable grip and again the wiring is equally designed for safety.

my henry is 30 years old and still works perfectly. he may be awkward and cumbersome but by god is he sturdy and good at his job.

Our plug sockets are absolute genius. It is virtually impossible to electrocute one’s self. Plus our power supply is 240v as oppose to North American 120v hence the extra safety in the U.K. Remember the episode that Alanna did on how long it took her to heat a kettle in Canada!

Brits don't call them power outlets. We call them sockets. We aim to confuse all foreigners 😂😂😂😂

Cleaning staff at Alanna's gym getting ready to vacuum the locker room: WHO KEEPS TURNING THIS OFF!?!?!?

I'm a foreigner too from non-English speaking country, I've come to the UK just 3 months. Honestly, I don't struggle with these British things at all and just do what 'When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do'. I'm easy and adapt quickly & happily 😁

British sockets are the normal sort. It's foreign countries that have strange ones.

Tea - it doesn't cure the world's problems but it does greatly boost your ability to deal with them.

Perhaps we should send missionaries to America to explain the concept of a sink plug.

Henrys are genius… almost every cleaner and builder uses them, they just work (or if you have used it wrong they are really easy to mend), and who needs warm water… cold for drinking, hot for washing, both if you need warm… anything else would be madness!

The Henry slander I will not stand until you’ve used the communal ones at University which invariably always smell of sick. Otherwise, perfection 😂

Switches on outlets makes sense with the alternative is to unplug the device, and leave the plug on the floor pins up and ready for you to step on it bare foot late a night.

As a Brit, I've never heard of browsing hours. But then I'm not crazy enough to go to any shop before 10am on a Sunday. Hell, I don't want to even leave the house until after lunch on a Sunday!

The UK doesn't call them outlets, they are sockets. The are also probably the safest in the world due to their design even though were a really old country. The ones in your gym are probably used by the cleaners.

Adventures and Naps keeps pumping out high-quality content!

Switched outlets just make sense, lack of them in other countries is absolutely mindblowing

I love the part in A Bridge too far when the adjutant goes to Sean Connery and says "Cup of tea sir?".. Then the rant about radios not working and lunatics laughing from the wood "and you think a cup of tea will help me ??!".. "Well it won't hurt sir" 😂

On/off switches are a safety feature, to control transmission of current. It has nothing to do with saving money.

The solution to separate taps is to put the plug in the sink and pour a little of both into the sink. When you are finished you remove the plug and all the water goes away.

Henry Hoovers are made in the UK. They employ UK citizens, and they pay their taxes. Every other hoover manufacturer do none of those things, and Dyson in particular actively work against Britain's best interests and are made to break down in 12 months. Always buy a Henry. It is the patriotic thing to do.

Regarding the taps. British people tend to fill the sink up using the cold and hot taps to make the water just right. American's, not caring about water, just run the tap while they wash. I lived in America for 7 years, so I have seen this!

Browsing hours? I’ve been on this planet for very many years, I’ve never heard of that.

What amazes me most is the diversity of lightbulbs. Before moving to the UK, I needed spare light bulbs of only one type (large screw on ones), and they would fit any and all appliances I had. Nowadays, each light bulb in my flat is different: 6 pin, 4 pin, 2 pin, small and large screw-on varieties.

Another note on UK plugs and sockets is that it's REALLY difficult to electrocute yourself with one. The prongs are arranged in such a way that by the time the plug is out of the socket enough for you to touch exposed metal it is already too far out of the socket to still have power running through it. It generally take intentional tampering with either the plug and/or socket to be able to.

How to remember floors: The British are grounded, Americans are flawed!😁 P.S. It's pronounced Wooster-sher as in Jeeves & Wooster.

Yes I miss British plugs, here in Australia I went to Bunnings and asked for bulbs....he pointed me to the garden section.....huh? Oh you mean globes! We laughed.

