The issue isn't open-floor plans themselves, but rather developers' disregard for energy efficiency in pursuit of profit, resulting in poorly designed McMansions that prioritize short-term gains over sustainability. The true culprit is the proliferation of cheap HVAC units, lax regulations, and consumer unawareness, which have converged to create a perfect storm of subpar architectural design.
To combat the commodification of housing, I advocate for a paradigm shift in new development projects. Conditional permits should require equivalent land allocation for non-profit, community-driven initiatives, such as co-ops and housing trusts. By prioritizing social impact over financial returns.
The US housing market is on the brink of a significant correction, driven by a combination of economic pressures. To safeguard your financial well-being, it may be wise to diversify your investments and consider alternative asset classes. Consulting with an independent financial advisor can provide valuable insights and personalized strategies for managing this market shift.
As much as I like Cheddar, speaking as a student of architecture, this story has several inaccuracies and overly-broad generalizations. First, the story criticizes open designs for being hard to cool, but then briefly talks about passively cooled buildings which generally require a degree of open design to function. There are many good ways to build energy efficient open designs, and while I agree that most houses in North America don't follow good design principles, the story doesn't really lay out a compelling picture of how to do better.
Agreed, this video is not one of their best researched ones, in today's building world you could build a very nice 10k Sq.Ft. open shop and have it cost you next to nothing to heat and cool with materials we have.
Mika Chance Sure, here's a recent article from up here in Canada that showcases several large projects designed for passive efficiency, www.cbc.ca/news/technology/passive-house-highrises-1.4437973 Also a Washington Post article www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/can-expensive-ultra-green-homes-sell-in-a-gritty-suburban-maryland-town/2017/05/17/753f1edc-2443-11e7-bb9d-8cd6118e1409_story.html?.e0590b67cacf about a project done by Flywheel Development (I think they're based in DC). There's the Hillcrest Seniors Residence in Pittsburgh too. These are all built using the PHI standard, (Passive House Institute) a method that relies on high insulation and air tightness between the building and the outside, but requires extensive airflow within the building to function. This is very different system than the open air-passive cooling designs mentioned in the story, and is much more practical in most of North America where winter is a consideration. Ironically enough, here's a good primer article on the related "net-zero" design movement from HGTV Canada: www.hgtv.ca/green-living/blog/net-zero-homes-mike-holmes-1916127/ In addition, there are simple things that can be done to existing buildings to improve passive performance as simple as planting deciduous trees on the sunward sides of a building (east/west) to block sun in the summer to help keep the house cool, but allow sunlight to pass in the winter helping heat the home. Opening windows along the windy axis of a building to passive airflow cooling is also a simple solution that can lower in house temperatures by several degrees. This can be improved by building houses with these principles in mind, but I can't think of any large scale projects using simple passive methods like this; this is more of a grass-roots small scale movement. I know it was a short piece that can only just touch the tip of the iceberg, but maybe follow-up piece to show what ordinary homeowners can do?
Mika Chance Agreed. Air conditioning is overly relied upon by most people, as is heating. Using passive strategies and saving active heating/cooling for when it's actually needed is something that really needs to drilled in to people until it becomes a normal part of life. It doesn't need to go away, but it shouldn't be the first tool in the toolbox.
@@christianwestling2019 Idk, I don't remember the video and I don't remember the context of the conversation, but I think I was being facetious towards that person because they stopped the video after it had mentioned africa and thought "I'm too good for the rest of this video". Lol
My poor Grandmother with dementia HATED the house my Grandparents moved into in 2006. She kept saying, "it looks like a barn!" Never understood why she said that. I finally realized the open layout drove her nuts, but she couldn't explain it. 🤷🏼♀️
I actually prefer a closed floor plan. I like the idea of having a living room that’s separate from the dining which is separate from the kitchen and so on. Plus I like the idea of having specific rooms... I hope that makes sense lol
it makes perfect sense to me. i think most of the people who want an open floor plan have been brain-washed by too many 'home improvement' shows and are -- no offense intended, it's just been my observation -- women who buy into the whole 'room to entertain guests' nonsense.
Especially when there's more people living there, it's nice to have enough rooms that everyone can be in a different room w/o having to hang out in their bedroom all the time
I agree, especially since they’re taking the open floor plans to the extreme and introducing these horrible open bathrooms... I look at these and I’m like, WHY!?!?
@Carpe Diem Funny thing about the US south. For as hot as it gets here, you'd think they'd have put a little more effort into making the HVAC system work right in the houses they built here. It's not right to have to set the thermostat to 70 just to keep it at a "comfortable" 80 upstairs, but that's normal and accepted here. I think the problem is crappy ductwork (they LOVE flex duct; sheet metal is too difficult, apparently) and they don't bother to balance the system. Sometimes they make the problem worse by putting ductwork, or worse, the air handler, in the attic. It's obvious with some of these installs that nobody who knows what they are doing had anything to do with it.
@Carpe Diem Except if you have an HOA they won't permit you to install a window air conditioner. Newer construction is either zoned or has separate units for upstairs or downstairs, but it only took them 30 years to fix the problem that way.
@Carpe Diem It becomes a question of how much will it cost to fix vs. the energy savings. Sometimes the best option is to sell it (because many buyers don't seem to care about things like energy efficiency) and buy a house that is energy efficient. An interesting phenomenon I've noticed with HOAs is that as the neighborhood gets older, the HOA basically falls apart and stops enforcing the regulations.
i used to live in a home that was seriously open floor plan. I've since moved into a home with a more closed concept built in 1982, the ability to close the doors of your kitchen is amazing when you want to cook at night without waking anybody up. The family room/kitchen is completely separate by 2 doors from the rest of the home. Even the living room can be boarded off as well as the office. Open concept is great in looks but not practicality
@Renee Tate - The noise is the first thing I thought of as well. Our house, built in 1979, is all open with high vaulted ceilings. The TV playing in the family room is actually louder in the living room on the opposite side of the house due to the sound traveling. The people in the family room can't hear the dialog on the TV 10 feet away, while people reading a book in the front room can't hear themselves think.
I dont understand why people would even consider an open kitchen or why they design houses so that the minute you walk in the door, you are looking into an open kitchen. Who wants to sit in their living room looking at the mess and pile of dirty pots and pans in the kitchen area ? A kitchen is for working, cooking, producing stuff and in real life does not look like the kitchens in home decor magazines.
As ones a professor of history of architecture told me. “If you design minimum apartments you need open spaces. But a huge house? Why would I like to smell the fish that is been cook in the kitchen while I am reading in the living room?
Not to mention the problems with acoustics! You can hear EVERYTHING from EVERYWHERE and the echoes can get cacophonous if you're not very careful. The only use I can think of is for helicopter parents who don't want their children to have a single unsupervised moment. Which is. Yikes.
@@johnnulf624 biggest issue IMO is if you fry something and cant close off the rest of the apartment or house. i mean everyone likes the smell of fish!! if they dont they are not hoomans!
Sounds like a guy who doesn't help with the cooking. It's really nice being able to watch the same thing on TV as my wife and son while I'm cooking, rather than being isolated in the kitchen alone.
So true; I have a 1912 terraced house in England with lots of interior walls, which is very warm in winter. In the summer, the through breeze creates a wind tunnel you could test cars in for aerodynamics. The entire layout is designed to minimise seasonal temperature variations.
Should mention the placement of interior doors is also critical to ventilation in summer; it would get stuffy if there wasn't a clear path from the front to back.
That's brilliant, we lived a stone house made in the 1930s that was built in a + shape, we never had an aircon and never needed one. The house would be a wind tunnel like you said and would always be nice and cool.
In the UK, keeping warm is the main issue, right? It is hardly surprising that terrace houses are easier to keep warm, given that the sides of the houses all insulate each other.
Depends on climate... trees can help yet if planted too close to the home or each other, causes pipe and foundation issues with the roots. Some trees retain heat too so in humid conditions, it's a mess.
The bathroom on the first floor of my house is in the middle, between kinda a donut of rooms. No matter where you are on the first floor, you can always here the occupant of the crappy bathroom. Every turd that drops. Every drrrroplet of PiSsssss. Every fart you make every tp you take I’ll be hearing you. I can hear my sibling right now! upstairs bathroom gang ftw
One of the problems is that the houses are made out of wood. I used to live in Mexico in a small brick made house, in an area that got extremely hot during the summer reaching sometimes up to 40 degrees Celcius, and during the winter it could hit 0 degrees Celsius. Yet, we never had to use air conditioner or a heater because the walls would keep everything relatively cool during the summer and during the winter we would just use sweaters and a couple of blankets, something that is a little hard to achieve with wooden walls.
Red Well, maybe lumber is cheap, but as you mentioned, it is very fragile when encountered with the brutality of nature, and as a Floridian i should know. In case you didn’t know, most houses in Mexico are made of concrete since in many cases it is cheaper than wood. Due to the lack of lumber as well as the Spanish influences in construction, many big companies flourished during the early 20th century such as CEMEX and Holcim Apasco. This led to the development of cheaper ways to provide bricks and cement to the public due to, as aforementioned, the lack of lumber. And by the way, Mexico is also part of North America. Just fun facts.
Brick houses are much safer, stronger and resistant to damage in the long run. I live in India where only the poorest have wood homes. Lumber is cheap.
Ever heard of the 3 pigs and the bad wolf. The second pig built his house out of wood, sticks specifically. It was blown down. Please build your houses out of brick or concrete, wood is definitely not as strong as brick or concrete.
There are advantages and disadvantages to all construction materials. The higher thermal mass of brick and stone can definitely help moderate temperatures, but here in Canada where we see temperatures of -20 or colder in the winter, we need more insulation. Hollow wooden walls allow for superior air-gap insulation allowing houses to be heated much more efficiently. In earthquake-prone areas the more brittle construction of stone and brick is a liability, whereas in huricane-prone areas the superior strength and mass of stone or brick is an advantage. My point is that making broad generalizations about "best materials" is against the principles of good design. No one solution fits all use cases.
I hate how open plan houses in america are! i'm from london and i love having separate rooms for everything! especially during quarantine. it gives everyone their own space, plus the heat and smells from the kitchen STAY in the kitchen.
What is cooking in the kitchen that you don't want the house smelling like it? It's my favorite when something is cooking and I smell it in a different part of the house
@@mollyover2369 ew. I would hate for my living room to smell like pot roast , fried fish, Turkey burgers, or anything else I cook. I want it to smell like my scented candles or plug ins
It's gonna be so hilarious in 30 years watching home reno shows adding back walls to these houses. And don't get me wrong, I love open floor concepts and wish I had the money to reno mine. Just saying it as a fan of This Old House who has watched every single episode.
Lol I was thinking this too. Every episode I see on HGTV I say "wow there goes another house we will see on a future episode with them adding the walls back" lol
In the early 1930s Frank Lloyd Wright was asked to design an inexpensive house for a young couple who were just starting out. His proposal, the First Jacob's House [Yes, there was a second one about a decade or so latter.], was so revolutionary that it was obvious Wright had been thinking about the "affordable-house" problem for a very long time. His solution while cool in summer was also warm and cozy in winter. It was open to the out-of-doors (East and South) via a continuous bank of French doors yet closed to the street (West) by a blank wall (with built-in book-shelving on the interior side) topped by clerestory windows. The kitchen was at the center, just a few steps away from the living/playroom area while being invisible to it. It (the kitchen) was the tallest space in the house with its roof well above that of the rest of the house. This feature provided whole-house ventilation in summer by functioning similar to a chimney-flue in creating an up-draft which would allow cooking odors to exit through operable clerestories while also provided daylighting to what otherwise would have been a dark space. The three bedrooms, which were little more than closets* for sleeping were lined-up in a row in a separate wing with the largest one as far as possible from the noise of children playing in the living space in winter. These were accessed through a long hallway with clerestories (for natural illumination) atop a continuous bank of built-in storage units (closets) which, in affect, provided double-wall insulation to the exterior (North) wall. With this, almost tiny, pavilion-like house which appears open and airy when viewed from its private back-garden while at the same time seems closed and substantial when seen from the public street ... in this one little building, Wright returned us to the emotional roots of our human ancestors of some 200,000 years ago sitting in dappled sunlight secure within a grove of trees while looking out at an open savanna somewhere in central southern Africa (in what is now known as Botswana) ... no prior architect had done this! I could continue but that would require a book of which there are several, the most well-known being "The Natural House" by the Master himself. My point being that in order to make an open-plan "work" requires more than just removing walls. Literally, EVERYTHING has to be re-thought! * Here, I'm using the term "closet" in its original meaning of a small room used for study, prayer, and/or contemplation ... one will find this usage in the Bible. Previously, we kept our clothes in the free-standing "wardrobes" [and wardrobe chests (sometimes referred to as "cedar" chests)] where we now house our TVs.
I don't like open floor plans. I rather like the idea of each room being a compartment much like a jewel box so each room can have a different character and style if you choose to
People are beginning to smarten up. Open floor plans suck if there's more then one person living in the house! People need time alone. Sometimes one wants to watch T.V. and another wants to do something unrelated.
