@@ralfk.5552 I guess you have not much of an idea what certain bullets shot from certain weapons can do. An assault rifle can easily shoot through a 30 cm concrete wall, or one made from bricks. Same goes for large caliber guns or revolvers. .45 or .357 easily shoot through a brick/concrete wall.
I've been to Germany many times. 1) They have garages 2) Toilets are both mounted to the wall or the classic way with a tank and mounted to the floor. 3) Showers - depends on the size of the bathroom and how you like it 4) Freezers - again, if you want a huge Fridge you can have it.
and we do have screens to put on your window avoid having bugs in your home...you just have to buy and put them up...don´t think it´s much different than in the US
In Germany, you don't need big refrigerators because usually the nearest grocery store is only a 5-minute walk away. The food is fresher and you don't throw away as much of it. Why this guy doesn't have a freezer, or at least a small freezer compartment, I don't understand.
I bought a fridge without a freezer to have more room as the cabinet allows only limited size for the fridge. But I have and my family always had a big freezer either in the kitchen or nearby (e.g. hallway or basement).
@@muuhnkin4611 in rural areas freezers are also more common. I have always lived in Berlin and have never used or even seen big freezers (mostly just 3 or even only 1 small compartments on the bottom or top of the fridge) My mothers family lives in rural Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and everyobody there has a big standalone freezer somewhere in the house.
I'm from Europe and I'm surprised to see your reactions to windows. This is an example of how habit and different continents differ in basic matters. Opening a window like this is the most ordinary thing in the world for me. Our windows have a third way of opening. It's called micro-ventilation and you turn it all the way up and then to the left about 15 degrees. Then the window is minimally open. I really like videos like this when I can see your surprise. Thanks, have a nice day. PS: The toilet is open. Apparently the guy lives there.
This. This was my reaction to his reaction regarding the windows. I always figured that it's the common standard for the whole world since they are essentially everywhere as the common type of any building window.
Regarding closets: keep in mind, that the 'room' you lose by a integrated closet is now added to the bedroom, and with a wardrobe cabinet you are more flexible in how you setup the room interior wise. :)
My biggest confusion when I was in the States was that a lot of windows aren't double paned. German windows always have two panes of glass, separated by a vacuum to prevent heat transmission.
@@HeresorLegacy Double pane windows have been standard in houses in North America for 50-60 years at least. But I bet in more southern (temperate) areas they might not be as necessary due to the warmer temperatures. Definitely a standard thing in the north. Also triple panel windows aren't much more efficient than double pane after they started putting in the vacuum between the panes. Triple pane are mostly use in cases where you want to lower exterior (road) noise from entering the house.
Our fridges do have freezers. They come in many styles, lots of fridges just have a lower part that is a freezer. But yes, these things are a LOT smaller than the American counterparts, and they are way less of a centerpiece, although we can buy "American style" fridges with double doors, ice dispensers and the coveted stainless steel look :)
I think its because most stores are way farther away in average in comparison to germany. So i guess people would do weekly / 2 weekly grocery shopping tours in the US
Yeah, I agree we have easier access to fresh food like vegetables or fish with shorter chains of distribution, so we don't need to accumulate a lot of food into the fridge 😊
@@s.c.9107 In addition, electricity is quite expensive in Germany. Many cannot afford to operate such a cooling block. Therefore, they prefer to go shopping once or twice more.
Well, on the other hand, the sliding windows are surprising to us over here, aren't they. Sure, we tend to see them more, because we watch American TV shows and movies, whereas most Americans don't watch many German movies or TV in their lifetime.
It requires well build windows. I guess for many American houses that would be an upgrade in quality besides the extra feature, which isn't cheap either. So for Germans and other Western-Europeans it's only like 50% more expensive than a regular window, whil for Americans that would be 300% for example. That's probably why they haven't seen it before.
These so called Kippfensters have been standard in Europe for last 60 - 70 years. Never seen a house or a building that doesn't have them. Its understandable that they don't have them in the US since they don't air and use air conditioning instead.
The oldest building (a barm) on my farm was built in 1736. Older than the US. Our main house, where we live in was built in 1823. Greetings from Germany❤️
In my vicinity there are houses from the 11th and 12th centuries that are completely intact and inhabited. Of course, the electrics were retrofitted at some point. A heater also came in (the fireplaces still work). A few castles from that time are still inhabited here.
The house I live in is also 200 years old. The villages around here are 1250 - 1500 years old and all the big cities around here are over 2000 years old. (Andernach, Koblenz, Bonn, Cologne)
Fun fact: Some windows of the newer generation allow a 3rd position. If you turn the knob between the full and tilted position, the window will only open a slight gap. This can be used for having an airflow after a paint job or in a newly built house. From the outside, the window looks like it is closed.
@@CzeCzaCreg I would say like in the last 10 years, maybe?. Older windows don't have that option, it's either tilted or open, but not that "semi-tilt", which you only notice on closer inspection.
@@cdk8472 I think so too. The windows my parents chose 3 years ago even have 4 settings ;) : normal swing action, tilt, and 2 minor-opening ventilation settings (that are actually quite hard to set... it needs practice to get the teeth to align with the gripper on the window frame). And I'm living in The Netherlands, where we seem to have been a bit later on implementing plastic window frames.
two more things about windows in germany: 1. the outside of the window is very easy to clean since you can open it all the way to the inside of the room. 2. if its raining is a big plus when the window is able to tilt open only the upper side, instead of pushing the bottom half up. so your opening is more likely to invite the rain if its a bit windy ;)
My ordinary windows here in the US can be tipped in, both top and bottom, for cleaning from inside the house. I've personally had windows like that for over 30 years.
@@rendzis Winter ventilation should be opening the windows as wide as possible for a short time. A quick and thorough exchange of air in the room with only what little mass of air has entered the room to heat is ideal.
Here in the Netherlands the building code for garages is pretty strict. Because your storing a vehicle there you have to have enough ventilation and stuff like that. It’s easier to achieve with a separate garage instead of one attached to the house. It’s basically seen as a fire risk.
In the US, our attached garages have to have fire rated doors and fire rated drywall between the garage and dwelling. If there is no step up into the house (e.g. the garage floor is level with the dwelling floor) there has to be a concrete curb/bulkhead under the door and any wall adjacent to the dwelling. So, like a submarine door, stepping over a bulkhead (my brother's old house had that). In my house I step up into the house to enter from the garage, however, one wall off my garage is adjacent to a family room that is on the same level (slab on grade) and there is a concrete curb/bulkhead between the garage and family room. This is all so flammable fluids don't seep into the dwelling if there is some sort of catastrophe. On the other hand, many older neighborhood, particularly in more urban areas have separate garages, usually located in the back yard facing a shared access alley. My old house was like that.
For the Netherlands: There have to be two doors between the garage and a room where people stay, so a little hallway in between. It's there to stop exhaustion gasses. Same goes for the 'bathroom', and for the front door, always a extra door between to keep the smells or cold air out. The radiators are part of the central heating system, they are filled with hot water that circulates and is heated up at one central point, usually the same thing that provides hot water, not a boiler. Hot water isn't stored, but heated up as cold tap water flows trough, to prevent still luke warm water that can cause veterans disease. What surprised me while visiting the US that in some cases the 'restroom' was directly attached to the restaurant. A single door between dining and pooping area... that was truly shocking!
@@dutchman7623 Your front door argument is not completly true, there are many apartmentbuilings (flats) that have a gallery (and balcony) and only one entry/exit door, so no second door.
Eerlijk gezegd, Nederlanders, en ik zeg dat als Duitser die al jaren in Nederland bouwt, namelijk Duitse standaardgebouwen, die ook zagen hoe Nederlanders ze bouwden, niet goed bouwt omdat die huizen meer op de Britse of Amerikaanse ontwerpen, die slecht zijn (slechte isolatie tegen koude en hitte en geluiden van buiten en binnen!). Ik zag ook ramen en deuren van slechte kwaliteit. Sommige regels zijn zo verouderd dat ze niet meer up-to-date zijn en dateren uit de vorige eeuw. Maar je ziet steeds meer Duitse techniek in de raambouw die uit België en Duitsland overwaait en als betere optie geaccepteerd wordt! To be honest, you Dutch people, and I say that as a German who has built in the Netherlands for years, namely German standard buildings, who also saw the way the Dutch build them, don't build well because those houses are more like the British or American designs, which are bad (poor insulation against Cold and heat as well as noises from outside and inside!). I also saw poor quality windows and doors. Some of the regulations are so outdated that they are no longer up to date and date back to the last century. But you see more and more German technology in window construction that is spilling over from Belgium and Germany and accepted as a better option!
You just use free standing wardrobes. They can be really big. But like this you can decide the placement in the room. And the size. Our houses in general are good isolated. There are different sizes for fridges and most people have a fridge freezer combination or a separate freezer (in the cellar for example). A lot also depends on how old the house is. A lot of older bathrooms have toilets on the floor and not mounted to the wall.
And you don't have fixed "bedrooms". You can use the rooms as what you need them. In adds you will only see the area and the number of rooms, not number of bedrooms.