Alanna, I stumbled across one of your videos only yesterday. I've watched several, and you had me in stitches with this one! Our British pronunciations of some place names are TOTALLY unreasonable, and they're just as confusing to us when we're kids and we first see them. I think we learn many of these place names by hearing them, before we ever see how they're spelled. But ... when you get used to them, the crazy difference between the spelling and the pronunciation becomes part of the fun, and knowing the correct pronunciation makes you feel like you've graduated, somehow. You're now in the know, and you're able to correct people who mispronounce them! This is all part of being British! I think my favourites are Alnwick, pronounced 'annick', and Towcester, pronounced 'toaster'. There are other words that don't sound like they look, of course, such as women, or friend, and I think their pronunciations are universal in all English-speaking countries. It's pretty silly that supermarkets call the pre-trading hour "browsing hour", as if anyone is going to browse in a supermarket, looking at all the food and taking an hour to make up their mind what they're going to buy. It's really "trolley loading hour". As for our plug sockets, they used not to have switches, many years ago, and even now, not all do. However, British plugs can take a bit of effort to pull out and put back in, so it's handy having a switch, especially as we have so many electrical things plugged into so many sockets these days. Also, when British plugs aren't plugged in, they tend to lie on the floor with their prongs pointing upwards, and if you inadvertently stand on one, it REALLY hurts! Both the American and British ways of numbering the floors of a building make sense, but as a child, I think probably most of us would expect the storey you walk into to be the first floor, and they you'd go up a flight of stairs to the second floor, and we all have to learn that no, the ground-level floor is the ground floor, and the 2nd level is the first floor. And then you're in the know: you've graduated! I guess the logic is that the ground 'floor' is actually on the ground (just forget basements for a moment), and that a 'floor' is a higher level that is actually made, rather than naturally being there, so the one above the ground is the first But I really understand your current confusion. I used to live abroad in a country where they drive on the right, with the steering wheel on the left side of the car, but when I visited home, cars' steering wheels were on the right. I got so confused that several times (in both countries) I got into the wrong side of the car, only to find that I didn't have a steering wheel. For maybe a year after I moved back to Britain, I just couldn't think which way round it would be, so before I got in the car, I would simply look to see where the steering wheel was! I do think, though, that the idiosyncrasies of British life are one of the defining qualities of Britishness. I know Americans use pounds and ounces, but the British used to go further and use stones. 16 ounces in a pound, 14 pounds in a stone, and 8 stones in a hundredweight. What could be simpler? 🤣🤣 Until 1971, our money had 240 pennies in a pound, divided into 20 shillings worth 12 pennies each ...

Using "First floor" to describe the Ground floor does not make sense. It's like saying that a baby is 1 year old on the day that they are born. Also, the American system breaks down as soon as you have underground floors. In the UK the Ground floor is numbered zero, and then underground floors are numbered -1, -2 etc. (because they are below zero). So positive numbers are above ground level, and negative numbers are below ground level. However, In the US the first underground floor would have to be numbered zero (seeing as they number the ground floor as 1).

The tap thing always gets me as people say about burning there hands! Put the plug in and then put hot and cold in to make warm water plus its better for the enviroment to fill the sink instead of constant running water and if you diss Henry then i will hunt you down😂

Have a Henry and he's a real veteran. Bought in '95 and never broken down. Know what you mean about the trailing container. You've got to know where you're going and what Henry is up to behind you. I took my daughter's Dyson down to the tip and the cry went up " not another one ".

Love the way you call the Henry vacuum cleaner family “Hoovers”. Very British!

The mug you used for your tea was classic 🤣

Henry is an *amazing* low key British success story. 1) not floated, so ownership remains entirely in the UK. 2) robust, durable, easy to repair and *designed* to be repaired (no planned obsolescence.). 3) fun fact - the company, still based in London, has zero, thats right *zero* advertising budget. It has made itself profitable through one simple gimmick - a cute anthropomorphic design and a name - and word of mouth about its quality and durability. Honestly I wish more companies were like this.

Really love this - so many Henry's 😂 Love your humour

One of the cool things about the Henry's is that Numatic that makes them never advertises them, so you'll never see them advertised on telly, they just rely on their reputation to sell them. The bad thing (for them at least) is they're virtually indestructable, so many people buy them and then never need to replace them as they just keep working, which is great as a user (got one myself) but not sure it's a great business model. :)

I tried washing my hair in a basin that had a mixer tap in the middle and kept bashing my head on the tap.

The British electrical plugs are a masterpiece of engineering. The earth connection pin is longer than the other pins because the holes that the L and N pins fit into have a shutter across them ( to stop people poking things into them ) and the earth pin pushes the shutters out of the way. The two 'power' pins are also insulated for most of their length to make sure that you fingers cannot get a shock, every plug has its own built in ( but replaceable ) fuse cartridge from 1 , 3, 5, 10 and 13 amps - this means a small appliance like a table lamp can have a 1 or 3 amp fuse and a large appliance like a refrigerator, washing machine etc can have a 13 amp fuse. The switch on the socket also makes a lot of sense ( especially if you have ever trodden on a British 3 pin plug with no shoes on )....