@@johndoe-wv3nu People are too alone these days. Humans are adapted to sit around a campfire from sunset until bedtime, which lead to gather around a candle to read, then to watch evening TV together. Now people are reading, watching, playing and even talking (through texting) alone, and it's detrimental to relationships with the people who actually matter in yout life, as well as to mental health, stress, and cross-generational wisdom. People are suffering because they learn the majority of what they know about socialization and emotions, from media rather than from people- and everything left unanswered feels like a problem that has never been had or solved before. The open plan concept was encouraged because it makes for healthier families that interact with each other more, even if it's just by being in each other's silent company. If you need privacy, your room is still isolated, but there shouldn't be any activities that keep you there all day. And it works really, really well, even and especially for introverts.
I hate open floor plans because it allows noise to travel to all parts of the house much easier. I don't need to hear a conversation that is happening in the kitchen while I'm trying to listen to a RUclips vid, even with headphones on, in my bedroom.
You can still close your bedroom door in an open floor plan. Just close your bedroom door, and you won't hear anything else happening downstairs. There's no need to close off every single room in the house and make things feel more "claustrophobic."
Same. Even with my door closed in my room and headphones on I can still hear everything going on downstairs, and it drives me crazy that there's nowhere in the house that I can't hear the TV when I'm trying to do my homework.
The open-floor plan isn't problem -open plans can be as environmentally sound as other plans - it's the complete disregard for heating and cooling energy requirements that most developers have, because frankly, they're just trying to make a buck selling crappy McMansions. You even showed open-floor plan buildings when you talked about environmental efficiency. You could, and probably should, have reversed the order of the video and said "how efficient A/C has changed modern house design," because what's happened is cheap heating and cooling units, under-regulated developers, and uniformed consumers have come together in a perfect storm of shitty architectural design. Once again, Cheddar, you've got a great topic and great graphics, but need to finish your research before you make your videos.
there are maybe two or three of these kinds of content farm channels i can reasonably rely on not to warp or fuck up the facts or overall gist. cheddar is not one of them. like the McMansions, it's more style than substance. you'll never find me living in a McMansion. ask a home inspector what they think of them! besides that, they're ugly, look and feel cheap, and when you realize the styling cues of them and can put a name to your vague dislike they'll start to make you sick.
@@torquemadax9507 it's a large garish house that appears mass-produced with no architectural consistency. They may appear nice to the at first glance, but they usually have about 10 different building styles slapped all over. Columns that don't support anything, 30 different window treatments, useless balconies, turrets, etc...
My family knocked out the wall between the Kitchen and the dining room. I hated it. They are socialites and constantly have guests over. It became twice as noisy because now you heard the cooking and the talking at the same time. No peace. Was a relief when I got my own place.
The kitchens were closed because of the smell rather than the heat. The heat was welcome in many places but the smell and grime would get into everything. However evacuation hoods changed things.
That's only partially true. It was actually not that uncommon to have an un-insulated "summer kitchen" and an insulated "winter kitchen" in parts of North America in the 1800's, partially to keep the kitchen heat away from the house in the warm months.
It’s not like there is only one reason. I’m sure the heat was welcome during winter and cold areas, but not during the summer. Food smell is not a big issue in the US unless you are cooking something exotic.
Sometimes you still get smells ... even with hoods. And when your trying out new recipes you tend to make a bigger mess; who wants people looking that or analyzing what your doing. Little privacy can be a good thing.
Anyone cook fish or other lingering food smell items? Open plans have a problem. And in Florida pioneers had kitchens separated by a walkway to keep the heat and all away. We had “dog trot” houses with covered boardwalks separating the rooms in a T shape.
When I was young and lived in apartments (which all apts have open floor plans), I always couldn't wait to get a house so my kitchen wasn't in my dang living room. Little did I know they started building new homes with the same open floor plan.
Same, if im having guests I would much rather walk out of the kitchen door with a full plate of food. I dont want to have to awkwardly make small talk while trying to hassle to cook dinner. Then the whole magic of the night is over 😂😂😂
@@asparrow5505 yes! I appreciate being able to have my kids have their space to play and make a mess and take care of, and myself and my husband can have our space. We have a family room for all of us. But it nice to have toys and kid crap in a contained area. And I truly love to bake, and some of the things I bake require attention to details and my kitchen allows me that. I love it. ❤️🌟
The energy code has already addressed this problem. Their solution is hyper-insulation. Don't need to spend money cooling your house if it's not even able to heat up to start with. It's a better solution because it also keeps the house efficiently warm in winter.
TheJaredtheJaredlong energy usage per capita in the US and UK has grown rapidly since the 1980s even though we now have incredibly more efficient vehicles, televisions, light bulbs, insulation, and we know the severity of climate change. The reason isn’t computers or phones, it’s much larger houses for smaller families further apart and away from the city, making everything less efficient. There’s no technofix when it just allows us to consume more, we need to learn from our past and live smaller and closer.
@@tylsim Our building code in terms of efficiency has not kept up with load demands. In California, the building code for insulation has been unchanged for basically 40 years. The houses here use much more energy per sq ft than they did in the past because A/C wasn't a requirement when building and many architects like to do many things that increase energy consumption like remove overhangs, complex building structure, skylights, vaulted ceilings, etc. If they want to limit energy consumption, the current way our energy companies charge don't disincentivize high energy consumption. Here in California, 10 years ago PGE had tiered electrical costs where the lowest consumers were charged the least and highest consumers were charged the most. They did away with this in order to encourage more energy consumption.
@@imzjustplayin We have tiered power costs here in BC, Canada. The only months I hit the second tier is when the AC is on. Lucky for us it is only needed four months out of the year. Having that second pricing tier sure works to get people to think about their usage. I got rid of my electric hot water tank and changed the whole house to LED lights.
@@imzjustplayin I'm not sure this is correct. Overall per capita energy consumption in California has been relatively flat since the 1970's, as opposed to significant growth elsewhere. I haven't found the data specific to residential, but based on conversations with a friend who helped establish many of our energy standards I'm pretty confident that on we are in much better shape on a per square foot basis as well.
@@waynecampbell9426 Most of those improvements have been in appliances and also the updated energy code didn't go into effect until 1980. Using that 1970s as a standard is stupid because the energy codes were non existent then. Like I said, no real improvement at all. It's easy to see because I know people who have built new homes and people with old homes, their energy bills aren't any different despite similar size and occupancy. Also just because you double the square footage, doesn't mean you should double your energy consumption since you could be turning a single story into a two story.
Closed floor plan houses with all the internal structure are far more resistant to earthquake damage. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (California), friends with open plan houses had to move out for several months while their houses were repaired. My old time closed plan 60's house was untouched as were others in the area. The magnitude 7.0 quake 6 miles distant did highly dishevel the interior furnishings but zero prob with the house itself. Per the video, while it was 100° outside yesterday, and the house has total hillside west exposure to the sun, there was big variation in room temperatures. Range was 80 to 90° inside with no A/C in the late afternoon. So just go to the cooler part of the house for a few hours and turn on a fan.
You left out the number one problem with the "open plan" design. You can't go into a room to be alone behind a closed door. If there are people in the home, you end up being able to see each other from every other part of the house. This had to have been implimented by some hateful extrovert that can't stand the idea of some introvert being comfortable by being alone so the designed houses to make that impossible.
I'm clearly extroverted, but I hate open floor plans. It would be nice to not have to worry about noise as much during night time. Noise carries through the whole place. I also hate how much trouble it is to keep small children out of the kitchen and away from hot stoves. I can use the bathroom if I'm cooking unless another adult is home.
@@MrSaxophoneGamer I agree. You always have the option to go into a bedroom and close the door. If it's not a place that is comfortable, make it work for you. Maybe the bed needs to be off center to accommodate for a reading chair and footstool. So often, we focus on how a house looks rather than how it functions. Don't wallow in your problem, be active in finding a solution. The number of people complaining about the lack of privacy in their own home is ridiculous: it's YOUR home, make it so.
You haven't seen the open plans I have, then. Yes. *bedrooms* have no walls or doors. *Bathrooms* have no walls or doors, the only doors are on closets.
I hate open floor plans. No privacy, everything is on display, and it's difficult to have different themes per area. Also, if I don't want to cool or heat a particular area of an open area, I have no choice. Closed rooms, easy, close registers and the door.
it's a marketing scheme for the construction industry. there are more existing older homes than new builds. i have a 1925 craftsman bungalow home. i'm not going to knock down the walls and increase my heating and cooling bill.
Open floor planes are nice though in a small houses/ condos because it gives the living area an illusion of space. I like privacy too, but I can use bedrooms for that.
@@TylerMRaab Hired help was often for the working class as well. A mother with half a dozen children wasn't capable of all of the tasks required for home upkeep prior to technology and hiring unmarried girls was common even in poorer families.
@@NoliMeTangere1163 It wasn't common among poor families. Instead, people used their families for help. Their parents and grandparents. And eventually the kids would be old enough to start helping around the house. If someone had a half dozen kids, then they already have at least 1-2 who would be able to help cook and clean.
I love older houses, the thought that went into them is remarkable. Usually there were lots of doors & connecting rooms so that you could open windows & doors to create a draft that with the correctly placed exhaust fan can feel like the coolest air conditioning. I’ve had old houses & new construction & hands down would choose an older house. The character that they have too is something that has been forgotten. The beautiful little nooks & built ins I guess you sometimes see in newer homes but not often. They were also constructed better, the walls, the floors, the trim work. Seeing lots of them abandoned & destroyed in various cities breaks my heart.
@@DannerBanks You got me beat by 2x. We don't seem to have an issue keeping the kitchen presentable even when entertaining, but we do have the advantage of having a small (6'x15') prep/catering kitchen in addition to the open concept kitchen. The small appliances live in there along with an extra fridge and microwave.
Lots of places in Asia have a dry kitchen and wet kitchen; the latter being used primarily by the house staff for heavy duty cooking whereas the former is more for baking, reheating and simple cooking
Grew up in a house made out of concrete mixed with perlite blocks. Never needed air conditioner and durig a winter it was easy to warm it up. It was a 2 storey house and still energy efficient and sound proofed. Walls, facade and celilings made out of mortar and still standing after so many years.
"air conditioning" in my parents home in Germany is mainly achieved trough opening all windows during breakfast and keeping them closed to dinner between Easter and Halloween, given that putting a fan in the root celer and keeping the doors open for 30 minutes turns everything 15C cold.
@LagiNaLangAko23 there are none, after the fire 1745 most of the foundations and basement have been mentaind but until the second to last sale (and remodeling) 1890 there haven't been any records inside the property line... The electrical and water plans assume most of the walls to be limestone and adding any "creative" fillings would be too much work.
@Carpe Diem drainage is better around me 😉, the lights are not the best but haven't had to be replaced since the 20s and if I could smell anything but wood oils chances are the brickwork Coul be slightly smoky... It's not like the basement has frequent need to contribute to indoor climate.
Open floor plan doesn't equal massive empty space. In the Netherlands open floor plan is popular because otherwise you'll end up with rooms as small as your bathroom. My kitchen is 7,2 m2/ 23.622 quare ft. I'd feel very clostrofobic if it was a closed of room.
this video is all over the place. Critiques open floor plans but then brings in climate change. Mentions architecture from hundreds of years ago as a standard but its actually not effictient to today's standards. 100 years ago people used to put newspapers in the wall to keep the "draft out" but people didn't know they actually wanted to keep the heat inside. That's why R values were created. This video feels like a sophomore in college making a video with too many broad ideas and no details. Stick to the subject of the video.
Here is the issue, they are using a 4 minute video to talk about a topic that's not simple. And what they are saying is that older buildings often were built around their climate and area while newer houses often do not do such a thing as often. They weren't saying that the older buildings used the best methods, but the best ideas.
I like your reply. It has a good counter argument. I feel like the video didn't explain things well enough and thats why theres so many negative comments. I disagree also with the concept that past generations had the best ideas.
It’s Cheddar. They hobble together a video to make money. Accuracy and quality isn’t their goal, it’s money. Just like a sophomore in college wasn’t to pass the class not be perfect at it.
Open floor plans are a scam in a lot of cases, in my opinion. They seem to work out OK making small spaces feel larger and can let in more light. Otherwise I fail to understand what drives homeowners to convert their homes into Manhattan-like studio apartments. "Oh I can see the kids while I'm cooking". In a few short years you'd wish you couldn't as they're sprawled all over the next room with their noisy friends. Speaking of noise - without some amount of wall division between rooms, noise just bounces around everywhere, all privacy is gone, or at least some amount of isolation when needed is gone. Paint schemes and decorating can be a challenge, too. In a sense, a builder is saving on building materials, mechanical, electrical and finishes by eliminating room partitions.
it also allows these t.v. 'remodelers' a great excuse not to actually have to design every room. people watch enough of this crap, think it's the hep thing to do, and start to want it as if being brain-washed. there are a few cases where opening a room up would be nice, just not like living in a sparsely decorated barn.