@@colete677 Yes, but I find it awful to sit on. I'm always afraid it's going to fall, and they tend to be higher up, which is actually bad on the physiological side.
Some additional thoughts (yep, long post, sorry 😉) to what already others might have stated in the comments (more related to Europe in general, not just Germany): Fridge/Freezer - In Europe in general the freezer is part of the refrigerator - either on the bottom or on the top and has a separate door (the fridge-part has one and the freezer has one, but it's one big unit when you buy it). Most people only buy food for a couple of days because they prefer to cook from fresh ingredients and because most of the shops are easy to reach in short distances, the people rather tend to shop every few days a couple of items instead of buying large quantities maybe once a month. So there's no real need for a separate big freezer in the household, the small one integrated in the standard fridge does the job just fine for the few items you buy. Windows - to be able to fully open them is not just good for airing your home, but also for practical purposes - you can clean them whenever you want and don't have to use a ladder or even call a company to clean your windows from the outside when you live on higher floors e.g. in an apartment building. For the bugs we just buy/install window screens. In fact most households have those on their windows during summer, but people tend to take them down for the winter or when it gets cold (they last longer then). Garage/Carport - it's often also not a necessity in Europe to even have one simply because the public transportation is so good, that a lot of people especially in the cities don't even have a car. You have most of the stuff you need either in a walking distance or you just take the bus, tram, etc. This is also something related to the 'close community' point mentioned in the video. But yes, if you have a garage/carport, it's usually not part of the house, but separate. Insulation - the houses and apartment buildings here are usually having very solid walls like brick/concrete/stone, etc. and usually keep a certain temperature inside (keep cool in summer, keep the heat in winter) much better than US houses. Considering also e.g. fire safety these materials are also much better to protect you from completely losing everything as the fire can be better contained in each room and your whole house doesn't immediately burst into flames. Door knob - in general throughout most of Europe we don't have a door knob that you twist and turn, but exactly the door handle, which you could see on the inside of the door in the video - one that you push down. On interior doors from both sides and on exterior doors we have usually the same system as shown in the video. Heating system - our system with the radiators in each room does save a ton of energy and the heating costs are easily manageable as you heat each room separately and can set different temperatures or even turn it off in rooms you don't use. Closets - depends on when the house was build I'd say. Newer houses already have sometimes an in-built closet/wardrobe in some rooms, but in general we tend just to buy separate wardrobes, because it allows you to put it in whichever corner of the room you want and change the room's disposition this way anytime you need. You're not having it fixed in one spot like a closet. Low ceilings - this is really limited usually to just one type of the houses what is shown in the video. So not such a large % of homes. The rest have normal/standard ceiling height. As for high ceilings - you'll find them in most old townhouses in the cities (and by old I mean built at least a century and more ago). That's typical for old townhouses. But for newer builds and separate houses people tend to prefer standard ceiling height - mainly because of the heating costs (the higher the ceiling the more you have to heat to reach a certain temperature and the more money you waste). Toilets - there's various types of toilets, so pls. don't judge by just one of the types seen in the video. What's also very common (not everywhere, but in some countries) is to have the toilet in a separate small room and not inside the bathroom as it's considered more hygienic (and you don't take your shower/bath in an occasionally smelly room... 😏) Showers/Bathtub - usually here the same as what you've described for the US. Not much difference there. What's a bit less common in Europe is the shower heads mounted on the walls. Usually you just see them on the ceiling in a combo with an additional shower head, that isn't fixed and you can move it around as you want.
Having visited the US many times I believe the fundamental reason for most of the differences between houses and office buildings as well, has simply to do with the (too) low cost of energy in the US (or because it is expensive in most European countries). I’ve seen many (partially) wooden houses which often are poorly insulated, have air heating, sliding windows which are drafty by design, etc. And this will not be the case everywhere in the US of course, but I have seen it often in greater Chicago area at least. If heating your house, flushing the toilet or simply turning on the lights is expensive, demand for energy and water efficient solutions rises. Where do you think innovations such triple glazing or LED lightbulbs came from. Not from the US, but primarily from EU because it is requested by the consumers and/or pushed by legislation.
I hate LED lights. I have dozens of incandescent flood lights in my ceiling. I bought a "life time" stash of those bulbs so I'll never have to switch to LED solely because my goverment wants to make me.
A real door handle, like the one on the inside of the apartment door, is absolutely preferable to round knobs in the US. Because such a door can still be opened with your elbow and foot if you have both hands full of stuff. It's often the little things that make life easier...
In Finland one does not have any moving handle, just the lock mechanism that one operates. Inner doors have a handle. A handle is bad if you have a dog.
@@okaro6595 I am aware that there are dogs that can also open a door in this way. But for one thing, not every breed of dog has the ability to do that. And not every dog understands how the mechanism works. But if you actually have a problem with this, you can still put the handle vertically. The possibility of opening the door with full hands remains, but neither the dog nor the cat (they can do it, too) then have a real chance of opening the door. Sometimes you get the impression that other people believe that the Germans have never been confronted with this animal problem, or that they are somehow underexposed...
American here - I had the lever handles in two of the houses I had built. I love them, although I had to be careful about locking them because my German shepherd could open them. My veterinarian has the same locks. They also have to watch out for some dogs being smart enough and tall enough to open the doors. The house I live in now has the typical knobs. I may eventually replace them.
@@okaro6595 You can change the position of the door handle so that it shows upwards. Then your dog cannot open the door anymore. Our last dog used to open doors. So we changed the handle position and it worked. Greetings from Bavaria, Germany :)
The reason you don't find closets too often, is because most dwellings in Germany are not single family houses, but multiplexes, which means they have a limited and defined footprint to fit into. A tiny spur of space hanging off the side of every room either means that you are taking space away from the next room, you can't fit rooms snugly up against each other, or you have a random bit of façade sticking out to accommodate a closet. Moreover a free standing wardrobe is 100% custom to your needs both in size and in placement.
In Europe you can also buy the same refridgerators as in America. Here in The Netherlands we call them "Amerikaanse koelkast" (American refridgerators). From your reaction I guess you think the American size is standard throughout the world, but it's actually the other way around 😉 Also, this wasn't mentioned in the video about the toilets, but in Europe (at least western Europe), in single family homes (not in flats/apartments) you will also find a separate toilet at the ground floor. So not just in the upstairs bathroom 💩
Most American fridges are a refrigurator/freezer combo. In Europe we usually have them seperate. A European fridge can easely be just as big as the refrigerator side of a US style fridge.
@Phillip Banes you're right but that's what Americans do. They say constantly that's different in every state, they pretend that there are 50 different countries within 1 country. So because they feel that way of there own country and the size of Europe and America are almost similar, that's not a strange comparison. But I agree that my life here in the Netherlands is almost the same as our neighbors Germany and Belgium but nothing to compare with the southern countries like Spain or Portugal.
lol I am sure in the USA they have super enormous fridges as compared to elsewhere in the world. It is crazy how back in the day the normal size was smaller and now they keep getting bigger.
Austrian here! - We have a garage as an extended storage space for bicycles, wood, large tools ... and a car-port for the car ;-) - Your amazement about the "hidden" fridge was very funny! - Having no closet makes you able to arrange the room better to your fitting - Your amazement about the windows was also funny!
Steep roofs might be an adaption to snow loads. In the Schwarzwald (kind of mountains), the traditional farm house has quite a steep and large roof, so snow would not accumulate too much but glide down more easily, reducing the static load on the roof structure. The room under the roof was usually for stacking hay, so in the end probably building material was saved. Also, the room under the roof tended to be storage area even in city buildings. Later, owners might have decided to build flats from that storage place and thus earn more rent. In general, land in Europe is much more at a premium than in the USA.
The houses in Germany usually are stone houses. The advantage if you do not have inbuilt closets is that you can add wardrobes in the way you want it - and with the kind of storage you need - into the appartments/houses. And take them with you to the next house. Renting in Germany is far more usual especially in cities as elsewhere. Usually when you rent a house or an appartment it comes empty not furnished. Empty means that you bring your own kitchen, your own wardrobes, beds and appliances. Even screens, holders for the shower curtain, lamps etc. We Germans (apart from students and young people) are long time renters. As soon we are settled and are finished with the family planning we really seldom move. The average time a German rents an appartment is 8 years and more than 40% are in their rented homes more than 10 years. Germans usually have freezers. Either a combined freezer/fridge combination (but in "normal" size not American size, the freezer part often is just a small segment of the normal refrigerator - we shop differently) or a seperate freezer (about 50%). There is only a handful of people that do not have atleast a freezing segment in the refrigerator.
I don't think there's a reason for the built in wardrobes other than 'style'. It's a typical American building style that didn't break through here in Europe.
@@BamBamGT1 you might be right there, I've seen it a few times with newly built, customized housed by younger folk that they had a walk-in closet installed, and they said they saw it on TV or online growing up and wanted to have it themselves.