The taps did it for me. Your explanation for separate taps is almost spot on. There are many homes in the UK that are a hundred or many hundreds of years old and still have crappy old tanks in the attic, perhaps with the odd dead rodent floating around. So you never really mixed your hot and cold if you planned to ingest that mixture without boiling it first, valued your health that is. With the introduction of boilers, especially combi types, the hot is fed from the same supply as the cold and its perfectly safe to mix them, so the UK has slowly moved from separate taps to mixers. Love this channel.

It isn't just the Brits who say "ground floor, first floor, etc." Every European country other than Russia does so, as do Australia, New Zealand, most East and Southern African countries, India, and most South Asian and Pacific nations, and even Mexico and most South and Central America.

I think the switch on the socket (outlet) is very useful and an added safety feature of the British home and workplace. I always turn a switch off prior to removing the plug from the socket to ensure there isn't a surge of electricity to my device or through the eclectic circuit of the house. It can also save quite a bit of money if the socket is supplying power to a device that has a standby function. My house was built in 1904 and even though it no longer has a hot water tank and supply tank in my loft (which could be the source of contamination as it was generally only loosely covered with a piece of wood, so birds or rodents could end up in it) it still has separate taps in the kitchen and bathroom. I prefer two separate taps and really do not like mixer taps. Having a hot and cold tap allows me to control the heat of the water added to the sink and retained with the sink plug in place.

Henry for the win. The suction power is incredible and he’s low maintenance.

ive a Henry hoover in my worshop. It`s used for cleaning up swarf(small shards of metal from machining), oil and water. It`s still working after fifteen years, sumply fantastic.

You Alright Alanna, how you doin'. Listen don't stress about the switch on the socket at the gym, it was probably just the cleaner forgetting to turn it off when unplugging the Henry vacuum because he /she were wondering if they had remembered to turn off the hot taps on the 1st floor. 🤣🤣

the reason for 2 taps, it wasnt about keeping hot and cold separate, it was about keeping the drinking water separate from the non drinking water as the old types of boiler used to heat water were not great and created Bactria, so basically its not separate hot and cold taps, its separate drinking and non drinking water taps.

Sunday trading in large stores and garden centres is restricted to only a few hours. On Easter Sunday they are not even allowed to open. One advantage of having switches on power outlets is you do not need to unplug to isolate the appliance.

When I was growing up,untill 1995, if you bought an electrical item in Britain usually you had to put your own plug on it I remember being taught this in school.

Henry vacuums were popular with professional cleaners because their top incorporates a handle that manually stores the electric cable. The cables were very long so you could do a large office without moving the plug. People in the office saw that the professionals were using these and assumed they must be better so bought them for their homes. The face is a plus.

I think the whole idea of sinks with plugs is so you can fill it with a mixture of hot and cold water to the temperature you want, then wash. True that there could have been a dead rodent in your local water tank but more people used to fill the sink using the plug than just keep the tap running to wash and shave etc.

UK deaths from electrocution in the years 2001 to 2017 range from 8 to 38 per year and average at about 20. I can't find such detailed statistics for the USA, but it seems to be somewhere between 400 and "more than 1000" per year. Taking into account the approximate 5 to 1 population difference, the UK would appear to be about 4 to 10 times safer despite using 230V rather than 110V.

The power outlet awitches are a safety feature to make sure that there is no danger of a spark causing injury - especially to children when it is off. And yes the earth pin and shutter system should have a sinilar effect, but redundant safety features are useful to have as well.

Alanna You would have liked the DFS furniture store Darley Dale Derbyshire. To avoid Sunday Trading laws if you bought a carrot for say £300 they threw in a settee or piece of furniture for free! They did very well from it!

The wash basin is key on the 2 tap system. Place in the plug in the basin. Pour hot in basin the turn off tap. Add cold to adjust to preferred temperature.

Love the look of your houseplants. Try 'dagonia teeth' plant as a floor growing 'tree' to grow in a corner setting. So satisfying watch them grow (fast).

Yup have a Henry. Yes his shape is awkward but he's sooooo reliable and so powerful he pulled the carpet off its grippers

Alana, you know that thing under the taps its called a basin. Put that plastic thing in it - technical term a plug (not to be confused with an electric plug)- run both taps for a few seconds into the basin swirl the water et voila perfect washing temperature water. Plus you save water.

Modern homes have single taps. If you are renting, you are probable in older houses. The hot water needed an expanion tank in the attic, anything living in your attic might die in the expansion tank. Scalding hot water is usuallly used in commercial environments like shopping malls where they don't want you to use the hot water. Of course, you could mix the water in the bowl, but no-one has time for that!