That’s not true. I’m sure there are many people who actually like their kids and like being a part of their lives. I had a old sectioned house and the kids and their friends still came in the kitchen to talk to me or wherever. I will never understand people that have kids but don’t actually want to spend time with them. Maybe that’s why even my adult kids and I are close and they never got mixed up in bad stuff when they were younger because I didn’t tell them and their friends to go away.
People do all these semi or even mostly permanent changes to homes and furniture bc it’s on trend and they get trend tunnel vision, not realizing that in 5 or 10 years they’ll be desperately trying to change them back to the new trend which will actually be the old original look. There is no point in following those trends none at all
@@MysticHeather honestly I can't wait for that like take the kitchen for example I currently live in a house with an open floor plan and once in a while when I'm in the kitchen I just feel exposed maybe it's just my anxiety but either way I don't like it
My parents went open plan in most of the downstairs and it's a pain! If someone is cooking with the extractor on or the washing machine is spinning you can't watch TV at a reasonable volume. If someone's having a phone call you can hear it everywhere. You can't shut children out of the kitchen when messing around with hot pans. It's freezing cold half of the year. The future of housing isn't a return to ticky tacky boxes of the 50s, it's passive houses like earthships that rely on mass for capturing and releasing heat and smart design with windows etc.
@@joer8854 Yeah they're whining about putting noisy appliances into the big open room instead of in a scullery- I haven't seen one open plan house which doesn't have a closed scullery to hide the dirty dishes, probably because my country has decent architects and individual owners, and not the mass manufacturing garbage from corporate owned US suburbs. I lived in a wood open plan most of my life with no heating, cooling, or range hoods, and lots of nautical light and this never posed any problems. Now I'm in a brick suburb house where the lights need to be on all day, we hear the washing machine because it's against the living room wall, and the rooms without North sun are frigid during both the summer and winter.
@@hauntedshadowslegacy2826 I haven't seen an open plan that doesn't have additional areas that you can escape to if you want to. Our entire lower level is escape space (bar, wine room, movie area, snooker, gym etc).
I just like to have an area to formally dine so that my guests can focus on looking at each other and a beautiful room, not all the chaos of where the meal was prepped. You just live in a box if walls don't seperate for privacy, cooling/heat, and smells.
I live in a large two story Victorian. I love my attic fan. During the fall and spring I open my windows, run the attic fan, and cool the entire house. Then I keep the house shut up during the day, and it stays cool.
I love them too, especially at night. Sleep like a baby. Only problem is the extra work cleaning due to all the dust. Give and take aside, I still would want an attic fan.
I’m reminded of a This Old House they did out in Los Angeles where the home had what looked like a wooden chimney with vents running up from the basement. It was a “California Cooler” that would pull the cooler air from the basement up into the rest of the house. Story also fails to mention that A/C tech is getting smarter, and if net zero homes become a thing, you can run your A/C off of your own solar panels.
Right on. Today's minimal specs when replacing AC/Heat pumps are ridiculously high, and expensive. My new heat pump for our 3 level 20 foot wide townhouse built around 1990 is half the size of a 5 passenger compact car. Honestly.
Running your AC off solar panels is still wasteful, you require more resources (including conflict minerals) for bigger panels and A/Cs actually generate heat because of thermodynamics. Insulation and architecture is more important than where your energy is coming from
@@gearandalthefirst7027 This Old House did a renovation/expansion of a house in Rhode Island with Net Zero tech, they accounted for as many of these issues as they could (and put all the solar panels on a big salt box roof on the newly built “barn” out back to maximize power generation (most of the time they were selling power back into the grid.)
It is so difficult to keep a kitchen organized and clean all the time. I'd drive myself crazy thinking that anyone walking in the front door will see my random stains, wrinkly dishtowels, greasy cabinet doors, flour on the counter, etc.
Moira O'Deorain well, including the office as part of the open space is just stupid. But that’s more of individual design problem, then a general. Open space is usually about kitchen and living room, so the communal part of the house. Everything else can still be closed off, while still being an open space house.
my childhood home has a pretty open floor plan, which has largely worked out since I have a pretty tight knit family. I imagine that if your family had more strained relations, it’d suck. It’s a nice house to hang out with your family in, but it’s not great for having friends over because nowhere feels private. You can pretty much hear everything in the house from any spot. 🤷🏻♀️
House fires spread far faster with open floor plans, too. Several of my family members were firefighters, and they always told me to keep doors shut to slow down a fire.
Yes closing doors slows smoke distribution in a home (the smoke usually kills you before the fire does). But building homes with sprinkler systems quashes the fire before it has a chance to spread. Check out nfsa.org/
Living in a heavily wooded area of Mississippi, my parents knew we would loose electricity often, so they built our house with high 12 foot ceilings, windows that allow for circulation, concrete floors that stay cool in the summer, and high attic space to draw the hot air into it. Though we lost electricity the other day due to a strong storm, the inside of the house never really got over 78 degrees F, while outside was easily near 85. Also large overhangs on the porches allow us to avoid direct day sunlight to any of the windows in the house which also helps.
Most people I have ever broached this subject with where I live(Midwest USA) also don't understand the love affair with the open layout. The newest house I ever lived in was built in 1950, the current one in 1900 and I love a traditional home.
I have to say people in America really are crazy in their use of aircon. Coming from Italy where the summer gets really hot the families who have aircon (because not everybody does) don't keep it as high and always on. I remember being shocked when I visited Miami and it was the perfect summer temperature outside, warm with a breeze, and as soon as I went inside a shop or a gallery (I actually went for the art fair) I had to put a sweater on...A SWEATER in summer. That had never happened to me before. I have the same criticism for London, where I live. In the winter everywhere you go is blazing hot inside and you see people wearing t-shirts or vests when outside is freezing... This thing has gotten out of hand, our bodies need seasons, they need to regulate body temperature and they are now losing the ability to do it. It's so incredibly wasteful! We should build homes that are well insulated with more sustainable materials and with spaces designed for efficiency. Who wouldn't like to spend less in bills and live better?
@@npeace312 But do you need to feel like it's winter inside? I don't think so. This is the problem, exaggeration. If it's summer, it's meant to be hot, make it so you won't collapse and even if you sweat a bit so be it. That's what Summer is about, heat. That is my point.
I hate open floors with a passion I don't want the kitchen and cooking smells to take center stage in the house ! I like having separate areas for different activities it helps make the house a lot more organized and easy to maintain I don't have to worry about sudden guests when I have a front room that is always clean and ready. The only open areas i like is the family room/ sunroom/ glass doors to the yard that is the only acceptable open floor areas, but never the kitchen or dinning or front rooms..
In old novels, people occasionally referred to being able to smell food being cooked, and they all act like they're being forced to smell pig manure. It's really weird. Nowadays, we are all extremely comfortable with the smell of garlic and onion being fried, things being cooked, bread being baked, etc, but they treated it like air pollution in the past.
No, no, no!! The future of house design is Passive House, not old-school designs. For one thing, the air is so polluted in most places that unless the house is sealed up, superinsulated. and actively ventilated (HEPA-filtered, and heat-recovery, of course), letting the house ventilate accidentally will just bring in bad-to-breathe particulate matter and/or ground-level ozone. The only places stack and accidental ventilation would work is in a relatively temperate climate (and where would that be anymore?) with very little outdoor air pollution. I have to agree though, that shows like Property Brothers are ridiculous and bad for the planet's climate.
There are a lot of quality videos about architecture and engineering on youtube. This clearly isn’t one of them. No mention of building materials or insulation? Or solar panels to power air conditioners? This video doesn’t want to educate you, it just wants to make you feel bad about your lifestyle.
I legitimately cannot stand open concept. I don’t want to make sure my entire home is immaculate when people come over. Let me have a messy kitchen! So I can focus on having fun and not the mess.
Pluses for open floor plans - feels more spacious, allows the cook to interact with family and guests. Minuses - If the kitchen is a mess then everything looks like a mess. Cook can't be alone if he/she wants to be. Can't hear the tv over the noises in the kitchen. Can't have a separate decorating decor from the living area. May feel too modern for some homes.
people i know who cook prefer to have a proper kitchen to themselves as they don't want it to be a spectator sport. of course, others would like the 'interaction' with people as opposed to them being the inevitable distraction as feeling as if they're being watched.
the worst thing about open floor plans are the family rooms, the ceiling are always thirty feet high. i feel like i’m in an office building not a home.
Exactly. And ever since covid, offices are rethinking the open concept also. People need walls and places to get away from each other being in each others face all the time, breathing each other’s air and hearing each other’s conversations
@@jatpack3 oh, yeah, high ceilings are great. I live in San Francisco where tall ceilings from Victorian and Edwardian buildings are the norm. I feel claustrophobic in places with low ceilings. But the big open concept rooms of newer construction make me feel like I’m in an office building. All of that echo! I prefer lots of smaller rooms with tall ceilings. Private spaces
i LOVED living in an open layout house..for about a month, then it started to really get on my nerves. You're watching a documentary and your kids are playing and you can hear everything so you have to turn the volume up or you want it dark in the living room but someones in the kitchen doing something so you have to just live with it or youre in the dining room trying to have a conversation with your wife and the kids are in the living room being loud...you have no privacy or way to block anything out and not to mention if you forget to close the blinds/curtains your neighbors or worse can see all throughout your house...nope, glad were back to a more closed off design now, it doesnt look as nice but were all much happier...oh yeah the climate and energy junk is good too i guess
Same. I don't understand the appeal of open-plan. I don't like it, though there is a middle ground to be had: I used to live in a house where you only had the living room and dining room connected. Everything else was in its separate rooms with the bedrooms and bathrooms down the passage in a separate part of the house. Kitchen as well was separate but attached to the laundry room on the end and a door out to the garden.
That's why brick houses are great, they cool in the summer and keep the heat in the winter. But USA loves its flimsy wooden homes, and their homes aren't cheap either.
I read a government pamphlet 20 years ago that said to plant deciduous trees on the south side of the house. Today those trees are 30 feet tall and making shade.
Open floorpans are great if you live alone. I've often thought it would be cool to have a space like those converted loft-spaces in which it is, basically, a big,, open floor and you define the "rooms" by the layout of furniture. Picture Seth Brundle's place in the movie, "The Fly." Kitchen, bedroom, living area, even his workspace, all occupying separate areas in a completely open floorspace. Pretty cool, for ONE person. But if you live with other people, you want some privacy, sure, but more basically, you want to be able to engage in different activities at the same time without interfering with other people. For instance, the most common "open plan" has the kitchen open to the living/family room, sometimes called a "Great Room." But what people do in these two rooms is very different and should be separated. Mostly, in the living/family room, people watch TV. Mostly, in the kitchen, people cook or eat. You want to be able to watch TV without hearing the sounds of cooking and you want to be able to cook or eat a meal without hearing the TV show someone else is watching. I really don't see why people think opening these two spaces to each other make sense. Someone working or eating in the kitchen might even want to listen to the radio/podcast or watch a different TV than someone else is watching in the living room. It makes sense to have a wall separating these rooms, but eliminating the wall between them seems to be the most common form of "open" floor-plan.
Open floor plans can make flooring repairs harder and more expensive depending on material and how it is installed. Understand a minor amount of damage cannot be repaired if material too old because companies discontinue products after a couple years. There's other issues like resilient flooring/ engineered flooring grooves that connect can be broken once detached. Stick with wood floor because at least you can sand and refinish it.
I miss closed floor plans especially in a rental. There's no alone time/privacy if you want to sit in the living room and someone wants to make a meal.
I don’t like open floor plans. I feel like the kitchen needs to be its own space. Feels more sanitary. I don’t like walking in the front door and the kitchen is right there. Also it’s nice to go to a quiet corner of the house and get some privacy.
I watched the video and I'm still waiting for the "surprising problem of open layout homes". It talks about how modern American home designs suck at passive cooling, which I agree with, but that's not why I clicked on this video. Down vote.
Moira O'Deorain I live in a 37 square meter apartment and that is my exsct problem. I found a rare type of a small apartment with a separate bedroom and I’m so happy about it. It’s 35 square meters and it should be fine because 37 has been too big for me as I live alone.
I live in a 1,300 Sq. Ft. gorgeous little Victorian house filled with small, beautifully-designed living spaces. Though we live in a climate that only sees rain 30 days a year, the house is always cool, breezy, clean, and extremely welcoming because they designed it to be a place to live in, not just visit during the 10 hours a day when you are not at work. The back door in the kitchen and the front door in the parlor are perfectly aligned to make a gloriously cool wind tunnel that keeps the entire downstairs perfectly ventilated. Upstairs, the bedroom windows align to do the same. They were brilliant! Modern houses are ugly money pits. I never want to live in one again.