Isn´t it common for american kitchens to have a huge freezer? In opposite in germany there is only a refrigerator with a small freezing segment in the kitchen and the freezer is in the cellar.
@@brauchebenutzername I do not think that there is a "common" standard anymore - atleast when it is about new installments of the recent 10 to 20 years. My mom e.g. has a normal German sized refrigerator hip high installed and an about as big freezing department beneath it. My fridge starts on the floor and is a little higher - and I have a freezing department that has about the double size of that "usual" freezing segment above my fridge - that is enough for me as I am single and buy most items fresh. Apart from bags of vegetables or fruits I just need it when I cook a meal for more than two days but I usually use that again in the next fortnight. But I do not eat any frozen pizzas or do keep icecream at home. It was different when my son still lived at home - than it usually was full with pizza, icecream and meat as I usually freeze that when I do not need that in the next 2 days.
Garages: Yes there are garages in Germany. Most apartment blocks have underground parking, fgamily homes have a garage and/or a carport. I think it all depends on where you live, in cities carports are more common, but on the outskirts of the cities and smaller towns garages are the norm, but it all depends on the climate. In areas where winter is not as harsh, you don't need a garage a carport is fine and for a lot of people a carport is the thing the build when they build the house to save money and they might add a garage at a later time. Fridges: Yes, our fridges are smaller, but most of them have a freezer department, most households buy an additional freezer for deep-freezing preopped meals and left over. Closets: We don't have built in closets, we usually just buy a big wardrobe and they can be massive and tbh, the closets in US bedrooms are so tiny, I would not be able to put all my clothes in a normal built in closet. no one floor houses: Of course do we have houses with only one floor. Back in the 60s and 70s one floor houses with a flat roof were very popular, they were called bungalow. Nowadays most houses have two or more floors, but one floor houses are still in the mix. The reason why everything is smaller in Germany is that we don't have as much space as the USA we live much more compact than the USA population. Germany has the 6th highest densisty in population in Europe with 233 people/km² while the USA has a population density of 36,7/km², meaning you have far more space to build and live like we do.
A garage in a real winter environment is amazing, no need to scrap the windshield of snow/ice, brush off the snow or shovel the snow from under and around the vehicle. At worst you just shovel some snow from your garage door to the road/alley and go.
not having a closet is actually a good thing. It frees up some space and your just have to buy a wardrobe or a cabinet, which gives you more options as to how you arrange the room.
Freezers in the Fridge: Yes we do have them. Double door Fridges (with Freezers): Yes we do Newer windows have 2 more positions: Microventilation on top only: So it is tilting like shown with a smaller gap Microventilation all around: Is it parallel offset to the window frame by just 5mm or so. So fresh air can enter on one end and used air exits on the other. Newer roller shutters will actually have screens in addition to the shutters, but they are not permanently fixed! You can roll them down like a roller blind on the outside. So in summer time you put them down, in winter time you can leave them up for better ventilation or better view or to ventilate your pillows and blankets in your bedroom. Yes, we can have also shower curtains (or movable glas sections in the newer bathrooms) and yes we can also have a holder for the shower head to fix higher up.
Living in Austria (next to Germany), I'm a bit astounded by the claim that garages/carports tend to be separated from the house. Of course that can be the case but more often than not, the garage is connected to the house. This might be different in northern Germany though. Regarding heating systems: Of course radiators are still used but floor heating seems to be the predominately used system nowadays.
Ohhhhh, you mean Australia! Can't be confusing the American readers like this. I've apparently been Swedish all my life. Never knew until i spent a year in the US
@Phillip Banes Nature disagrees. It's always the first thing that pops up in my mind when i see images from a big hurricane destruction in the US. In fact i can still remember one where they panned the camera around 360 degrees and everything was completely destroyed except for one stone/concrete building still standing like nothing had happened.
In Sweden it really depends on the size of the house or apartment. Is it a bigger home, to house a family, it's usually one fullsized fridge and one full sized freezer, but if it's a smaller home for just one person, or a couple there could be a combined unit with the freezer either below or above the fridge.
@Phillip Banes Yeah, that's true. In rural areas in Sweden, it's pretty common to have an big extra freezer, like in the garage, especially if you're a hunter.
@Daniël Europe and EU are totally different things, so that's super confusing since everyone will assume you only mean the 27 countries in the EU when you write "EU" instead of the 44 countries of Europe. Typing 4 more letters isn't going to kill you...
I live in The Netherlands, and age of your home does also make a difference, my apartment is from the 70's and it has a toilet on the floor. It also does not have the same windows, only seen those at the cantine of my work place. My refrigerator has a freezer section at the bottom, so its both in one but with seperate comparments. There really are a lot of options to get the home you like, it just depends on what you want to spend and how old the building is.
Hi from germany, first of all, there are garages here ;-) But as mentioned, they are often not part of the house. This is for many reasons, for example most germans don't own a house but living in an apartment house for rental. If these houses have a garage, they are usually underground beneath the house. If you own a house, it is common that the houses and the garages of your neighbourhood are separated, so the houses stand together and so do the garages. The reason is in my opinion to keep traffic out of this neighborhood for safety reasons, especially for children. Heating: Yes, it is common to have radiators in every room and you just turn it on the needed. Plus the houses in europe are different than in the U.S. Here they are made of cement, and often built in a connected row, which is also more energy efficient than separated houses. They're keeping the heat in the winter and don't heat up as much in the summer. Fridges: Yes, german refrigerators blend in the kitchen, but the most have at last a small freezing department, too. There are also fridge/freezing combos which are about 6 foot tall, the upper half is for fridging and the lower part (with a separate door) got 3 or 4 drawers for freezing, and it all blends in. But there are also american-like fridges, too ;-) Bathrooms: Yes, bath tub and shower is separated, IF you have a bath tub that is ;-) Especially if you 're living in an apartment, there is usually only a shower.
Most single family houses here in Germany do have garages but they often are for one car only and they aren't connected to the house via a door. It's also common that a row of houses ("Reihenhäuser") shares a separate row of garages ("Garagenhof").
Carports are just a canopy with a car below. A garage is something where you can lock a car in.Up until the 19th century, in big cities, many apartment buildings had a stall for horses at the ground floor. A garage for horses.
You do realize a garage usually has concrete walls on 3 sides. The 4th side is the metal garage door. A carport is just a metal roof over a car. It's open on all 4 sides.
Closets: True. There are walk-in closets in German houses, but those would be in really luxurious homes. The normal place you live in will not have a walk-in closet, and you will end up buying some wardrobe from IKEA for your clothes. I think it is a question of size. A wardrobe along the wall is not as space consuming as a walk-in closet, which basically is a separate room. Space in Germany comes at a price, and often times you want to use the available space for something else.
It's very likely that the closet thing originates from the spacious development of suburbs in the US with also the necessity of having stuff just bigger and more spacious. There are also many more toilets in American homes than in European ones. Also, Europeans have usually lived much tighter together so special built in closets truly are luxury stuff. Usually when there are such closets then they are for dry food, vacuum cleaner, cat litter any other thing you might want to specifically store away or hide from light.
I see another advantage of having wardrobes over closets: I can use any room multipurpose. Imagine I'd move in a 3 room flat with my partner (plus kitchen and bathroom, as they aren't counted in those rooms in germany). We start out as a young and happy couple, maybe in need of an office to work from home, one becomes the bedroom, one the living room. Our lives go on and one day we expect a child. We can now change the office to a bedroom and include it in the living room e.g. Yet, all the time we hadn't have the need of a closet in our office, the space was free for us to design as we chose. We could've had a couch in there as well as our own gym
We do have freezers typically (I´m from Austria, but I know Germans do as well), they are either a really tiny compartement at the top of a fridge that looks like the one in the video. In my apartment for example, our fridge also looks like a cabinet of the kitchen, but the fridge and the freezer are seperate and have the same size, they look like 2 cabinets, frisge in the upper part, freezer with 3 drawers in the lower part.
Having door handles and not knobs has fire safety reasons. When they get hot you can always find a way to push them down without your hands and you are not trapped in the room
@@MrUnkasen I meant the doors inside. The front door has no auto lock. It has a normal handle inside and no handle outside. So you can open it only from inside without a key. But you are not trapped when you are in the house
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@@pixelbartus [citation needed] As to the front door and being trapped? That's absolutely possible, because you *can* lock (most?) front doors (not just close, but really lock it).
9:58 That kind of window (and also doors, e.g. for balconies) is pretty much everywhere in Europe, right now. (I mean, older houses didn't have them, but people increasingly install them when they do renovations). They are very effective in terms of isolation (both termal isolation and acoustic isolation), unlike sliding widows, which always allow some draft and noise in.
@@GazilionPT 🤔That somehow defeats the insulating purpose of double glazeing cos you can´t get such a tight pressure seal with a sliding window and only one locking point, where as the windows in Germany have up to 8 locking pins per window that pull the window into the frame and so create an air/water tight seal. I cant think of a way this is managed with sliding windows (not tilt slide).