Your videos just get better and better

Floors is like us driving on the CORRECT side of the road-( LEFT)- it makes sense! ; Basement or cellar( if you have one below the GROUNDFLOOR and above that 1st floor, 2nd floor....etc simples!

I worked in the motor trade in the 80s and 90s and saw the absolute abuse that Henry could take from industrial trade wastes like broken car glass and other stuff you should never get near with a vacuum. They never died, so I bought one in 1993 and I'm still using it today for when my Dysons can't cope and it's never failed yet. I even got a longer hose for doing the stairs so I don't have to carry it upstairs anymore. The newer ones today don't seem as sturdy built as mine. After 30 years heavy use and abuse it's still good for another 30 years.

Hey Alannah, whether you read this or not, your channel is probably in my top 5 channels on KZfaq. I shop at Barkers menswear in NZ and read that the founder of the store went to the UK to train as a tailor (with Burton tailoring). Its from reading that he went to the UK that I started watching European food tasting channels on KZfaq. Its from your channel that I've tried a starbar, double decker, irn bru, jaffa cakes and matchmakers (I didn't like the starbar and matchmakers; we have opposite tastebuds). I also now drink Yorkshire tea and eat milk chocolate hobnobs and dark chocolate digestives. I tried maple syrup for the first about 6 months ago. Its one of, if not literally the best topping I've ever had.

The Henry style hoover is a strange one, because they are no good for round the house as you said, but in large open areas like offices and shops, they're really good because normally these spaces have either a hard floor or very flat carpet tiles (so no need for heavy duty beaters or brushes). They are also massive spaces that you need to be able to vacuum very quickly and with minimal effort, so the light weight handle of the Henry is ideal. And because they are large open spaces, there is much more room to manouver the body of the hoover.

Cool video! "Where's the data on that?" Cut to British grandpas furiously typing away...

I remember my maternal grandparents house when I was a young child in the 60's. The only tap in the house was cold and in the kitchen and there was no cooker. There was also no bathroom. They had a cast iron oven built into the fireplace and a shelf thing over the fire for pans. You wanted hot water, you had to boil it in a pan on the fire. They had tin bath on a hook on the wall for use with hot water produced in the same manner. Oh, and the toilet was outside!

With the taps older houses used to have a "hot water tank" where the hot water was boiled and kept ready for use. This could get quite nasty (I remember my father telling me that he knew of a family who found a dead rat in theirs). The cold water comes straight from the mains and is considered fit for drinking and the two taps kept the drinking water away from the hot water. Modern combi-boilers don't have a storage tanks and as such most modern bathrooms and kitchens have mixer taps (unless people want the classic look)

The 3 pin plug goes into the socket, the hot and cold taps work well if you put a plug in the sink and fill it with hot and cold water to whatever temperature suits you.

Separate taps are simple you put the plug in the sink run the hot water then the cold until you get the water as hot as you want

The British have a device known as a "Sink Plug" which allows you to mix the water in the bowl.😊😊When I turn on my hot tap I have to run it for a while before it gets hot as the pipes between the hot tank and the cap cool down.

Yes - I still have separate taps everywhere in my house, which is only 17 years old (which disproves what some, smug people say about ALL newer properties ALL having mixer taps these days! - not so at all!) - and I've had them all my 73 years, so I'm used to how to handle them!

One of my fav Monty Python sketches has a joke about pronunciation versus spelling. Michael Palin's character inroduces Graham Chapman's character as Mister Raymond - Luxury - Yacht, however Graham's character corrects Palin's character and explains that " My name is spelled Raymond Luxury Yacht, but it's pronounced Throat - Warbler - Mangrove".

I went to Loughborough Uni and had a rugby shirt with the uni name on it I was on holiday and an American (who was on the same tour) came up to me and asked me where Loogyboroogy was I looked at him blankly and he pointed at my shirt, oh it's pronounced Luffboro I replied He wandered away looking a bit confused and probably thought I was taking the piss. He obviously didn't understand patronization 😮

It takes a fair amount of effort to pull a British electrical plug out of its socket (unlike North American plugs that fall out when you look at them), so having the switch is handy.