There was far to many generalization in this post to make it useful. But it did remind me that a whole house fan is great cost effective cooling option. And relatively easy retrofit for most houses. I turn it on at night to cool the house then turn it off and shut the windows and partially close some window shade on the south side of my house in the morning. I also have ceiling fans in most room. So by using the whole house and ceiling fans I use the AC only on a handful of days in the summer. A few caveats this will only work for ppl willing to deal with some variation in temp and humidity in there house. And high humidity is the many limiting factor in my case. For ppl thinking the fans will use more electric the AC it's not true they use about 10% or less than what using a conventional air to air heat pump based AC unit would require. Its also relatively cheap and the only mechanical or electric based unit in my house that has never need replacing or servicing. So its lasted over 30 yrs and still works fine. There is few other considerations, so if this make anyone interested in install one feel free to get back to me. www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-cooling-systems/cooling-whole-house-fan
All have serious drawbacks. Solar is expensive to make and harmful to dispose.Wind turbines decimate bird populations( think 40 ft feral cat) and nuclear- well, Fukushima.
@@YSLRD Solar, true. The problem with wind turbines is not the bird population decimation, it is the fact that the source is unreliable and not profitable enough. The direct radiation from Fukushima killed a total of zero (0) people. The emergency evacuation killed more people than the Fukushima meltdown did (about 1600). Chernobyl only 31 people died as a direct effect from the disaster. About 60.000 (estimate) people died indirectly from Chernobyl. (sourced from WHO). While the burning of fossil fuels and biomass is estimated to cause 3 million deaths worldwide per year and indoor air pollution from biomass and fossil fuel burning is estimated to cause approximately 4.3 million premature deaths. Nuclear energy creates nuclear waste too, but it is stored underground in storage facilities (it doesn't go back into nature!). Nuclear waste itself is not even that harmful as people believe it is. Also, nuclear energy plants create isotopes needed for diagnosing and treating cancer. If anything. Nuclear energy is safer, more reliable and less harmful than any other alternative energy source at this moment.
Open layout is also terrible for people with audio sensitivity. Nobody can get any peace. Also that ticky tacky song was written about the San Francisco Bay Area
This is a good video, covering the energy efficiency / air conditioning problem well. There are other issues with open plans as well. As a residential designer I try to guide clients towards a more balanced approach to open and closed spaces. So often people think they want "wide open plans", like the man in the video who talks about seeing every corner of the house from the kitchen. But so often, after the fact, people realize they don't necessarily want to see the kitchen from every corner of the house. There are also problems with having no social spaces people can retreat to. If one person wants to watch the football game on TV while several others are having a quiet conversation, the open plan poses problems. I find a good arrangement is to have a family space open around the kitchen but to have a separate, smaller, more formal living room as well. This provides people with choices about where and how they want to socialize. This works even in smaller homes. A lot of British houses have a room called a "snug" which serves this purpose nicely. It can be small enough to seat just 2 people but it provides a choice.
Another alternative is geothermal cooling. Yes, the installation cost is prohibitive for some, but it would dramatically slash electrical consumption at the home level. It's also a technology that is commercially available today.
Solar does not work in climates when covered in snow and they do not work if you have shade trees blocking the sun. Solar is unreliable, inefficient and not cost effective.
@@peggyt1243 Hmm, when the solar is covered in snow you probably don't need cooling. Same when the sun isn't shining. Shade trees covering the panels? They are helping, not hindering. Thanks to the shade you need less cooling so it doesn't matter if they don't work as well. Solar isn't good for a lot of things because of all the points you mention but if there is one thing where they are a valid option it's to run an AC. Also it does not need to be your solar on your roof. Parking lots should be covered, especially company lots, and equipped with EV charging points too. Car stays cool, gets a charge and the energy use of your AC at home gets offset by the solar over the parking lot. All for the price of one.
it would be interesting to know, how much energy flows into heating compared to cooling. this video suggests: people can be warm in winter, but they should sweat for nature in summer.
Being too cold can kill you a lot more easily than being too hot. It takes hours for heatstroke to overcome your body's ability to cool itself, but hypothermia can begin in minutes in the right conditions. That said, I love my AC and I keep my house at 68°F all summer long as nobody's ever gonna take that from me.
There was a heat wave in 1995 that killed 739 people over a 3 day period in Chicago. It was the deadliest natural disaster of the entire decade. More people died in that heat wave than from hurricanes, tornadoes, or Earthquakes that year. The problem was it remained excessively hot even at night so people got no relief. After 48 hours or 72 hours of continuous heat people just starting dropping dead. When it is cold you can always put on another sweater but when it is hot there is nothing you can do except find someplace with AC. www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/July-2015/1995-Chicago-heat-wave/
Our house built in 1935 has no air conditioning other than a small portable to cool the living room. It helps the bedroom above too, it is still very warm but not brutal as it would be if the living room was hot.
My husband and I built our home and it’s in the French Country manor style. The kitchen, breakfast nook, and the great room (family room) are open concept. Dining room and study are their own space which are separated by large French doors if you want privacy, and bedrooms are closed off and are accessed by long hallways (like corridors).
Why don’t we just make a crap ton of nuclear power plants, like basically infinite power and super environmentally friendly, except obviously make sure it’s designed right or else we’re all dead 💀💀
@@andrewcowing9141 i don't know if you know what happens to old uranium rods, but those are the main problem cause the are high radioactive and need to be locked away for centuries. Moreover this atomic waste is produced non stop and we dont have a real solution for this problem, that means that atomic energy isn't safe and enviromental friendly, it just dont produces co2.
@@Pottlps first off nuclear power plants are extremely environmentally friendly in the sense that they release no harmful gasses to the environment, and they last a long time (around 80 years). The old uranium rods just get locked up and don't have any harm to the environment because they are locked up. The only real way that it would be not environmentally friendly is if one failed, collapsed, and or blew up unattended and lots of toxins get released, but, that rarely happens, they go through so many procedures like when they build airplanes. So where did you get the idea that they were bad?
Open layout homes have an unsurprising problem FIRE !!! Most house fires start in the kitchen In traditional homes with traditional kitchens and solid wood kitchen doors a fire can be contained in the kitchen for at least long enough for the family to safely escape the home Not so with an open floor plan where a fire that started in the kitchen can quickly engulf the house
Easy to fix: 1) Have all homes cast in shade via a ramada roof over the original roof so the entire house is cast in shade. You can't beat the sun in a parked car in the sun as ac is maxed, yet pull it into shade and all is fine. 2) Under your front yard would be a ~800sqft hole ~20' underground...with a 4" pvc pipe intake in the front yard leading to the hole and a 4" pvc exhaust into your home. Per thermo dynamics the system runs itself with no help, air travels hot to cold...air would shove down the intake into the room and cool, and be blown into your home via the 4" exhaust pipe. There's also a trick, you make one of the pipes and inch different then the other, one 4", other 3"...so creates a faster draft and more volume. Aka, natural ac.
Christel Champagne yeah. A house here in New England would have to be at least slightly different from Florida. The main concerns of mine being snow and humidity/heat.
@@elenagibbons4719 lived in Michigan and South Carolina. Same style for the mass market. Single glazing windows. Thin, cheap walls. Central heating/cooling. Where I am from, tripple glazing, bricks, basements and insulation from the elements is standard and our winters are not as hard...
When I lived in texas, if you opened a window it would heat your house from 90° to 110° Fahrenheit. At night it might cool down to 86 if you're lucky. I used an ac to keep it around 85 during the day and 75 at night. Older people died in the summer from power outages because they would get heat stroke.
Thank you for making this. My grandfather was one of the pioneers of passive solar heating and cooling. This has been a known issue since at least the 70s, but getting the word out that convenience comes with problems has been a challenge.
The issue isn't open-floor plans themselves, but rather developers' disregard for energy efficiency in pursuit of profit, resulting in poorly designed McMansions that prioritize short-term gains over sustainability. The true culprit is the proliferation of cheap HVAC units, lax regulations, and consumer unawareness, which have converged to create a perfect storm of subpar architectural design.
To combat the commodification of housing, I advocate for a paradigm shift in new development projects. Conditional permits should require equivalent land allocation for non-profit, community-driven initiatives, such as co-ops and housing trusts. By prioritizing social impact over financial returns.
The US housing market is on the brink of a significant correction, driven by a combination of economic pressures. To safeguard your financial well-being, it may be wise to diversify your investments and consider alternative asset classes. Consulting with an independent financial advisor can provide valuable insights and personalized strategies for managing this market shift.
I'm eager to receive guidance and grateful for the support of a trusted advisor, but how can I identify a reliable and reputable one?
Rebecca Noblett Roberts maintains an online presence. Just make a simple search for her name online.
I checked Google up out of curiosity and I must say I am impressed by her Credentials. I emailed her already, waiting on her response.
As much as I like Cheddar, speaking as a student of architecture, this story has several inaccuracies and overly-broad generalizations.
First, the story criticizes open designs for being hard to cool, but then briefly talks about passively cooled buildings which generally require a degree of open design to function.
There are many good ways to build energy efficient open designs, and while I agree that most houses in North America don't follow good design principles, the story doesn't really lay out a compelling picture of how to do better.
Mika Chance Look up Matt Risinger here on youtube, he has a great channel on building science.
Agreed, this video is not one of their best researched ones, in today's building world you could build a very nice 10k Sq.Ft. open shop and have it cost you next to nothing to heat and cool with materials we have.
Mika Chance Sure, here's a recent article from up here in Canada that showcases several large projects designed for passive efficiency, www.cbc.ca/news/technology/passive-house-highrises-1.4437973
Also a Washington Post article www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/can-expensive-ultra-green-homes-sell-in-a-gritty-suburban-maryland-town/2017/05/17/753f1edc-2443-11e7-bb9d-8cd6118e1409_story.html?.e0590b67cacf about a project done by Flywheel Development (I think they're based in DC).
There's the Hillcrest Seniors Residence in Pittsburgh too.
These are all built using the PHI standard, (Passive House Institute) a method that relies on high insulation and air tightness between the building and the outside, but requires extensive airflow within the building to function. This is very different system than the open air-passive cooling designs mentioned in the story, and is much more practical in most of North America where winter is a consideration.
Ironically enough, here's a good primer article on the related "net-zero" design movement from HGTV Canada: www.hgtv.ca/green-living/blog/net-zero-homes-mike-holmes-1916127/
In addition, there are simple things that can be done to existing buildings to improve passive performance as simple as planting deciduous trees on the sunward sides of a building (east/west) to block sun in the summer to help keep the house cool, but allow sunlight to pass in the winter helping heat the home. Opening windows along the windy axis of a building to passive airflow cooling is also a simple solution that can lower in house temperatures by several degrees. This can be improved by building houses with these principles in mind, but I can't think of any large scale projects using simple passive methods like this; this is more of a grass-roots small scale movement.
I know it was a short piece that can only just touch the tip of the iceberg, but maybe follow-up piece to show what ordinary homeowners can do?
Mika Chance Agreed. Air conditioning is overly relied upon by most people, as is heating. Using passive strategies and saving active heating/cooling for when it's actually needed is something that really needs to drilled in to people until it becomes a normal part of life. It doesn't need to go away, but it shouldn't be the first tool in the toolbox.
Spencer Martin Navarra Chew except open layouts, in the way they are done now, ignore passive cooling.
It's like the video was going somewhere big with this, then just stopped. 💁🏻♂️
I agree. She lost me after the Africa comment.
@@lothean2099 huh, I wonder why? Because there's a Lott of good information after that little hiccup
yeah....this video should've went on atleast another 5 minutes if not like 15
@@DarkAssassin2259 Why was it a hiccup?
@@christianwestling2019 Idk, I don't remember the video and I don't remember the context of the conversation, but I think I was being facetious towards that person because they stopped the video after it had mentioned africa and thought "I'm too good for the rest of this video". Lol
My poor Grandmother with dementia HATED the house my Grandparents moved into in 2006. She kept saying, "it looks like a barn!" Never understood why she said that. I finally realized the open layout drove her nuts, but she couldn't explain it. 🤷🏼♀️
This comment is hilarious
I actually prefer a closed floor plan. I like the idea of having a living room that’s separate from the dining which is separate from the kitchen and so on. Plus I like the idea of having specific rooms... I hope that makes sense lol
it makes perfect sense to me. i think most of the people who want an open floor plan have been brain-washed by too many 'home improvement' shows and are -- no offense intended, it's just been my observation -- women who buy into the whole 'room to entertain guests' nonsense.
I agree I like the bit of privacy it affords each room, I'm not into an open design that much either
Especially when there's more people living there, it's nice to have enough rooms that everyone can be in a different room w/o having to hang out in their bedroom all the time
I agree, especially since they’re taking the open floor plans to the extreme and introducing these horrible open bathrooms... I look at these and I’m like, WHY!?!?
Same here, like what are you supposed to do in a loft by bedrooms?
"We can't ask everyone to live without AC"
Welcome to Europe
@@andrewhenley2161 Actually, here in Italy (and I live in the north) we have even more than 100 F and a lot of humidity.