Yes, we've got lots of garages here in Germany. It's a quite new thing having a carport - it's much cheaper than a garage. A garage may be connected to the house via some roof, quite seldom in american style with a second entrance to the house
The heating system is getting more and more setup into zones, so you don’t burn gas/energie to warm up rooms that doesn’t really need to be heated, you will hover need to install thermostats for every independent zone
Separate garages are actually only found in older houses. These were built at a time when most of the population did not have their own car. When one could later afford one, the building was supplemented by a garage, which was then set up where there was still space.
The refrigerator thing is a generalization (as are many things in these kinds of videos). Yes, on average refrigerators are certainly smaller. Families are smaller and people go shopping for fresh stuff more often. But if you want or need a large refrigerator they are easily available. Getting a floor to ceiling ones, or a broader with double doors isn't a problem.
I worked in construction for 30 years, 15 of which as a Project Manager. I worked for a good time with and as a consultant to our American coworkers at our American branch (exhibitions construction). And most of the time as a Project Manager in Windows and doors. What style of opening you want for your door, is completely up to you. Germans prefer the entrance door without a handle where in Switzerland handles are common. But they use the same hardware. The windows in your clip are of the cheapest kind. They are made of plastic, inside and out. If you spend more money, you could get wooden windows, all aluminium is more expensive or the best variant, aluminium outer skin and wood inside. The Rolladen is by far not the only way to shade your windows. If you're a rich guy they can be integrated, between the layers of glass, while the glass is still insulating. It is ridiculous how far the US is behind in technology concerning housing. I actually don't know if I had a project other than with triple glassed windows for the last 15 years.
I have half of them on my house the cheap plastic and half of them the mid level wood... and the woods windows are just so much nicer, don't even compare. Of cause.. if you going the rent it.. its no question about it.
Wood is for people who need tell everyone they have wood windows. Elitist. Metal is terrible compared to either wood or plastic. Zero insulation qualities and that is huge here in Canada. Yeah, I spent most of my life in construction too. There are a thousand ways to do it right.
In Germany you also have a lot of garages, but they are not directly at the house (mostly), but separated. Sometimes even completely away from the house, for example, several garages for different people. These are usually rented in addition. In big cities, on the other hand, you often have underground garages. - The thing about refrigerators is also not quite correct. Many have a large double refrigerator, in which the upper half is a normal refrigerator and the lower half is a freezer. Or often you have an additional freezer (usually in the basement). But yes, American fridges are (as far as I've seen) usually much larger and we don't have the ice machines in the fridge (almost none) because we're not so ice-crazy here. Also be careful if you order an iced coffee (Eis-Kaffee) here! It's a little different here than it is in America. Here you get a coffee with (usually) vanilla ice cream in it! Not ice cubes, as in the USA! - And also that about the screens is not correct. They are usually not standard on the windows, but you can retrofit them without any problems. Only we haven't needed that so much in the past. Only in the last 10-30 years it has become worse with mosquitoes. That's why many now have screens on the windows. - Even with the toilets, it is not quite as shown. Yes, we also have the toilets mounted on the floor (and have the drain there) and the water tank mounted behind it. What is shown in the video are mostly newer / more modern houses / apartments.
I believe the yanks would call this a detached garage. Garages are super common, I don't know where this dude in the video lives preciesly but seems like he's missed em or they are locally rare.
First time I went to open the windows I thought I broke it. My host family put drinks outside during winter. I tended to go to the store more for smaller shops as I lived not far from the town centre.
@@tim.n5395 I haven't heard of anyone having it, but I don't know many people making a lot of money ^^. We make ice cubes sometimes, but I think it would be a waste to have a machine for it.
One big difference from my experience is that many houses in Germany do have deep cellars. I live in an old house, that was build around 1900 and it has a vaulted cellar. Vaulted cellars have always nearly the same temperature and they are very good to store vegetables and potatoes and keep them fresh. These cellars are also very good to keep drinks at lower temperature without the need of a fridge.
The thing with these un-twistable ‘doorknobs‘ on exterior doors is that even when the door is unlocked you can’t open it from the outside. Kinda like if you couldn’t push down the handle on a normal door. This means you don’t have to stress about locking the door when you leave.
I lived in Germany for a number of years and I would say that about half of what he said just depends on the house just like it would have to depend on the house here in the states.
what I've always wondered: In America there are also multi-story houses with windows that you can only push up halfway to "open" them. But how the hell do you guys clean the outside of them?
A lot of windows have an option where you can tip the bottom part of the window down and clean. You can't see this feature from the inside or outside. If your window is too old from the tip feature you get a ladder, hire someone, or there is glass cleaner that you hook up to a hose and spray the windows.
@Kaphew YT lol. A lot of American houses have at least 2 floors. It became popular for a house to have more than 1 floor in the 1990's. My mom's house has 3 floors. The living room and family room are on the 1 st floor, kitchen, eat in kitchen, bedrooms, and dinning room is on the 2nd floor, and the 3rd floor is the bonus/game room. My mom also has a basement. My daughter's preschool was an old restaurant and that's 2 floors. The first floor was shops and the 2nd floor was the actual restaurant.
My parents-in-law had build their house initially with a single floor and cellar and a flat roof and have a lot of problems with rain and water that came through the roof. When they inherited they built a 2nd floor and change the roof to a massive version with roof tiles to solve the rain problem.
Most German fridges have a small freezer compartment on top and many households have a freezer in the basement - we do not want these things cluttering our kitchens.
One can definitely have a net against bugs in their window in Europe. The difference is it doesnt come with the frame and you just put it on the window frame. Its more hassle but the size can be universal and you cut it to the size of your window yourself.
You have to keep in mind that a lot of cities and villages are quite old, built in times where there was no airconditioning, no cars. You had to pay for your house by the amount of sqm on the ground not sqm in total, so building small but more-storied houses was the way (Middleage cities e.g like in my hometown in southern Germany).
Garages are fairly common in Germany, more common than carports certainly. In inner cities both are a lot less common, though you may have an underground carpark. It's really a question of space and cost. Freezers again are common, at the very least a combo unit freezer & fridge, but often enough also a separate freezer, though often that may be in the cellar instead of the kitchen, so maybe that is why he didn't notice them.
As for the Refrigerators, you can buy the "American Refrigerators", smaller ones with only a small Freezer Unit at the Top or Bottom, or buy a Refrigerator without Freezer and place a big one (that can be as big as a normal Refrigerator) in your Basement or so. Mosquito Nets are available here without a Problem, though if you build a House you have to specifiy that you want to have them installed, or let them get installed later (my Father works for a Company who installs those Shutter and Mosquito Nets) Garages are not connected to the House as others mentioned for various Reasons, you might find connected Garages in older Homes, but its rare to see them nowadays. The Rest is mostly Stuff that was already mentioned here.
In Bulgaria our windows also open like German windows but they also come with screens. Like 90% of the time you change your windows for newer ones, the company includes screens to your windows. It's the best of both worlds
About the freezer... although some people buy freezers for long storage, most people have refrigerators that are really a combo, part freezer, part refrigerator on the same machine, with a different door that separate both parts, vertically. Although you can buy a only-refrigerator, and freezer separately, it's more common the combo. The freezer of the video is a smaller one. It's more common a refrigerator of similar width, but slightly taller than a person.
One reason for separate garages from the house is also fire protection. If the garage is built directly connected to the house, you need to prevent the spread of a possible fire, so you need to have (expensive) temperature- and fume-resistant doors, for example.
Not needed here. As long as you don't have one of those Tesla chargers that are known for catching fire. Why else would a garage catch fire? The door between our house and attached garage is an ordinary exterior door. The shared wall is covered in sheetrock same as the interior rooms of the house.
Windows on the tilt setting can be locked that way, letting fresh air in but keep burglars out. Houses in The Netherlands are similar, although triple glass is getting standard. Our houses are required to have an energy label based on insulation, solar panels, window paning and so on.
Wow, that's so different than the USA, but it makes sense. Here you can't sleep with the window open unless you live in country side or idk if that's even safe, I guess people can sleep leaving the springs on the window on to get fresh air, which is "somewhat safe" lol but that's cool other countries make it an option to have it open at night time and safe, that would be awesome.
3:45 important to know about door KNOBS: You will never find any door knobs in German houses or rooms with turn action to open the door. All doors in Germany have handles to push down to open the door. The advantage of handles (or push lever?) is the possibility to operate them not only by hand, but als with other parts of your body (ellbow, foot, chin, etc.)
oh yes door knobs are quite dangerous too. I lived in Canada end of the 60ies. My daughter 22 months old, locked herself in the bathroom with those kind of knobs. Of course too small to know how to open it. It took us hours to finally free her. I think it was a neighbour dismanteling almost the complete door. She was very brave, did not cry much. Maybe today those knobs are designed to open more easily?
@@mariar.6741 0f course door handles are common in europe. Why the hell door knobs are common in the "new World"? And the imperial measurement system? And the crappy sliding windows? And the 110 V electric AC system? Are they all crazy in "good's own country"?