11:30 The British phrase "Are you all right? " (commonly shortened to "You alright?" or even just "Alright?") is equivalent to the USA "How are you?". These aren't intended as questions, but are instead greetings, equivalent to saying "Hello". 5:40 I think the floors make sense when you consider using stairs or a lift. You usually enter a building on the ground floor, so this is labelled separately as G or 0. Consequently, the First Floor is 1 floor up, and so on. Similarly, the basement is usually labelled B or - 1, and so on, if below ground. This also makes is easier to count how many floors (levels) a building has, because if your apartment is on the 6th floor then you're literally 6 floors "up" (i.e. above the ground)

Loved your mug! 😄

"You alright?" "Yeah, you alright?" "Yeah"... Beginning & end of convo, no more is needed, walk away from the social situation! 😂 I long time ago I used to have house rabbits & the only hoover that didn't freak them out was Henry! So thank you Henry for your services lol

Across the pond you are waiting for your kids to light up like a Christmas tree when they stick their fingers in the outlet and you still complain about safety switches are you real

Hi Alanna,I loved your video,some interesting thoughts.With regards to separate hot and cold water taps,if you put cold water in the basin or sink first,you can then put in hot water until the required temperature is reached…No scolding.cheers Roly 🇬🇧.

Henry is mostly for commercial use, although some homes (including mine) have them. They are very powerful and the fact you don’t have to carry the weight of the motor etc. means you can hoover all day with no issues. It also means you have a big body to hold a lot of dust. In hotels they are excellent

lived in UK for 65 years and never heard of browsing hours! This is a weird supermarket!

Being used to the Ground floor, first floor, second floor etc concept, imagine how confusing it was visiting a famous store in New York to discover floors one and a half and two and a half? The escalators kept going past the half floors even though we could see them. It turned out to be a different set of escalators, Why would they call mezzanine floors 'Half's' ? 🇬🇧

Alright mate? Yeah, you’re right. If I ever ask someone “How are you?” and they tell me, I’m absolutely mortified. Good series of videos, I’m cracking up 😂

12:12 😂 I love confusing people when they ask me 'you alright' and I say either "why? do it not look alright" or "no I'm not", I love seeing people's faces because it's not what they expect to hear😂😂

I'll never forget the time the Head of Human Resources called the IT helpdesk because his printer wasn't working, so I went down to have a look. Yup, you guessed it. The power switch was off on the wall socket! If I had a pound for every time...

The power outlet is the way it is in the uk because of health and safety. 👍

It's not the cup of tea itself, but what the cup of tea represents. It's stopping and taking some time to think or chat with a friend etc. Taking a quick break and going back to your problem with fresh energy and a calm mind. But the tap situation is insane. You got us there.

You're hilarious, natural delivery

Separate taps - you fill the basin to the temperature mix you require. Better for the environment too.

The separate taps thing is, like you said, about hot water storage (or at least how it used to be) and apparently the correct way to go about using the separate taps is to fill up the sink and mix your water in there to the right temperature... but who has time for that?

Switched outlets allow you to cut power to a device without unplugging it. Many devices still draw power when they may appear to be off.

i started on a charles, i got sick of the cord when doing the stairs, switched to a cordless hoover but realised how good i had it with the charles i missed the suction and the cord winder bit so ive come back to a henry now, even though he gets stuck on doorways, lovely

Alanna, I can't tell if you were joking about the hot and cold water, but the idea wasn't to either freeze or burn your face, you mix the waters in the basin to get the perfect temperature XD

I have the pink Hetty. In a sad comment on the gender pay gap, she was £5 cheaper than Henry

Still have seperate taps, but managed to work out at an early age that if I put the plug in the basin, I could then mix the cold and hot in the basin without "injuring" myself

Charles is a wet and dry shop vac. Great for clearing up leaks and spills. The standard if for short pile and commercial flooring (eg office carpet tiles and hard floors). For domestic carpets you need a different head.

I do have an Henry. I've also had Dysons in the past, and I have found my Henry not only to last longer, but have a better suction than the more expensive Dyson machines. The one I currently have is almost a decade old, although it's getting to the point where it will need replacing soon.

I can't remember the last time I saw a basin with separate taps. Most modern bathrooms have mixer taps. And if they have separate taps just put the plug in the basin, and run both taps to the preferred temperature it's not rocket science.

The on/off switch on the plug socket means you can quickly shut off power without having to remove the plug. Then you know the appliance definitely isn't live..This also means there isn't a plug lying around which could be stepped on, causing injury...a lot of people just say 'alright' as a general greeting and drop the 'you'. The correct response is 'not bad'. Every single time. Doesn't matter if you've just won the lottery or your house has burnt down. It's just how it is.

Loved this one 😊

The great thing about Henry's & the extended family is that they are actually made in Somerset, UK. They are often used in offices ect as they are very hardy. The other great feature is that all the parts are available at a reasonable price. They can be worked hard & repaired. That's pretty eco friendly.