Andrew Henley huhh? Southern eu gets just as hot as usa
@Carpe Diem Funny thing about the US south. For as hot as it gets here, you'd think they'd have put a little more effort into making the HVAC system work right in the houses they built here. It's not right to have to set the thermostat to 70 just to keep it at a "comfortable" 80 upstairs, but that's normal and accepted here. I think the problem is crappy ductwork (they LOVE flex duct; sheet metal is too difficult, apparently) and they don't bother to balance the system. Sometimes they make the problem worse by putting ductwork, or worse, the air handler, in the attic. It's obvious with some of these installs that nobody who knows what they are doing had anything to do with it.
@Carpe Diem Except if you have an HOA they won't permit you to install a window air conditioner. Newer construction is either zoned or has separate units for upstairs or downstairs, but it only took them 30 years to fix the problem that way.
@Carpe Diem It becomes a question of how much will it cost to fix vs. the energy savings. Sometimes the best option is to sell it (because many buyers don't seem to care about things like energy efficiency) and buy a house that is energy efficient. An interesting phenomenon I've noticed with HOAs is that as the neighborhood gets older, the HOA basically falls apart and stops enforcing the regulations.
i used to live in a home that was seriously open floor plan. I've since moved into a home with a more closed concept built in 1982, the ability to close the doors of your kitchen is amazing when you want to cook at night without waking anybody up. The family room/kitchen is completely separate by 2 doors from the rest of the home. Even the living room can be boarded off as well as the office.
Open concept is great in looks but not practicality
@Renee Tate - The noise is the first thing I thought of as well. Our house, built in 1979, is all open with high vaulted ceilings. The TV playing in the family room is actually louder in the living room on the opposite side of the house due to the sound traveling. The people in the family room can't hear the dialog on the TV 10 feet away, while people reading a book in the front room can't hear themselves think.
I dont understand why people would even consider an open kitchen or why they design houses so that the minute you walk in the door, you are looking into an open kitchen. Who wants to sit in their living room looking at the mess and pile of dirty pots and pans in the kitchen area ? A kitchen is for working, cooking, producing stuff and in real life does not look like the kitchens in home decor magazines.
@Renee Tate it's america. what you drive is more important than what you eat.
For REAL
@@anastasia10017 look at me junior I'm carving a bloody fish carcass! Ikr!
As ones a professor of history of architecture told me. “If you design minimum apartments you need open spaces. But a huge house? Why would I like to smell the fish that is been cook in the kitchen while I am reading in the living room?
Exactly! They're CHEAP looking!
Not to mention the problems with acoustics! You can hear EVERYTHING from EVERYWHERE and the echoes can get cacophonous if you're not very careful.
The only use I can think of is for helicopter parents who don't want their children to have a single unsupervised moment. Which is. Yikes.
maybe I like the smell of fish
@@johnnulf624 biggest issue IMO is if you fry something and cant close off the rest of the apartment or house. i mean everyone likes the smell of fish!! if they dont they are not hoomans!
Sounds like a guy who doesn't help with the cooking. It's really nice being able to watch the same thing on TV as my wife and son while I'm cooking, rather than being isolated in the kitchen alone.
So true; I have a 1912 terraced house in England with lots of interior walls, which is very warm in winter. In the summer, the through breeze creates a wind tunnel you could test cars in for aerodynamics. The entire layout is designed to minimise seasonal temperature variations.
Should mention the placement of interior doors is also critical to ventilation in summer; it would get stuffy if there wasn't a clear path from the front to back.
The entire home is designed to minimize space. Most people in North America would have trouble with UK terrace houses.
That's brilliant, we lived a stone house made in the 1930s that was built in a + shape, we never had an aircon and never needed one. The house would be a wind tunnel like you said and would always be nice and cool.
In the UK, keeping warm is the main issue, right? It is hardly surprising that terrace houses are easier to keep warm, given that the sides of the houses all insulate each other.
@@rich7447 assuming the house is 2 or three stories, it should be enough space for a family, unless you have 5 kids or something
Plant trees. it can be 10ºF cooler under a tree than it would otherwise be.
Gammareign clean the seas. That would help so much more because most of oxygen comes from water organisms
Yeah no it doesnt work when you live somewhere EXTREMELY humid
Depends on climate... trees can help yet if planted too close to the home or each other, causes pipe and foundation issues with the roots. Some trees retain heat too so in humid conditions, it's a mess.
Yea and 500% more humid.
plant venus flytraps they will solve overpopulation as a bonus
Open floor plans are horrible for large families too in my house I hear everything and smell everything because of the open layout
add in someone who likes to play music and youve got pure hell
I hate open plan. I loathe cooking with an audience. I don't want to hear other people all of the time.
I don't enjoy the rest of the house when odors leave the kitchen.
I like to have the choice to shut a door if needed.
For real tho people with kids cannot hide the messes in an open concept house lol
The bathroom on the first floor of my house is in the middle, between kinda a donut of rooms. No matter where you are on the first floor, you can always here the occupant of the crappy bathroom. Every turd that drops. Every drrrroplet of PiSsssss. Every fart you make every tp you take I’ll be hearing you. I can hear my sibling right now! upstairs bathroom gang ftw
Please let's start a fanclub. Open plan must Fall!
One of the problems is that the houses are made out of wood. I used to live in Mexico in a small brick made house, in an area that got extremely hot during the summer reaching sometimes up to 40 degrees Celcius, and during the winter it could hit 0 degrees Celsius. Yet, we never had to use air conditioner or a heater because the walls would keep everything relatively cool during the summer and during the winter we would just use sweaters and a couple of blankets, something that is a little hard to achieve with wooden walls.
Red Well, maybe lumber is cheap, but as you mentioned, it is very fragile when encountered with the brutality of nature, and as a Floridian i should know. In case you didn’t know, most houses in Mexico are made of concrete since in many cases it is cheaper than wood. Due to the lack of lumber as well as the Spanish influences in construction, many big companies flourished during the early 20th century such as CEMEX and Holcim Apasco. This led to the development of cheaper ways to provide bricks and cement to the public due to, as aforementioned, the lack of lumber. And by the way, Mexico is also part of North America. Just fun facts.
Brick houses are much safer, stronger and resistant to damage in the long run. I live in India where only the poorest have wood homes. Lumber is cheap.
Ever heard of the 3 pigs and the bad wolf.
The second pig built his house out of wood, sticks specifically. It was blown down.
Please build your houses out of brick or concrete, wood is definitely not as strong as brick or concrete.
There are advantages and disadvantages to all construction materials. The higher thermal mass of brick and stone can definitely help moderate temperatures, but here in Canada where we see temperatures of -20 or colder in the winter, we need more insulation. Hollow wooden walls allow for superior air-gap insulation allowing houses to be heated much more efficiently.
In earthquake-prone areas the more brittle construction of stone and brick is a liability, whereas in huricane-prone areas the superior strength and mass of stone or brick is an advantage.
My point is that making broad generalizations about "best materials" is against the principles of good design. No one solution fits all use cases.
yeah... I live in a part of the US where the majority of houses are brick. When summers are humid, that brick talk is nonsense.
I hate how open plan houses in america are! i'm from london and i love having separate rooms for everything! especially during quarantine. it gives everyone their own space, plus the heat and smells from the kitchen STAY in the kitchen.
Love my London home!
Bit sad innit
What is cooking in the kitchen that you don't want the house smelling like it? It's my favorite when something is cooking and I smell it in a different part of the house
@@mollyover2369 ew. I would hate for my living room to smell like pot roast , fried fish, Turkey burgers, or anything else I cook. I want it to smell like my scented candles or plug ins
@@nishashawn2021 lol imagine thinking your own food smells gross. Not everyone's cooking smells god awful lol
It's gonna be so hilarious in 30 years watching home reno shows adding back walls to these houses. And don't get me wrong, I love open floor concepts and wish I had the money to reno mine. Just saying it as a fan of This Old House who has watched every single episode.
Lol I was thinking this too. Every episode I see on HGTV I say "wow there goes another house we will see on a future episode with them adding the walls back" lol
Most every episode of shows on HGTV involve a contractor knocking out a wall.
In the early 1930s Frank Lloyd Wright was asked to design an inexpensive house for a young couple who were just starting out. His proposal, the First Jacob's House [Yes, there was a second one about a decade or so latter.], was so revolutionary that it was obvious Wright had been thinking about the "affordable-house" problem for a very long time. His solution while cool in summer was also warm and cozy in winter. It was open to the out-of-doors (East and South) via a continuous bank of French doors yet closed to the street (West) by a blank wall (with built-in book-shelving on the interior side) topped by clerestory windows. The kitchen was at the center, just a few steps away from the living/playroom area while being invisible to it. It (the kitchen) was the tallest space in the house with its roof well above that of the rest of the house. This feature provided whole-house ventilation in summer by functioning similar to a chimney-flue in creating an up-draft which would allow cooking odors to exit through operable clerestories while also provided daylighting to what otherwise would have been a dark space. The three bedrooms, which were little more than closets* for sleeping were lined-up in a row in a separate wing with the largest one as far as possible from the noise of children playing in the living space in winter. These were accessed through a long hallway with clerestories (for natural illumination) atop a continuous bank of built-in storage units (closets) which, in affect, provided double-wall insulation to the exterior (North) wall.
With this, almost tiny, pavilion-like house which appears open and airy when viewed from its private back-garden while at the same time seems closed and substantial when seen from the public street ... in this one little building, Wright returned us to the emotional roots of our human ancestors of some 200,000 years ago sitting in dappled sunlight secure within a grove of trees while looking out at an open savanna somewhere in central southern Africa (in what is now known as Botswana) ... no prior architect had done this!
I could continue but that would require a book of which there are several, the most well-known being "The Natural House" by the Master himself. My point being that in order to make an open-plan "work" requires more than just removing walls. Literally, EVERYTHING has to be re-thought!
* Here, I'm using the term "closet" in its original meaning of a small room used for study, prayer, and/or contemplation ... one will find this usage in the Bible. Previously, we kept our clothes in the free-standing "wardrobes" [and wardrobe chests (sometimes referred to as "cedar" chests)] where we now house our TVs.
In 30 years if I'm still watching that garbage 😂😂😩
Some will definitely say "as you can see this 2010s minimalist grey and white open space looks very dated"
I don't like open floor plans. I rather like the idea of each room being a compartment much like a jewel box so each room can have a different character and style if you choose to
I totally agree
Thank you. I thought I was alone.
Me too, but in today's world it just looks stuffy and outdated to others.
People are beginning to smarten up. Open floor plans suck if there's more then one person living in the house! People need time alone. Sometimes one wants to watch T.V. and another wants to do something unrelated.
@@johndoe-wv3nu People are too alone these days. Humans are adapted to sit around a campfire from sunset until bedtime, which lead to gather around a candle to read, then to watch evening TV together.
Now people are reading, watching, playing and even talking (through texting) alone, and it's detrimental to relationships with the people who actually matter in yout life, as well as to mental health, stress, and cross-generational wisdom.
People are suffering because they learn the majority of what they know about socialization and emotions, from media rather than from people- and everything left unanswered feels like a problem that has never been had or solved before.
The open plan concept was encouraged because it makes for healthier families that interact with each other more, even if it's just by being in each other's silent company. If you need privacy, your room is still isolated, but there shouldn't be any activities that keep you there all day. And it works really, really well, even and especially for introverts.
I hate open floor plans because it allows noise to travel to all parts of the house much easier. I don't need to hear a conversation that is happening in the kitchen while I'm trying to listen to a RUclips vid, even with headphones on, in my bedroom.
Open concepts discourage intimate spaces. Also, if one has a large art collection the open concept makes it a challenge to display things well.
It's the worst with small children. I walk around with ear plugs all the time because of the echo 😭
You can still close your bedroom door in an open floor plan. Just close your bedroom door, and you won't hear anything else happening downstairs. There's no need to close off every single room in the house and make things feel more "claustrophobic."
Same. Even with my door closed in my room and headphones on I can still hear everything going on downstairs, and it drives me crazy that there's nowhere in the house that I can't hear the TV when I'm trying to do my homework.
You need better headphones.
The open-floor plan isn't problem -open plans can be as environmentally sound as other plans - it's the complete disregard for heating and cooling energy requirements that most developers have, because frankly, they're just trying to make a buck selling crappy McMansions. You even showed open-floor plan buildings when you talked about environmental efficiency. You could, and probably should, have reversed the order of the video and said "how efficient A/C has changed modern house design," because what's happened is cheap heating and cooling units, under-regulated developers, and uniformed consumers have come together in a perfect storm of shitty architectural design.
Once again, Cheddar, you've got a great topic and great graphics, but need to finish your research before you make your videos.
there are maybe two or three of these kinds of content farm channels i can reasonably rely on not to warp or fuck up the facts or overall gist. cheddar is not one of them. like the McMansions, it's more style than substance.
you'll never find me living in a McMansion. ask a home inspector what they think of them! besides that, they're ugly, look and feel cheap, and when you realize the styling cues of them and can put a name to your vague dislike they'll start to make you sick.
it's been two years. i see your comment. And you still right about Cheddar.
What exactly is a mcmansion?
@@torquemadax9507 it's a large garish house that appears mass-produced with no architectural consistency. They may appear nice to the at first glance, but they usually have about 10 different building styles slapped all over. Columns that don't support anything, 30 different window treatments, useless balconies, turrets, etc...