@@sinusnovi3826 I don't know. My theory is that countries are like people, they have their mental age. The United States is so new, it seems to be at that age in adolescence that you want to do everything differently than your parents do, even if it is worse or more uncomfortable. let it grow up and discover the world for itself XD.
@@juttaweise Well, that won't happen in The Netherlands as well, but that's more because if a child should lock the bathroomdoor and not understand how to unlock it again, a big flat screwdriver will usually be enough to unlock the door from the outside. There's always a slot in the revolving mechanism that drives a pin into the doorframe.
Год назад+5
The window shutters have a double function, keeping your house cool by keeping the sun out and for safety as well.
*although* shutters being closed for several days are seen as an invitation for burglars, since noone seems to be at home for a while. this is why some use automatic opening/closing systems to simulate someone being at home, while you in fact are on vaccation for days/weeks.
I love how you do your channel and your videos!! very impartial and interested. That's contagious! :) Connects cultures and peoples. Thanks! Warmhearted regards from Vienna/Austria
It's a personal choice whether you want a kitchen with the refrigerator (like this) incorporated in the whole kitchen design and furniture, so it will look the same (incognito as you call it) or to choose a standalone refrigerator, which is generally bigger and will likely have its own freezer unit (while the smaller ones may have an extra freezer or you get a single small freezing compartment). I think, generally, if you rent a place with furniture already there, you'd typically get a kitchen like this one with the refrigerator built in. Most places will rent to you without kitchen--these pre-furnished apartments are more common for students or other short term renters. From how he talks about his kitchen, I get the impression that it was already in the house when he moved in. If he actually had put his own kitchen together, he would've noticed that there are a lot of stand alone refrigerators. Though, I'd say they generally probably aren't these huge double door refrigerators, unless you have like a huge family to feed.
I'm a German living Australia. 71 years old and a trained carpenter in Germany. Here in Oz the building techniques are seemingly very similar to the American building style for the single family home. There are building companies that will be able to build to your specs if you want something special and you have the money to afford it. The doors in most German homes are solid in general, rarely are they of the honeycomb variety as they are in Australia.
Keep in mind that not all houses are like that. In my house, I had bug screens, the toilet was the normal style like in the States. The windows are double or triple glass, for insulation purposes. The main difference is that most houses in Germany have a basement. This is where the freezer, usually a chest freezer, is located, as well as the utility room.
Hey, I'm from Germany and will let my thoughts about the 10 main differences down below: Nr. 1: Yes, that's right. Most of the houses are build next to each other and stand together to form cities/ towns. Sometimes you can find "resettlement farms", especially in the rural area. There are less houses, many times also two, three or four houses. But that's rare at all. Nr. 2: Also right. Most (single-household) houses are build up with two or even three floors. Then there are houses with multiple apartments, which are even bigger, e.g. with four, five or more floors. But there is a trend in Germany in building the house-type Bungalows, which are only one-floored. Nr. 3: That's not right but also not wrong. So first if all, carports & garages are both common in Germany. Which you choose depends in the needs and expectations you have or them of the owners. Very often the garage has a connection to the house (e.g. from downstairs when you're building on a hill or from same level). Nr. 4: Yes, there are no door knobs in Germany or I've never seen any. You need a key and have to turn it around to open the door. Nr. 5: Additionally we use a heating system which is installed in the ground/ floor. But it can also be used separated. So you can heat only the rooms you're really using. Nr. 6: That's true. In many kitchens the refrigerador is blended with the same front-material like the whole kitchen. Some kind of "build-in-solution". But the "american-way" is also used here, which I personally prefer. Nr. 7: In newer houses there are also closets, which I like very much. But yes, many times you only find wandrobes. Nr. 8: Our windows are great. I was totally shocked that americans don't know that systems. Also the windows are very well isolated, with two or three glases and a great frame. Screens are add-ons to our Windows but very common in some areas, especially in rural areas. Nr. 9: Some houses have a low ceilings other do not. Depends how you want it (when you're building a new one) Nr. 10: The tanks of the toilets are often but not every time build-in into the wall. Also not all toilets are mounted in the air, many are standing on the ground. The flushing is very efficient, just to save water, and it's reliable, too. Best whishes for all, have a great day ;)
I'm from Poland, we have handles both sides of the door. If the door is unlocked, you can use the handle both sides. When you lock the door, you can still move the handles, but the door is locked so it won't move :) Obviously :) How can you not have laterally opening windows in US? Entire Europe (it's not just a German thing) has this system of vertical tilt opening by about 30 degrees and lateral opening all the way like regular door. Since like...forever. I mean... My whole life I thought this is the same worldwide xD Can't you just use whatever works better in the US and not the other way around? And btw, how do you clean your windows from the outer side? You have to use ladders and clean them from the outside? This is nuts man xD And central heating - we also have air heating, but you can close the vents automatically (via app) or open them not all the way in some rooms where you don't need heating. Or in case of radiators, you only heat up the ones you need and there is a regulated power of heating from 1-5. Also - depending on what region or country you are in or how much money you have, central heating uses coal, natural gas or electricity (most common are with natural gas and heat pump system used with PV panels, however if you're poor you use coal). This is such a logical thing I just don't understand how you do not use this in US. This is crazy xD For freezers, you can buy a separate one or in most cases it is a fridge with freezer on top or bottom - two separate doors. It can stand on it's own or it could be put into kitchen furniture, so the front will look like the rest of the furniture in the kitchen. Bedrooms usually don't have closets, we buy wardrobes for clothes ;) It takes up place in the bedroom, but well, bedroom is used for sleeping and clothes storage only, so whatever. You guys don't have roller shutters? It is anti theft & protects you from the sun. It also protects from wind - when it's shut, it helps keep heat in house better. In case of garages - whatever works for the owner, either garage alongside with the house or close by.
There are one floor houses in Germany and Austria (mostly called Bungalow). I have some in my neighborhood, but they are rather rare. More so as land is expensive nowadays and you pay much more for the same space in the house. Roof and basement or baseplate need to be there in both cases.
The roullettes are deffinetly my favorite part of this video THEY ARE ALWAYS SHUT since people in the back can just watch inside and I don't want any burglar to know what's in my room.
About the door handles, the one without the knob outside is called a "shield" or "door shield" and it's purpose (outside of locking you out accidentally) is to ensure you can't forget to lock the door when you leave your home leaving your house unlocked. Also aesthetics I guess.. We have this kind of door and on our model we have a little blue switch which we can flip and then it won't lock itself when you go out, for example, going back in you can push the door with your elbow or foot and it will open. This way.. it can work as a traditional door where you are responsible to lock it when you need it locked
Actually we have both in Germany Floating toilett seats and those mounted to the ground. And we also have two systems for tanks. Those who are inside the wall and, like in my home, tanks that are mounted to the wall. At older buildings those canister are mounted to the wall but right under top of the room and you have to pull a chain after you're done. Comming to carpots and garages: We have both. In my home, that was build in 1994, so it's not that old, we have a garage also connected to the main house but no way to enter it from garage but of course the main entrence is just like 10 steps so no problem. We also have garages connected to the house that also have an entrence to it so you don't need to go to the main entrence but according to my experience most have a Garage that is connected to the house without an entry to it or carpots and not to forget the pre-build garages that will be, totally ready to use, transpoted to your property but those are not connected at all to the main building. The part with the main door has totally simple reason called "Safty". When I watch American movies I have the feeling that every stranger who wants could open the door and come in in best case unnoticed by the owner so easy going to sneak around and steal stuff while you are maybe in your room with you PC and don't recognize anything at all cause you may wearing headphones with music or the sound of the game you are playing. Fly-screens. I Fly-screens on windows at least in Spring till mid of autumn,
there are even two additional 'flush systems', that tbh are somewhat old fashioned. one being the 'high tanks' that are also mounted to the wall, but being almost at the ceiling using more of the gravity force, when the water runs down (nowdays rarely found in private homes, but still in some public toilets). the second being the 'direct flusher' that doesn't have a tank at all, but just opens a valve to the pipes and lets the water run into the toilet (super ineffecient in regards of water consumption and loud as hell).
The low ceilings is not really everywhere. In my apartment, we actually lowered the ceiling because the actual height was 2.95m ( about 9feet). We lowered it, to keep the heating costs in winter down. One really great thing with high ceilings, Christmas and tall xmas trees. Having said that, one of the rooms does have a slanted ceiling, but it is a little higher than the one shown in the video. Toilets, not all of them are mounted on the walls. It really depends on the house/apartment, and if you are building your own place, you choice.
In Germany, people can only afford their own house if they are wealthy. In America, people afford to buy their own (cheap) house and believe that this makes them wealthy. That is the difference. More appearance than reality. This is America. 🙄
Garages are very common in Germany. Single famiy houses have garages, but are not connected to the house. And houses for more families have to have garages, you cannot build without garages. the town has a law that when you build you have to build with garages.