@@torquemadax9507 A McMansion is a fast-food mansion -built to look nice but shoddily made, with bad design, high energy use, and cheap materials.
My family knocked out the wall between the Kitchen and the dining room. I hated it. They are socialites and constantly have guests over. It became twice as noisy because now you heard the cooking and the talking at the same time. No peace. Was a relief when I got my own place.
Cooking as now become a 'spectator sport'. I don't want others watching me toiling over a hot stove and distracting me with aimless chatter. 😂
@@eattherich9215
That would be hell. I have adhd. It takes me long enough to cook a meal as it is. That would make it nigh impossible.
The open concept house, known otherwise as a barn!
well, i consider the people who buy these things to be of a herd mentality, so that sounds about right.
@@ryanbarker5217 moo?
Or a studio apartment
Or a house that had been demolished in a severe storm?
underated comment
The kitchens were closed because of the smell rather than the heat. The heat was welcome in many places but the smell and grime would get into everything. However evacuation hoods changed things.
That's only partially true. It was actually not that uncommon to have an un-insulated "summer kitchen" and an insulated "winter kitchen" in parts of North America in the 1800's, partially to keep the kitchen heat away from the house in the warm months.
It’s not like there is only one reason. I’m sure the heat was welcome during winter and cold areas, but not during the summer. Food smell is not a big issue in the US unless you are cooking something exotic.
There was a time in America not long ago when women enjoyed being in the kitchen together, for example, when cooking for holidays.
Sometimes you still get smells ... even with hoods. And when your trying out new recipes you tend to make a bigger mess; who wants people looking that or analyzing what your doing. Little privacy can be a good thing.
Anyone cook fish or other lingering food smell items? Open plans have a problem. And in Florida pioneers had kitchens separated by a walkway to keep the heat and all away. We had “dog trot” houses with covered boardwalks separating the rooms in a T shape.
When I was young and lived in apartments (which all apts have open floor plans), I always couldn't wait to get a house so my kitchen wasn't in my dang living room. Little did I know they started building new homes with the same open floor plan.
There are plenty of apartments that aren't open floor plan
@Curtis That's the same feeling I get
Commie blocks work if you want closed floor plan in a small apartment and want to fit in as many people as possible.
I live in an efficiency and the open kitchen sucks! My bed and couch often absorb the smell of onions, grease or whatever I cook!
I have lives in at least a dozen different apartments, not a one with an open floor plan.
I don’t want my kitchen out in the open. I like my own space for cooking and creating.
I live alone so the whole house is my own space... and I like the kitchen to be attached to the living room so I can watch tv while doing dishes 🤷🏼♀️
@@bookcat123 well living alone it doesn’t matter then does it... if it works for you. I don’t have a solitary lifestyle.
Same, if im having guests I would much rather walk out of the kitchen door with a full plate of food. I dont want to have to awkwardly make small talk while trying to hassle to cook dinner. Then the whole magic of the night is over 😂😂😂
Closed concept is more intimate and cozy. You can have quiet with tea and a book and create different moods throughout the house.
@@asparrow5505 yes! I appreciate being able to have my kids have their space to play and make a mess and take care of, and myself and my husband can have our space. We have a family room for all of us. But it nice to have toys and kid crap in a contained area. And I truly love to bake, and some of the things I bake require attention to details and my kitchen allows me that. I love it. ❤️🌟
The energy code has already addressed this problem. Their solution is hyper-insulation. Don't need to spend money cooling your house if it's not even able to heat up to start with. It's a better solution because it also keeps the house efficiently warm in winter.
TheJaredtheJaredlong energy usage per capita in the US and UK has grown rapidly since the 1980s even though we now have incredibly more efficient vehicles, televisions, light bulbs, insulation, and we know the severity of climate change. The reason isn’t computers or phones, it’s much larger houses for smaller families further apart and away from the city, making everything less efficient. There’s no technofix when it just allows us to consume more, we need to learn from our past and live smaller and closer.
@@tylsim Our building code in terms of efficiency has not kept up with load demands. In California, the building code for insulation has been unchanged for basically 40 years. The houses here use much more energy per sq ft than they did in the past because A/C wasn't a requirement when building and many architects like to do many things that increase energy consumption like remove overhangs, complex building structure, skylights, vaulted ceilings, etc. If they want to limit energy consumption, the current way our energy companies charge don't disincentivize high energy consumption. Here in California, 10 years ago PGE had tiered electrical costs where the lowest consumers were charged the least and highest consumers were charged the most. They did away with this in order to encourage more energy consumption.
@@imzjustplayin We have tiered power costs here in BC, Canada. The only months I hit the second tier is when the AC is on. Lucky for us it is only needed four months out of the year. Having that second pricing tier sure works to get people to think about their usage. I got rid of my electric hot water tank and changed the whole house to LED lights.
@@imzjustplayin I'm not sure this is correct. Overall per capita energy consumption in California has been relatively flat since the 1970's, as opposed to significant growth elsewhere. I haven't found the data specific to residential, but based on conversations with a friend who helped establish many of our energy standards I'm pretty confident that on we are in much better shape on a per square foot basis as well.
@@waynecampbell9426 Most of those improvements have been in appliances and also the updated energy code didn't go into effect until 1980. Using that 1970s as a standard is stupid because the energy codes were non existent then. Like I said, no real improvement at all. It's easy to see because I know people who have built new homes and people with old homes, their energy bills aren't any different despite similar size and occupancy.
Also just because you double the square footage, doesn't mean you should double your energy consumption since you could be turning a single story into a two story.
Closed floor plan houses with all the internal structure are far more resistant to earthquake damage. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (California), friends with open plan houses had to move out for several months while their houses were repaired. My old time closed plan 60's house was untouched as were others in the area. The magnitude 7.0 quake 6 miles distant did highly dishevel the interior furnishings but zero prob with the house itself.
Per the video, while it was 100° outside yesterday, and the house has total hillside west exposure to the sun, there was big variation in room temperatures. Range was 80 to 90° inside with no A/C in the late afternoon. So just go to the cooler part of the house for a few hours and turn on a fan.
You left out the number one problem with the "open plan" design. You can't go into a room to be alone behind a closed door. If there are people in the home, you end up being able to see each other from every other part of the house.
This had to have been implimented by some hateful extrovert that can't stand the idea of some introvert being comfortable by being alone so the designed houses to make that impossible.
Simon Macomber lol
I'm clearly extroverted, but I hate open floor plans. It would be nice to not have to worry about noise as much during night time. Noise carries through the whole place. I also hate how much trouble it is to keep small children out of the kitchen and away from hot stoves. I can use the bathroom if I'm cooking unless another adult is home.
Its not like bedrooms are open plan, saying you can't get privacy is quite untrue
@@MrSaxophoneGamer I agree. You always have the option to go into a bedroom and close the door. If it's not a place that is comfortable, make it work for you. Maybe the bed needs to be off center to accommodate for a reading chair and footstool. So often, we focus on how a house looks rather than how it functions. Don't wallow in your problem, be active in finding a solution. The number of people complaining about the lack of privacy in their own home is ridiculous: it's YOUR home, make it so.
You haven't seen the open plans I have, then. Yes. *bedrooms* have no walls or doors. *Bathrooms* have no walls or doors, the only doors are on closets.
I hate open floor plans. No privacy, everything is on display, and it's difficult to have different themes per area. Also, if I don't want to cool or heat a particular area of an open area, I have no choice. Closed rooms, easy, close registers and the door.
it's a marketing scheme for the construction industry. there are more existing older homes than new builds. i have a 1925 craftsman bungalow home. i'm not going to knock down the walls and increase my heating and cooling bill.
They always feel like apartments. I miss the old houses that have character.
Open floor planes are nice though in a small houses/ condos because it gives the living area an illusion of space. I like privacy too, but I can use bedrooms for that.
Closed floor plans feel claustrophobic. Open floor plans both make the area feel more spacious and more inviting.
Also for me it's easier to clean separate small rooms instead of a big open space
"Kitchen's were for the hired help", yeah for about 2% of the population. You don't know what your talking about
I agree. I’m sick of hearing this. Most people were not rich and we still aren’t.
@@TylerMRaab Hired help was often for the working class as well. A mother with half a dozen children wasn't capable of all of the tasks required for home upkeep prior to technology and hiring unmarried girls was common even in poorer families.
She was talking about the philosophy behind the style, not declaring everyone rich.
@@NoliMeTangere1163 It wasn't common among poor families. Instead, people used their families for help. Their parents and grandparents. And eventually the kids would be old enough to start helping around the house. If someone had a half dozen kids, then they already have at least 1-2 who would be able to help cook and clean.
Your right. This channel sucks. Full of inaccurate bs. I’m done w cheddar or whatever it’s called.
I love older houses, the thought that went into them is remarkable. Usually there were lots of doors & connecting rooms so that you could open windows & doors to create a draft that with the correctly placed exhaust fan can feel like the coolest air conditioning. I’ve had old houses & new construction & hands down would choose an older house.
The character that they have too is something that has been forgotten. The beautiful little nooks & built ins I guess you sometimes see in newer homes but not often. They were also constructed better, the walls, the floors, the trim work. Seeing lots of them abandoned & destroyed in various cities breaks my heart.
The biggest problem of the open floor plan is that I have to keep my kitchen clean all the time
Cook a meal and then move.
What are you doing to get your kitchen so dirty?
@@rich7447 Cooking for 6
@@DannerBanks You got me beat by 2x.
We don't seem to have an issue keeping the kitchen presentable even when entertaining, but we do have the advantage of having a small (6'x15') prep/catering kitchen in addition to the open concept kitchen. The small appliances live in there along with an extra fridge and microwave.
Lots of places in Asia have a dry kitchen and wet kitchen; the latter being used primarily by the house staff for heavy duty cooking whereas the former is more for baking, reheating and simple cooking
Grew up in a house made out of concrete mixed with perlite blocks. Never needed air conditioner and durig a winter it was easy to warm it up. It was a 2 storey house and still energy efficient and sound proofed. Walls, facade and celilings made out of mortar and still standing after so many years.
"air conditioning" in my parents home in Germany is mainly achieved trough opening all windows during breakfast and keeping them closed to dinner between Easter and Halloween, given that putting a fan in the root celer and keeping the doors open for 30 minutes turns everything 15C cold.
@LagiNaLangAko23 there are none, after the fire 1745 most of the foundations and basement have been mentaind but until the second to last sale (and remodeling) 1890 there haven't been any records inside the property line... The electrical and water plans assume most of the walls to be limestone and adding any "creative" fillings would be too much work.
@LagiNaLangAko23look into "earth ships" and straw bail construction for technical advise.
@Carpe Diem drainage is better around me 😉, the lights are not the best but haven't had to be replaced since the 20s and if I could smell anything but wood oils chances are the brickwork Coul be slightly smoky... It's not like the basement has frequent need to contribute to indoor climate.
@Carpe Diem
So run a dehumidifier in the basement? Invest in your comunetys resilience? Move some place conducive to human live?
I hate open floor plans because I much prefer my living spaces to be warm and cozy. Nothing cozy about massive empty space.
Open floor plan doesn't equal massive empty space. In the Netherlands open floor plan is popular because otherwise you'll end up with rooms as small as your bathroom. My kitchen is 7,2 m2/ 23.622 quare ft. I'd feel very clostrofobic if it was a closed of room.
i agree, it's very uncomfortable, and the 'room to entertain' is the opposite of a selling feature to me.
I agree..they are harder to decoratetoo, with those awkward angles or no place to rest the eye. 3 rooms in 1 can be overwhelming.
this video is all over the place. Critiques open floor plans but then brings in climate change. Mentions architecture from hundreds of years ago as a standard but its actually not effictient to today's standards. 100 years ago people used to put newspapers in the wall to keep the "draft out" but people didn't know they actually wanted to keep the heat inside. That's why R values were created. This video feels like a sophomore in college making a video with too many broad ideas and no details. Stick to the subject of the video.
Here is the issue, they are using a 4 minute video to talk about a topic that's not simple. And what they are saying is that older buildings often were built around their climate and area while newer houses often do not do such a thing as often. They weren't saying that the older buildings used the best methods, but the best ideas.
I like your reply. It has a good counter argument. I feel like the video didn't explain things well enough and thats why theres so many negative comments. I disagree also with the concept that past generations had the best ideas.
the sound is all over the place too
It’s Cheddar. They hobble together a video to make money. Accuracy and quality isn’t their goal, it’s money. Just like a sophomore in college wasn’t to pass the class not be perfect at it.
@@TheMasterhomaster A business wants to make money? Say it ain't so! :P
Open floor plans are a scam in a lot of cases, in my opinion. They seem to work out OK making small spaces feel larger and can let in more light. Otherwise I fail to understand what drives homeowners to convert their homes into Manhattan-like studio apartments.