Interesting, though not exactly true in certain areas 1, Most houses got separate garages because they were built before owning a car become a common practice, especially in Eastern Europe. 2, No door knobs is a bit of a stretch, while there are houses that don't have doorhandles and knobs, it's uncommon. 3, Radiators are everywhere, and in larger cities it's fairly common to have central heating for entire districts. 4, While European fridges are generally smaller, they're uncommon to be this cabinet style. We also have freezers, either as a freezer shelf, a separate freezer section under the fridge, or a separate unit altogether. The one in the video is a fairly small unit even by our standards. 5, Walk-in closets are rare, though there are built-in wardrobes in many houses. 6, Our windows are also double or triple paned, for better heat retention. We also have mosquito nets, often the type you can actually pull up like the roller on the video 7, The ceiling height varies on many things, like the age of the building, where it's located, so on and so forth. 8, Toilets come in a large variety of designs, even the "bowl" is not the same. Many toilets have a "step" inside, for example, and can be standing or hanging, and even the waste pipe can exit both downwards or backwards. The tank is also usually located above the toilet, instead directly on the back for greater pressure. 9, Separate showers and bath tubs are rare, usually we either have one or another. The toilet however, is often has it's own room, and is in fact not in the bathroom.
8:50 absolutely standard for a few decades now... I wouldn´t try and find an apartement without windows like those... They are also very good insolated, not only regarding wind/ temperature, but also noise. I´m living right next to a main road and I hear nothing when the windows are closed :)
I am German. and this isn't my Fav vid on this Theme. he's very short sighted (only says what is in his ''region''). and hes telling it like there is no differencs he says a lot of ''thats common'' when i see it very rarely so this is my list = 1 = There are houses in the middle of nowhere. (literly just random in the forest with a dirt road) 2 = I live in a house only with 1 floor above ground and 1 below - i see almost as mutch 1 floor buildings as 2 floor buildings. 3 = i never saw just a carport i only see Garages, i saw houses with one but they there the roof of the garage that was made longer. 4 = Refrigerator i only saw this kind of Refrigerator in old Buildings (here i can just tell my experience). (5 = Roladen are rare atleast where i am from you can see them installet but rare are they build in the house like his) (this is short sighted from me). 6 = Bug Screens super common where i am from, i see them everywhere but in bigger city's i didn't so is very rigion based i feel like. 7 = i was in the US and never felt a difference in the ceilings (ofcource some houses have higher ones then others). 8 = if there is a normal shower no curtains around the tub if there isn't a normal shower then there are curtains (from what i saw). I ask that everyone who read this picks a number they dont agree with and write is as an answere i want to know what you see common and as rare! again this is from my view so don't say i am wrong because i live my live you live your's.
8:36 In Italy there is actually a bit of a legend on this one. There was this German inventor that invented this kind of window. He wanted to show his friend and invited him over. As soon as his friend saw it, he said "Was ist das?" and that's how it got the name. No joke, here in Italy we call them the "was ist das windows"! Bug screens in Italy are farely common in the countryside and on the coast, and sometimes in cities as well, but not as much. Impossible to find it in mountainous areas because it's simply not a problem there.
that is funny, because in France, small windows in the roof of houses are called "wasisdas" But that has been like that for ages, more than you stated about the inventor. Might have been the time of Napoleon riding around Europe ;o))
A garage requires a permit in Germany, is considered a separate building and it must meet requirements such as: E.g. wastewater connection, electricity and exhaust air. A garage may not be used as storage space in Germany.
In the Black Forest where I will be moving to, it is imperative that you have your key with you at all times or you will get locked out for sure because the door automatically is locked upon closing! It feels really insecure to me that I can’t leave the door unlocked when I go outside for just a moment, such as to bring the groceries into the house in several trips. They don’t really think about it over there because that is what they are used to. But for me, I have to think each time. I think having an emergency key stashed outside somewhere secret and safe if essential. The windows are helpful over there esp for when it rains because the tilt allows fresh air without the rain coming in, but we had to make our own frames for fly screens and they are nailed into the outer window frame. I know we get more insects in the USA than over there, but I still can’t sleep if even one mosquito is buzzing in the room. Roofs are shingled with ceramic tiles over there. The houses mostly have strong thick walls, not wooden thin ones such as we have here. There is so much that is different over there that one just takes for granted here in the States and gets confused or disoriented when faced with the differences.
That last part with the bathroom was interesting to me as a Norwegian. The toilet on the wall with the hidden cistern has been part of all new bathrooms for the last twenty years or so. At first I thought it could be impractical in case something went wrong, but most things are accessible from behind that flushbutton cover. Also, I'm 42 years old, and have never lived in a home with a bathtub. Shower only is the norm in standard bathrooms. Villas or larger houses might have a larger, more "luxurious" bathroom with a corner bathtub in it, but othervise you might have to install one "aftermarket".
I never lived in an appartment or house in Germany that had no bathtub. It's more common in appartments that you have a bathtub, but no extra shower. Houses usually have a shower and a bathtub in Germany.
It largely depends on when the house was built. While you'll rarely see an older apartment without a bathtub in Germany, they've been falling out of favor in recent years.
@@vorrnth8734 That's for the most part a subjective matter, but one can assume that the demand for bathtubs have declined since this is the general development across northern Europe.
German doors have so called "Schnappers" (Snatchers) that you can click inside the lock frame so that it doesnt lock, for example if you are just going outside to throw away the trash or moving stuff. Pretty sure there are a lot of names for that in English and German but I cant be bothered to look it up right now 😄
I will have to look if the doors I use over there have this feature. I haven’t seen it, but I know my sister in law often keeps her back door unlocked by leaving the key in the outside lock when they are in the garden and going in and out a lot.
In older houses we had built in garages. But they were constructed for much smaller cars than we have now and sometimes were narrow even then. So your are limited with the size of the car or you need to park outside. Years ago a neighbor discovered that after he came home with the new car 🙂. Friends of us took a car for a test drive to check that and needed to switch to a different model as planned.
9:48 regarding windows, there is another position (at least where I live). You have a position between the 0-90 degrees at 45 degree which lets you vent the room without actually opening anything. There is this rubber sealing between the window and the support frame, and if you turn the handle to 45 degrees, it lets *just* a tiny bit of airflow in to keep the mold away without opening the window.
I live in the Netherlands and our houses mostly use the same Windows. We also have screen inserts in the window so we can open them (tilted or all the way) but the bugs can stay out. Most of this house is also very common in the Netherlands. I was really surprised that you heat or cool the whole house in the US, it makes no sense at all. It costs a fortune to heat. I guess these type of houses in the US are very poorly insulated compared to the concrete and brick houses in Europe.
For the garage part: I'm from Hungary, and when I was a kid, it was pretty common to park your car in the basement of your house. In this case the basement was accessible from the street-facing side of your house and it had a wide enough ramp and door for your car. My parents and all the other families on our street had a basement like this as well. Nowadays carports are more popular, I have one too. But you can also see more and more "American style" houses as well with a "built-in" garage.
It's easy to go wrong with those garages though, I've seen so many of them after a bigger rain. It's only a good idea if the terrain of the street is ideal, otherwise water can easily go in. Not to mention trying to go somewhere when the ramp is frozen (because lack of preparation, salting etc).
@@Jorgerally35 it's not about or car, it's the garage full of equipment and the walls. They will be soaked in water. Basically it's the basement of the house.
@@hcorEtheOne Yes, I see what you are saying. There were some precautionary measures that worked pretty well though. Like every house had at least 2 drain ditches in front of it + a pretty deep one in front of the basement door, covered with a grille. The ramps were made with little built-in ridges to help traction during winter time, and people always made sure to put salt or sand on the ramps. I understand that this solution might be problematic in different countries or even in different areas of the same country, but I can't remember any cases when someone's basement got flooded here, even though we had some heavy rains over the years. In the worst case, you might get like 1-2 centimeters of water, but not high enough to damage your car or equipment. You pump out the water, let the basement air out, and you are good to go.
We've had those windows in the UK for decades now.....they're called "tilt and turn". I live in Spain now and we also have them here. Also, I've been fitting kitchens for years now with integrated appliances....not just the fridge/freezer, but the washer, dishwasher, dryer etc. all built into units with doors on.
I lived in both places. Main difference is that houses in Germany are built from stone bricks (lumber is only used for sheds 😄), so German houses not only look but actually feel waaaaay more robust or sturdy than in most places in the US. What I like better in US vs Germany are built-in closets. Why aren't they common here? 😭 They make so much sense. In Germany you'll find closets (walk-ins) in newer luxury apartments/houses more often now, it seems to be a relatively new concept though. Sometimes people convert small/spare rooms into a walk-in closets.
They don't make sense when most people don't need an entire room for clothes. We've made it with a simple wardrobe for decades. The clothes don't complain, you can have bigger rooms for the same footprint, and you can choose almost any room as a bedroom and arrange stuff from there.
I feel that's not necessarily true, it's common knowledge that used cars in Germany or Austria tend to rust a lot, and a lot of them may have hail damage. It's just it's not important if it disintegrates after the first 8 years, that's poor people's problem.
Here in the UK garages or carports are uncommon, most people who have them just use them as storage or as a shed and park outside. For the most part your car doesn’t need protected from the elements, it doesn’t get too hot in the UK so most of what you have to worry about is snow and ice and that doesn’t damage the car if you are careful.
Most "affordable" houses have door handles, it depends on if you prefer to live in a big city or smaller villages with distance between houses, our houses in Europe are very insulated because of our weird weather situation, the fridge and such it depends on the size of the kitchen we have freezers smaller upper part of the fridge and lower part opens like a fridge as well with small drawers to place frozen items in. And the closet situation that is just normal way to have more living space, so easier to put up a built in if you need yourself or a small dresser for clothing items.
im construction worker. A friend from merica sent me pic of him renovating a house. it was made of wood and drywall. I was quite shocked. Here they're isolated from inside and outside, made of brick etc.
5:11 what is important with the radiators: he touches the thermostat. The thermostates allow to heat each room up to your favourite temperature for the specific room.
They freezer is missing in the kitchen, mostly, when the house has a big garden or a big family. Because then you have a big freezing chest in the basement.
I dont live in a really common house for german standards because it was built in about 1860 and has a roof out of reed. Back then farmers used it for them and their animals. Its really interesting how the whole construction was done and how good the circulation of temperature is working here. In the winter the heat is staying inside and in the summer its nicely cold. Such buildings are mostly found in the north of Germany or Denmark.
a lot of the differences come down to the fact that germany/ europe has a higher population density than the usa so of course they have to fit more people in a tighter space so they had to be clever with tight spaces. most german towns are just wayy older then american cities especially compared to the typical suburban us towns which were errected in the 1950‘s/1960‘s where things like cars were already established. so in comparison to my hometown, the city was already like 900 years old when the first cars were invented. so i try to keep it brief: europe: -cities were designed without cars in mind -most of the time a car isn’t really necessary bc you‘re quicker using other types of transportation -everything is more packed in european cities -europe is often higher priced so they kinda had to be more efficient with their ressources (space in general/electricity/fuel/heating/etc) the biggest difference is probably that american houses have more „comfortable“ features regularly as compared to standard european houses. european houses are therefore more efficient and usually build with better quality.
![American reacts to Posts That Prove American's Think That Only They Exist [part 2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KZ_wRzra8yo/mqdefault.jpg)
Difference no. 11: German houses are not made out of paper, like US houses
They shout think about, to build their Houses out of Concrete or solid Stones, that nobody can shoot trough the Walls! A lot of Lifes can be saved!
Built to last, not to be cheap, that´s the main difference
@@ralfk.5552 ...and the house could withstand the next hurricane!
@@ralfk.5552 I guess you have not much of an idea what certain bullets shot from certain weapons can do.
An assault rifle can easily shoot through a 30 cm concrete wall, or one made from bricks.
Same goes for large caliber guns or revolvers.
.45 or .357 easily shoot through a brick/concrete wall.
mmhh steel concrete or as we in germany say sometimes "bollwerk" build to last a thousand years ^^
I've been to Germany many times.
1) They have garages
2) Toilets are both mounted to the wall or the classic way with a tank and mounted to the floor.
3) Showers - depends on the size of the bathroom and how you like it
4) Freezers - again, if you want a huge Fridge you can have it.
and we do have screens to put on your window avoid having bugs in your home...you just have to buy and put them up...don´t think it´s much different than in the US
We do have garages, but they are usually not connected to the house.
But if it's an old style toilet, it's probably a "flachspüler" with the good old inspection shelf.
Es gibt unterschiedliche WC Typen Hochbett, Tiefbett und dann glaube ich sind da noch 2 weitere Ausführungen...
So nen schöner Druckspüler ist viel besser als ein Spülkasten...
In Germany, you don't need big refrigerators because usually the nearest grocery store is only a 5-minute walk away. The food is fresher and you don't throw away as much of it.
Why this guy doesn't have a freezer, or at least a small freezer compartment, I don't understand.
He has probably never opened the compartment at the bottom!.🤘
@@arnodobler1096 🤣
I bought a fridge without a freezer to have more room as the cabinet allows only limited size for the fridge. But I have and my family always had a big freezer either in the kitchen or nearby (e.g. hallway or basement).
The 5 min walk might be true for cities, but in rural areas it's often a 20min drive
@@muuhnkin4611 in rural areas freezers are also more common. I have always lived in Berlin and have never used or even seen big freezers (mostly just 3 or even only 1 small compartments on the bottom or top of the fridge) My mothers family lives in rural Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and everyobody there has a big standalone freezer somewhere in the house.
I'm from Europe and I'm surprised to see your reactions to windows. This is an example of how habit and different continents differ in basic matters. Opening a window like this is the most ordinary thing in the world for me. Our windows have a third way of opening. It's called micro-ventilation and you turn it all the way up and then to the left about 15 degrees. Then the window is minimally open. I really like videos like this when I can see your surprise. Thanks, have a nice day.
PS: The toilet is open. Apparently the guy lives there.
Or the 4th way: You somehow manage to break it and now only the lower left side is fixed
@@-Lazy lol this is always a huge pain😂😂
its called "socialism fucked us in the ass so hard we can't afford AC so we had to get inventive ,long live the nanny state"
@@-Lazy don’t rotate the handle when window is open ;)
This. This was my reaction to his reaction regarding the windows. I always figured that it's the common standard for the whole world since they are essentially everywhere as the common type of any building window.
Regarding closets: keep in mind, that the 'room' you lose by a integrated closet is now added to the bedroom, and with a wardrobe cabinet you are more flexible in how you setup the room interior wise. :)
that! :)
My biggest confusion when I was in the States was that a lot of windows aren't double paned. German windows always have two panes of glass, separated by a vacuum to prevent heat transmission.
Nowadays more 3 panes. 2 panes are considered cheap and bad for energy consumption.
@@reinhard8053 You get my point though. Maybe I could have written "at least two panes" to be more precise.
@@HeresorLegacy Double pane windows have been standard in houses in North America for 50-60 years at least. But I bet in more southern (temperate) areas they might not be as necessary due to the warmer temperatures. Definitely a standard thing in the north. Also triple panel windows aren't much more efficient than double pane after they started putting in the vacuum between the panes. Triple pane are mostly use in cases where you want to lower exterior (road) noise from entering the house.
@@RCLapCar triple is the EU standard. Cannot get double any more as new, at least not in Slovenia.
2 layers is actually outdated. Now 3 layer are more common
better insulation
Our fridges do have freezers. They come in many styles, lots of fridges just have a lower part that is a freezer. But yes, these things are a LOT smaller than the American counterparts, and they are way less of a centerpiece, although we can buy "American style" fridges with double doors, ice dispensers and the coveted stainless steel look :)
I think its because most stores are way farther away in average in comparison to germany. So i guess people would do weekly / 2 weekly grocery shopping tours in the US
Nah my fridges are European and are pretty dang big
Much better access to shopping on a daily basis….we use more fresh produce on our daily lives.
Yeah, I agree we have easier access to fresh food like vegetables or fish with shorter chains of distribution, so we don't need to accumulate a lot of food into the fridge 😊
@@s.c.9107 In addition, electricity is quite expensive in Germany. Many cannot afford to operate such a cooling block. Therefore, they prefer to go shopping once or twice more.
I'm always amazed that something as simple as a "Kippfenster" is mind blowing over there in the states.
Well, on the other hand, the sliding windows are surprising to us over here, aren't they. Sure, we tend to see them more, because we watch American TV shows and movies, whereas most Americans don't watch many German movies or TV in their lifetime.
Same here xd
It requires well build windows. I guess for many American houses that would be an upgrade in quality besides the extra feature, which isn't cheap either. So for Germans and other Western-Europeans it's only like 50% more expensive than a regular window, whil for Americans that would be 300% for example. That's probably why they haven't seen it before.
@@DenUitvreter tbh this is standart window type in new houses (and most of old houses have these too)
These so called Kippfensters have been standard in Europe for last 60 - 70 years. Never seen a house or a building that doesn't have them. Its understandable that they don't have them in the US since they don't air and use air conditioning instead.
The oldest building (a barm) on my farm was built in 1736. Older than the US.
Our main house, where we live in was built in 1823.
Greetings from Germany❤️
never forget, counting years in the USA starts with 1492...everything before that had never happened...like the founding of my town in 1250s!
My parents house is about 600 years old, they knew how to build to last!
My house was build 1796. The house is a typical Harz half-timbered house in an idyllic valley in the Harz mountains.
In my vicinity there are houses from the 11th and 12th centuries that are completely intact and inhabited. Of course, the electrics were retrofitted at some point. A heater also came in (the fireplaces still work). A few castles from that time are still inhabited here.
The house I live in is also 200 years old. The villages around here are 1250 - 1500 years old and all the big cities around here are over 2000 years old. (Andernach, Koblenz, Bonn, Cologne)
Fun fact: Some windows of the newer generation allow a 3rd position. If you turn the knob between the full and tilted position, the window will only open a slight gap. This can be used for having an airflow after a paint job or in a newly built house. From the outside, the window looks like it is closed.