"Oh I can see the kids while I'm cooking". In a few short years you'd wish you couldn't as they're sprawled all over the next room with their noisy friends. Speaking of noise - without some amount of wall division between rooms, noise just bounces around everywhere, all privacy is gone, or at least some amount of isolation when needed is gone. Paint schemes and decorating can be a challenge, too.
In a sense, a builder is saving on building materials, mechanical, electrical and finishes by eliminating room partitions.
My anxiety is rising just reading that lol
it also allows these t.v. 'remodelers' a great excuse not to actually have to design every room. people watch enough of this crap, think it's the hep thing to do, and start to want it as if being brain-washed.
there are a few cases where opening a room up would be nice, just not like living in a sparsely decorated barn.
That’s not true. I’m sure there are many people who actually like their kids and like being a part of their lives. I had a old sectioned house and the kids and their friends still came in the kitchen to talk to me or wherever. I will never understand people that have kids but don’t actually want to spend time with them. Maybe that’s why even my adult kids and I are close and they never got mixed up in bad stuff when they were younger because I didn’t tell them and their friends to go away.
@@lysan4878 In that case let's agree it's a personal life style choice; just not mine.
I hate the open floor plan with such a burning passion it seems so 2005 it's already not aging well
People do all these semi or even mostly permanent changes to homes and furniture bc it’s on trend and they get trend tunnel vision, not realizing that in 5 or 10 years they’ll be desperately trying to change them back to the new trend which will actually be the old original look. There is no point in following those trends none at all
@@MysticHeather honestly I can't wait for that like take the kitchen for example I currently live in a house with an open floor plan and once in a while when I'm in the kitchen I just feel exposed maybe it's just my anxiety but either way I don't like it
I hate open concept. I like a formal dining room and at least half a wall in the kitchen.
Cheddar had intrigued me, but where are the science journal sources? O.o
One cannot believe a business without evidence.
this video is basically a short version of episode 291 "thermal delight" of 99% invisible
They quoted HGTV and that’s enough for me.
My parents went open plan in most of the downstairs and it's a pain! If someone is cooking with the extractor on or the washing machine is spinning you can't watch TV at a reasonable volume. If someone's having a phone call you can hear it everywhere. You can't shut children out of the kitchen when messing around with hot pans. It's freezing cold half of the year.
The future of housing isn't a return to ticky tacky boxes of the 50s, it's passive houses like earthships that rely on mass for capturing and releasing heat and smart design with windows etc.
What your describing is problems with the building code, not design.
@@joer8854 Yeah they're whining about putting noisy appliances into the big open room instead of in a scullery- I haven't seen one open plan house which doesn't have a closed scullery to hide the dirty dishes, probably because my country has decent architects and individual owners, and not the mass manufacturing garbage from corporate owned US suburbs.
I lived in a wood open plan most of my life with no heating, cooling, or range hoods, and lots of nautical light and this never posed any problems. Now I'm in a brick suburb house where the lights need to be on all day, we hear the washing machine because it's against the living room wall, and the rooms without North sun are frigid during both the summer and winter.
I hate the “open” style. I don’t want other people looking into my business.
(Psst, open floorplans don't involve every single room; your bathrooms can still be closed off.)
@@hauntedshadowslegacy2826 I haven't seen an open plan that doesn't have additional areas that you can escape to if you want to. Our entire lower level is escape space (bar, wine room, movie area, snooker, gym etc).
I just like to have an area to formally dine so that my guests can focus on looking at each other and a beautiful room, not all the chaos of where the meal was prepped. You just live in a box if walls don't seperate for privacy, cooling/heat, and smells.
I live in a large two story Victorian. I love my attic fan. During the fall and spring I open my windows, run the attic fan, and cool the entire house. Then I keep the house shut up during the day, and it stays cool.
I love them too, especially at night. Sleep like a baby. Only problem is the extra work cleaning due to all the dust. Give and take aside, I still would want an attic fan.
I prefer “closed concept” houses. More individual rooms makes my house seem larger, even if it isn’t.
You are so right about that
yep
I’m reminded of a This Old House they did out in Los Angeles where the home had what looked like a wooden chimney with vents running up from the basement. It was a “California Cooler” that would pull the cooler air from the basement up into the rest of the house.
Story also fails to mention that A/C tech is getting smarter, and if net zero homes become a thing, you can run your A/C off of your own solar panels.
Right on. Today's minimal specs when replacing AC/Heat pumps are ridiculously high, and expensive. My new heat pump for our 3 level 20 foot wide townhouse built around 1990 is half the size of a 5 passenger compact car. Honestly.
Running your AC off solar panels is still wasteful, you require more resources (including conflict minerals) for bigger panels and A/Cs actually generate heat because of thermodynamics. Insulation and architecture is more important than where your energy is coming from
@@gearandalthefirst7027 This Old House did a renovation/expansion of a house in Rhode Island with Net Zero tech, they accounted for as many of these issues as they could (and put all the solar panels on a big salt box roof on the newly built “barn” out back to maximize power generation (most of the time they were selling power back into the grid.)
You would need an entire block of solar panels to run A/C and I doubt your neighbors will allow you to cover their roof with them. Do the math
@@peggyt1243 wouldn’t that depend on how much A/C you’re running and where you live??
I actually get anxious in big open spaces... I like walls and little enclosed rooms. The open concepts thing is definitely not for me
Yea I get it, I know some people like that. They should make some with more closed floor plans.
It is so difficult to keep a kitchen organized and clean all the time. I'd drive myself crazy thinking that anyone walking in the front door will see my random stains, wrinkly dishtowels, greasy cabinet doors, flour on the counter, etc.
Yes!! My thoughts exactly!!
It makes the house seem bigger.
That open kitchen means you get to smell and hear everything that happens in the kitchen and it does not always smell so good, and can be very noisy.
Open plan houses are all good until you have a family and want some privacy and alone space
@ "um t" : Totally agree.
Open floor plans aren't good when you live by yourself, either.
Go to bedroom then.
Matt Wolf no computer in bedroom, it’s in the office which is part of the open concept area
Moira O'Deorain well, including the office as part of the open space is just stupid. But that’s more of individual design problem, then a general. Open space is usually about kitchen and living room, so the communal part of the house. Everything else can still be closed off, while still being an open space house.
my childhood home has a pretty open floor plan, which has largely worked out since I have a pretty tight knit family. I imagine that if your family had more strained relations, it’d suck. It’s a nice house to hang out with your family in, but it’s not great for having friends over because nowhere feels private. You can pretty much hear everything in the house from any spot. 🤷🏻♀️
House fires spread far faster with open floor plans, too. Several of my family members were firefighters, and they always told me to keep doors shut to slow down a fire.
Yes closing doors slows smoke distribution in a home (the smoke usually kills you before the fire does). But building homes with sprinkler systems quashes the fire before it has a chance to spread. Check out nfsa.org/
Living in a heavily wooded area of Mississippi, my parents knew we would loose electricity often, so they built our house with high 12 foot ceilings, windows that allow for circulation, concrete floors that stay cool in the summer, and high attic space to draw the hot air into it. Though we lost electricity the other day due to a strong storm, the inside of the house never really got over 78 degrees F, while outside was easily near 85. Also large overhangs on the porches allow us to avoid direct day sunlight to any of the windows in the house which also helps.
As much as I appreciate my wife cooking, I can't stand how in an open floor plan the T.V. competes with clanking cookware.
Most people I have ever broached this subject with where I live(Midwest USA) also don't understand the love affair with the open layout. The newest house I ever lived in was built in 1950, the current one in 1900 and I love a traditional home.
I have to say people in America really are crazy in their use of aircon. Coming from Italy where the summer gets really hot the families who have aircon (because not everybody does) don't keep it as high and always on. I remember being shocked when I visited Miami and it was the perfect summer temperature outside, warm with a breeze, and as soon as I went inside a shop or a gallery (I actually went for the art fair) I had to put a sweater on...A SWEATER in summer. That had never happened to me before.
I have the same criticism for London, where I live. In the winter everywhere you go is blazing hot inside and you see people wearing t-shirts or vests when outside is freezing... This thing has gotten out of hand, our bodies need seasons, they need to regulate body temperature and they are now losing the ability to do it. It's so incredibly wasteful! We should build homes that are well insulated with more sustainable materials and with spaces designed for efficiency. Who wouldn't like to spend less in bills and live better?
Caterana Tonnē Fleur it’s cultural. Now welcome to America and enjoy your glass of 90% ice and 10% beverage!
@@TheMasterhomaster It's a culture of waste! So silly, all manufactured.
i dont even have AC at home, though i do live at 56 degrees latitude so it may be colder than normal here normally
I live in hot and humid Florida and would never live here without air conditioning. It would be absolutely miserable.
@@npeace312 But do you need to feel like it's winter inside? I don't think so. This is the problem, exaggeration.
If it's summer, it's meant to be hot, make it so you won't collapse and even if you sweat a bit so be it.
That's what Summer is about, heat.
That is my point.
I hate open floors with a passion I don't want the kitchen and cooking smells to take center stage in the house ! I like having separate areas for different activities it helps make the house a lot more organized and easy to maintain I don't have to worry about sudden guests when I have a front room that is always clean and ready. The only open areas i like is the family room/ sunroom/ glass doors to the yard that is the only acceptable open floor areas, but never the kitchen or dinning or front rooms..
In old novels, people occasionally referred to being able to smell food being cooked, and they all act like they're being forced to smell pig manure. It's really weird. Nowadays, we are all extremely comfortable with the smell of garlic and onion being fried, things being cooked, bread being baked, etc, but they treated it like air pollution in the past.
I don't care for the smell of food to permeate every room of the house. If that was want I wanted, I would live above a restaurant.
No, no, no!! The future of house design is Passive House, not old-school designs. For one thing, the air is so polluted in most places that unless the house is sealed up, superinsulated. and actively ventilated (HEPA-filtered, and heat-recovery, of course), letting the house ventilate accidentally will just bring in bad-to-breathe particulate matter and/or ground-level ozone.
The only places stack and accidental ventilation would work is in a relatively temperate climate (and where would that be anymore?) with very little outdoor air pollution.
I have to agree though, that shows like Property Brothers are ridiculous and bad for the planet's climate.
I’ve always preferred an enclosed kitchen to keep the fumes and smells away from the rest of the house.
Or flour, that stuff gets everywhere
Heaven forbid like a crockpot explodes
There are a lot of quality videos about architecture and engineering on youtube. This clearly isn’t one of them. No mention of building materials or insulation? Or solar panels to power air conditioners? This video doesn’t want to educate you, it just wants to make you feel bad about your lifestyle.
I legitimately cannot stand open concept. I don’t want to make sure my entire home is immaculate when people come over. Let me have a messy kitchen! So I can focus on having fun and not the mess.
We moved into a 1925 house full of walls and doors that close. My hate of open floorplans goes back a long way.
Pluses for open floor plans - feels more spacious, allows the cook to interact with family and guests.
Minuses - If the kitchen is a mess then everything looks like a mess. Cook can't be alone if he/she wants to be. Can't hear the tv over the noises in the kitchen. Can't have a separate decorating decor from the living area. May feel too modern for some homes.
people i know who cook prefer to have a proper kitchen to themselves as they don't want it to be a spectator sport. of course, others would like the 'interaction' with people as opposed to them being the inevitable distraction as feeling as if they're being watched.
the worst thing about open floor plans are the family rooms, the ceiling are always thirty feet high. i feel like i’m in an office building not a home.
Exactly. And ever since covid, offices are rethinking the open concept also. People need walls and places to get away from each other being in each others face all the time, breathing each other’s air and hearing each other’s conversations
High ceilings are good for warm climates.
@@jatpack3 oh, yeah, high ceilings are great. I live in San Francisco where tall ceilings from Victorian and Edwardian buildings are the norm. I feel claustrophobic in places with low ceilings. But the big open concept rooms of newer construction make me feel like I’m in an office building. All of that echo! I prefer lots of smaller rooms with tall ceilings. Private spaces
i LOVED living in an open layout house..for about a month, then it started to really get on my nerves. You're watching a documentary and your kids are playing and you can hear everything so you have to turn the volume up or you want it dark in the living room but someones in the kitchen doing something so you have to just live with it or youre in the dining room trying to have a conversation with your wife and the kids are in the living room being loud...you have no privacy or way to block anything out and not to mention if you forget to close the blinds/curtains your neighbors or worse can see all throughout your house...nope, glad were back to a more closed off design now, it doesnt look as nice but were all much happier...oh yeah the climate and energy junk is good too i guess
Same. I don't understand the appeal of open-plan. I don't like it, though there is a middle ground to be had: I used to live in a house where you only had the living room and dining room connected. Everything else was in its separate rooms with the bedrooms and bathrooms down the passage in a separate part of the house. Kitchen as well was separate but attached to the laundry room on the end and a door out to the garden.
That's why brick houses are great, they cool in the summer and keep the heat in the winter. But USA loves its flimsy wooden homes, and their homes aren't cheap either.
I read a government pamphlet 20 years ago that said to plant deciduous trees on the south side of the house. Today those trees are 30 feet tall and making shade.
And in winter the leaves drop of so they let the light in.
Open floorpans are great if you live alone. I've often thought it would be cool to have a space like those converted loft-spaces in which it is, basically, a big,, open floor and you define the "rooms" by the layout of furniture. Picture Seth Brundle's place in the movie, "The Fly." Kitchen, bedroom, living area, even his workspace, all occupying separate areas in a completely open floorspace. Pretty cool, for ONE person.
But if you live with other people, you want some privacy, sure, but more basically, you want to be able to engage in different activities at the same time without interfering with other people. For instance, the most common "open plan" has the kitchen open to the living/family room, sometimes called a "Great Room." But what people do in these two rooms is very different and should be separated. Mostly, in the living/family room, people watch TV. Mostly, in the kitchen, people cook or eat.
You want to be able to watch TV without hearing the sounds of cooking and you want to be able to cook or eat a meal without hearing the TV show someone else is watching. I really don't see why people think opening these two spaces to each other make sense. Someone working or eating in the kitchen might even want to listen to the radio/podcast or watch a different TV than someone else is watching in the living room. It makes sense to have a wall separating these rooms, but eliminating the wall between them seems to be the most common form of "open" floor-plan.
This sounds identical to parts of 2 different podcast episode from Endless Thread, I mean word for word. Somebody ripped someone off.
Tim Fevens omg!!!!!!
Uh-huh...... now you’re catching on
Its almost a condensed version of 99% Invisible's "Thermal Delight"
My house is a 1930s Sears catalogue house! This was super interesting.
Open floor plans can make flooring repairs harder and more expensive depending on material and how it is installed. Understand a minor amount of damage cannot be repaired if material too old because companies discontinue products after a couple years. There's other issues like resilient flooring/ engineered flooring grooves that connect can be broken once detached. Stick with wood floor because at least you can sand and refinish it.
I miss closed floor plans especially in a rental. There's no alone time/privacy if you want to sit in the living room and someone wants to make a meal.
I don’t like open floor plans. I feel like the kitchen needs to be its own space. Feels more sanitary. I don’t like walking in the front door and the kitchen is right there. Also it’s nice to go to a quiet corner of the house and get some privacy.
I watched the video and I'm still waiting for the "surprising problem of open layout homes".
It talks about how modern American home designs suck at passive cooling, which I agree with, but that's not why I clicked on this video.
Down vote.
They’re noisy and you end up getting kitchen mess like flour and grease everywhere
Moira O'Deorain I live in a 37 square meter apartment and that is my exsct problem. I found a rare type of a small apartment with a separate bedroom and I’m so happy about it. It’s 35 square meters and it should be fine because 37 has been too big for me as I live alone.
Just get solar.
Apocalypse averted.
Jebediah Kerman solar panels aren’t a consistent enough source of power, they are also terrible for the environment when disposed of
Get a powerwall.
Right! Like she said the only alternative is to build a lot more power plants 🙄🤔
Yeah, get more to solve an overconsumption problem, brilliant.
Solar panels and a car for battery storage
I live in a 1,300 Sq. Ft. gorgeous little Victorian house filled with small, beautifully-designed living spaces. Though we live in a climate that only sees rain 30 days a year, the house is always cool, breezy, clean, and extremely welcoming because they designed it to be a place to live in, not just visit during the 10 hours a day when you are not at work. The back door in the kitchen and the front door in the parlor are perfectly aligned to make a gloriously cool wind tunnel that keeps the entire downstairs perfectly ventilated. Upstairs, the bedroom windows align to do the same. They were brilliant! Modern houses are ugly money pits. I never want to live in one again.
Open floor plans kinda make me think of a regular Home Depot design layout as well as a furniture store a bit.
There was far to many generalization in this post to make it useful. But it did remind me that a whole house fan is great cost effective cooling option. And relatively easy retrofit for most houses.
I turn it on at night to cool the house then turn it off and shut the windows and partially close some window shade on the south side of my house in the morning. I also have ceiling fans in most room. So by using the whole house and ceiling fans I use the AC only on a handful of days in the summer.
A few caveats this will only work for ppl willing to deal with some variation in temp and humidity in there house. And high humidity is the many limiting factor in my case.
For ppl thinking the fans will use more electric the AC it's not true they use about 10% or less than what using a conventional air to air heat pump based AC unit would require. Its also relatively cheap and the only mechanical or electric based unit in my house that has never need replacing or servicing. So its lasted over 30 yrs and still works fine.
There is few other considerations, so if this make anyone interested in install one feel free to get back to me.
www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-cooling-systems/cooling-whole-house-fan
by 2050 Solar, wind, and nuclear will be a lot more common. Not to mention a lot more efficient and smart systems
All have serious drawbacks. Solar is expensive to make and harmful to dispose.Wind turbines decimate bird populations( think 40 ft feral cat) and nuclear- well, Fukushima.
@@YSLRD Solar, true. The problem with wind turbines is not the bird population decimation, it is the fact that the source is unreliable and not profitable enough.
The direct radiation from Fukushima killed a total of zero (0) people. The emergency evacuation killed more people than the Fukushima meltdown did (about 1600). Chernobyl only 31 people died as a direct effect from the disaster. About 60.000 (estimate) people died indirectly from Chernobyl. (sourced from WHO). While the burning of fossil fuels and biomass is estimated to cause 3 million deaths worldwide per year and indoor air pollution from biomass and fossil fuel burning is estimated to cause approximately 4.3 million premature deaths. Nuclear energy creates nuclear waste too, but it is stored underground in storage facilities (it doesn't go back into nature!). Nuclear waste itself is not even that harmful as people believe it is. Also, nuclear energy plants create isotopes needed for diagnosing and treating cancer. If anything. Nuclear energy is safer, more reliable and less harmful than any other alternative energy source at this moment.
You forgot about how noisy it gets when you add kitchen noise to the party
You never noticed how the party always ends up in the kitchen, anyways?
is really about using brains over brawn, using aircooling is the brawn approach, pre-AC architecture used the brains approach.
Open layout is also terrible for people with audio sensitivity. Nobody can get any peace. Also that ticky tacky song was written about the San Francisco Bay Area
The fact that we take climate into almost zero consideration when we build homes is actually a pretty insane thing
I’m thankful to just live in a home.
I love my open floor plan home. It is awesome and doesn't cost any more to heat/cool than any other house I've ever lived in.
Sure, and you enjoy the fact that when you fart in one corner everyone can hear smell and hear you in the other!
This is a good video, covering the energy efficiency / air conditioning problem well. There are other issues with open plans as well.
As a residential designer I try to guide clients towards a more balanced approach to open and closed spaces. So often people think they want "wide open plans", like the man in the video who talks about seeing every corner of the house from the kitchen. But so often, after the fact, people realize they don't necessarily want to see the kitchen from every corner of the house. There are also problems with having no social spaces people can retreat to. If one person wants to watch the football game on TV while several others are having a quiet conversation, the open plan poses problems.
I find a good arrangement is to have a family space open around the kitchen but to have a separate, smaller, more formal living room as well. This provides people with choices about where and how they want to socialize.
This works even in smaller homes. A lot of British houses have a room called a "snug" which serves this purpose nicely. It can be small enough to seat just 2 people but it provides a choice.
80 degrees is not comfortable. And AC is the best human invention.
"we can't ask people to live without air conditioning"
We can't?
come to florida during the summer
"The alternative is making many more power plants"
Or... Just installing solar on your roof?
Those that use the most electricity don’t care about installing solar. Also the high up front cost isn’t feasible for most people.
Another alternative is geothermal cooling. Yes, the installation cost is prohibitive for some, but it would dramatically slash electrical consumption at the home level. It's also a technology that is commercially available today.
Solar does not work in climates when covered in snow and they do not work if you have shade trees blocking the sun. Solar is unreliable, inefficient and not cost effective.
@@peggyt1243 Hmm, when the solar is covered in snow you probably don't need cooling. Same when the sun isn't shining. Shade trees covering the panels? They are helping, not hindering. Thanks to the shade you need less cooling so it doesn't matter if they don't work as well. Solar isn't good for a lot of things because of all the points you mention but if there is one thing where they are a valid option it's to run an AC. Also it does not need to be your solar on your roof. Parking lots should be covered, especially company lots, and equipped with EV charging points too. Car stays cool, gets a charge and the energy use of your AC at home gets offset by the solar over the parking lot. All for the price of one.
@@astranger448 You are right ............ but you do need heating when the solar panels are covered in snow.
it would be interesting to know, how much energy flows into heating compared to cooling. this video suggests: people can be warm in winter, but they should sweat for nature in summer.
Being too cold can kill you a lot more easily than being too hot. It takes hours for heatstroke to overcome your body's ability to cool itself, but hypothermia can begin in minutes in the right conditions. That said, I love my AC and I keep my house at 68°F all summer long as nobody's ever gonna take that from me.
There was a heat wave in 1995 that killed 739 people over a 3 day period in Chicago. It was the deadliest natural disaster of the entire decade. More people died in that heat wave than from hurricanes, tornadoes, or Earthquakes that year. The problem was it remained excessively hot even at night so people got no relief. After 48 hours or 72 hours of continuous heat people just starting dropping dead. When it is cold you can always put on another sweater but when it is hot there is nothing you can do except find someplace with AC.
www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/July-2015/1995-Chicago-heat-wave/
Our house built in 1935 has no air conditioning other than a small portable to cool the living room. It helps the bedroom above too, it is still very warm but not brutal as it would be if the living room was hot.
My husband and I built our home and it’s in the French Country manor style. The kitchen, breakfast nook, and the great room (family room) are open concept. Dining room and study are their own space which are separated by large French doors if you want privacy, and bedrooms are closed off and are accessed by long hallways (like corridors).
Good to see what cheddar is doing
“That number could triple by 2050”
So it might but it might not
Why don’t we just make a crap ton of nuclear power plants, like basically infinite power and super environmentally friendly, except obviously make sure it’s designed right or else we’re all dead 💀💀
Just think about the nuclear waste which will last for over thousands of years -_-
@@Pottlps that's why i said don't mess it up so there is no nuclear waste
@@andrewcowing9141 i don't know if you know what happens to old uranium rods, but those are the main problem cause the are high radioactive and need to be locked away for centuries. Moreover this atomic waste is produced non stop and we dont have a real solution for this problem, that means that atomic energy isn't safe and enviromental friendly, it just dont produces co2.
@@Pottlps first off nuclear power plants are extremely environmentally friendly in the sense that they release no harmful gasses to the environment, and they last a long time (around 80 years). The old uranium rods just get locked up and don't have any harm to the environment because they are locked up. The only real way that it would be not environmentally friendly is if one failed, collapsed, and or blew up unattended and lots of toxins get released, but, that rarely happens, they go through so many procedures like when they build airplanes. So where did you get the idea that they were bad?
Open layout homes have an unsurprising problem
FIRE !!!
Most house fires start in the kitchen
In traditional homes with traditional kitchens and solid wood kitchen doors a fire can be contained in the kitchen for at least long enough for the family to safely escape the home
Not so with an open floor plan where a fire that started in the kitchen can quickly engulf the house
Easy to fix:
1) Have all homes cast in shade via a ramada roof over the original roof so the entire house is cast in shade. You can't beat the sun in a parked car in the sun as ac is maxed, yet pull it into shade and all is fine.
2) Under your front yard would be a ~800sqft hole ~20' underground...with a 4" pvc pipe intake in the front yard leading to the hole and a 4" pvc exhaust into your home. Per thermo dynamics the system runs itself with no help, air travels hot to cold...air would shove down the intake into the room and cool, and be blown into your home via the 4" exhaust pipe.
There's also a trick, you make one of the pipes and inch different then the other, one 4", other 3"...so creates a faster draft and more volume.
Aka, natural ac.
I’m pretty sure they don’t design the same homes like they do up north like they do in Florida..
Christel Champagne yeah. A house here in New England would have to be at least slightly different from Florida. The main concerns of mine being snow and humidity/heat.
@@elenagibbons4719 lived in Michigan and South Carolina. Same style for the mass market. Single glazing windows. Thin, cheap walls. Central heating/cooling. Where I am from, tripple glazing, bricks, basements and insulation from the elements is standard and our winters are not as hard...
Actually they do. There used to be differences, but not so much now.
They'll have to take my air-conditioning out of my cold dead hands.
In the uk, if it is too hot we open the window, most homes don’t even have AC units
What is the average dew point in the uk during summer?
Tyler Cook it also doesn’t get as hot in the UK as it does in many parts of the US.
Trying doing that in the US. It can make the house hotter.
When I lived in texas, if you opened a window it would heat your house from 90° to 110° Fahrenheit. At night it might cool down to 86 if you're lucky. I used an ac to keep it around 85 during the day and 75 at night. Older people died in the summer from power outages because they would get heat stroke.
And England is in what degree Latitude?
Thank you for making this. My grandfather was one of the pioneers of passive solar heating and cooling. This has been a known issue since at least the 70s, but getting the word out that convenience comes with problems has been a challenge.
i can also hear a pin drop anywhere in the house, when the house is essentially one big room