I like that third choice. I’ve only used and seen the two choices, but I’m glad they engineered the third way!
@@louisegogel7973In the late 1980s I was a London Estate Agent and I had a viewing at a new property. The windows were multi functional.
not sure what "newer generation" that is just any window that have tilt option. When it can tilt it can go by half way.
@@CzeCzaCreg I would say like in the last 10 years, maybe?. Older windows don't have that option, it's either tilted or open, but not that "semi-tilt", which you only notice on closer inspection.
@@cdk8472 I think so too. The windows my parents chose 3 years ago even have 4 settings ;) : normal swing action, tilt, and 2 minor-opening ventilation settings (that are actually quite hard to set... it needs practice to get the teeth to align with the gripper on the window frame). And I'm living in The Netherlands, where we seem to have been a bit later on implementing plastic window frames.
two more things about windows in germany:
1. the outside of the window is very easy to clean since you can open it all the way to the inside of the room.
2. if its raining is a big plus when the window is able to tilt open only the upper side, instead of pushing the bottom half up. so your opening is more likely to invite the rain if its a bit windy ;)
My ordinary windows here in the US can be tipped in, both top and bottom, for cleaning from inside the house. I've personally had windows like that for over 30 years.
Tilted windows are very effective at killing cats, though. Something important to know!
@Beluga congratulations!
But no1 said "german windows"
Wer lesen kann ist klar im Vorteil...
And you can open the window a little bit, it is like the "winter ventilation" option!!!
@@rendzis Winter ventilation should be opening the windows as wide as possible for a short time. A quick and thorough exchange of air in the room with only what little mass of air has entered the room to heat is ideal.
Here in the Netherlands the building code for garages is pretty strict. Because your storing a vehicle there you have to have enough ventilation and stuff like that. It’s easier to achieve with a separate garage instead of one attached to the house. It’s basically seen as a fire risk.
same in Germany and if the distance to the neighbor is too small (border development), a garage also needs fire protection walls.
In the US, our attached garages have to have fire rated doors and fire rated drywall between the garage and dwelling. If there is no step up into the house (e.g. the garage floor is level with the dwelling floor) there has to be a concrete curb/bulkhead under the door and any wall adjacent to the dwelling. So, like a submarine door, stepping over a bulkhead (my brother's old house had that). In my house I step up into the house to enter from the garage, however, one wall off my garage is adjacent to a family room that is on the same level (slab on grade) and there is a concrete curb/bulkhead between the garage and family room. This is all so flammable fluids don't seep into the dwelling if there is some sort of catastrophe. On the other hand, many older neighborhood, particularly in more urban areas have separate garages, usually located in the back yard facing a shared access alley. My old house was like that.
For the Netherlands:
There have to be two doors between the garage and a room where people stay, so a little hallway in between.
It's there to stop exhaustion gasses. Same goes for the 'bathroom', and for the front door, always a extra door between to keep the smells or cold air out.
The radiators are part of the central heating system, they are filled with hot water that circulates and is heated up at one central point, usually the same thing that provides hot water, not a boiler. Hot water isn't stored, but heated up as cold tap water flows trough, to prevent still luke warm water that can cause veterans disease.
What surprised me while visiting the US that in some cases the 'restroom' was directly attached to the restaurant.
A single door between dining and pooping area... that was truly shocking!
@@dutchman7623 Your front door argument is not completly true, there are many apartmentbuilings (flats) that have a gallery (and balcony) and only one entry/exit door, so no second door.
Eerlijk gezegd, Nederlanders, en ik zeg dat als Duitser die al jaren in Nederland bouwt, namelijk Duitse standaardgebouwen, die ook zagen hoe Nederlanders ze bouwden, niet goed bouwt omdat die huizen meer op de Britse of Amerikaanse ontwerpen, die slecht zijn (slechte isolatie tegen koude en hitte en geluiden van buiten en binnen!). Ik zag ook ramen en deuren van slechte kwaliteit. Sommige regels zijn zo verouderd dat ze niet meer up-to-date zijn en dateren uit de vorige eeuw. Maar je ziet steeds meer Duitse techniek in de raambouw die uit België en Duitsland overwaait en als betere optie geaccepteerd wordt!
To be honest, you Dutch people, and I say that as a German who has built in the Netherlands for years, namely German standard buildings, who also saw the way the Dutch build them, don't build well because those houses are more like the British or American designs, which are bad (poor insulation against Cold and heat as well as noises from outside and inside!). I also saw poor quality windows and doors. Some of the regulations are so outdated that they are no longer up to date and date back to the last century. But you see more and more German technology in window construction that is spilling over from Belgium and Germany and accepted as a better option!
You just use free standing wardrobes. They can be really big. But like this you can decide the placement in the room. And the size. Our houses in general are good isolated. There are different sizes for fridges and most people have a fridge freezer combination or a separate freezer (in the cellar for example). A lot also depends on how old the house is. A lot of older bathrooms have toilets on the floor and not mounted to the wall.
And you don't have fixed "bedrooms". You can use the rooms as what you need them. In adds you will only see the area and the number of rooms, not number of bedrooms.
The hanging toilet is the modern one, also easier to clean underneath!
@@colete677 Yes, but I find it awful to sit on. I'm always afraid it's going to fall, and they tend to be higher up, which is actually bad on the physiological side.
Some additional thoughts (yep, long post, sorry 😉) to what already others might have stated in the comments (more related to Europe in general, not just Germany):
Fridge/Freezer - In Europe in general the freezer is part of the refrigerator - either on the bottom or on the top and has a separate door (the fridge-part has one and the freezer has one, but it's one big unit when you buy it). Most people only buy food for a couple of days because they prefer to cook from fresh ingredients and because most of the shops are easy to reach in short distances, the people rather tend to shop every few days a couple of items instead of buying large quantities maybe once a month. So there's no real need for a separate big freezer in the household, the small one integrated in the standard fridge does the job just fine for the few items you buy.
Windows - to be able to fully open them is not just good for airing your home, but also for practical purposes - you can clean them whenever you want and don't have to use a ladder or even call a company to clean your windows from the outside when you live on higher floors e.g. in an apartment building. For the bugs we just buy/install window screens. In fact most households have those on their windows during summer, but people tend to take them down for the winter or when it gets cold (they last longer then).
Garage/Carport - it's often also not a necessity in Europe to even have one simply because the public transportation is so good, that a lot of people especially in the cities don't even have a car. You have most of the stuff you need either in a walking distance or you just take the bus, tram, etc. This is also something related to the 'close community' point mentioned in the video. But yes, if you have a garage/carport, it's usually not part of the house, but separate.
Insulation - the houses and apartment buildings here are usually having very solid walls like brick/concrete/stone, etc. and usually keep a certain temperature inside (keep cool in summer, keep the heat in winter) much better than US houses. Considering also e.g. fire safety these materials are also much better to protect you from completely losing everything as the fire can be better contained in each room and your whole house doesn't immediately burst into flames.
Door knob - in general throughout most of Europe we don't have a door knob that you twist and turn, but exactly the door handle, which you could see on the inside of the door in the video - one that you push down. On interior doors from both sides and on exterior doors we have usually the same system as shown in the video.
Heating system - our system with the radiators in each room does save a ton of energy and the heating costs are easily manageable as you heat each room separately and can set different temperatures or even turn it off in rooms you don't use.
Closets - depends on when the house was build I'd say. Newer houses already have sometimes an in-built closet/wardrobe in some rooms, but in general we tend just to buy separate wardrobes, because it allows you to put it in whichever corner of the room you want and change the room's disposition this way anytime you need. You're not having it fixed in one spot like a closet.
Low ceilings - this is really limited usually to just one type of the houses what is shown in the video. So not such a large % of homes. The rest have normal/standard ceiling height. As for high ceilings - you'll find them in most old townhouses in the cities (and by old I mean built at least a century and more ago). That's typical for old townhouses. But for newer builds and separate houses people tend to prefer standard ceiling height - mainly because of the heating costs (the higher the ceiling the more you have to heat to reach a certain temperature and the more money you waste).
Toilets - there's various types of toilets, so pls. don't judge by just one of the types seen in the video. What's also very common (not everywhere, but in some countries) is to have the toilet in a separate small room and not inside the bathroom as it's considered more hygienic (and you don't take your shower/bath in an occasionally smelly room... 😏)
Showers/Bathtub - usually here the same as what you've described for the US. Not much difference there. What's a bit less common in Europe is the shower heads mounted on the walls. Usually you just see them on the ceiling in a combo with an additional shower head, that isn't fixed and you can move it around as you want.
best comment so far
Wszystko się zgadza, może jedynie Wielka Brytania różni się od standardów europejskich!!!
Having visited the US many times I believe the fundamental reason for most of the differences between houses and office buildings as well, has simply to do with the (too) low cost of energy in the US (or because it is expensive in most European countries). I’ve seen many (partially) wooden houses which often are poorly insulated, have air heating, sliding windows which are drafty by design, etc. And this will not be the case everywhere in the US of course, but I have seen it often in greater Chicago area at least. If heating your house, flushing the toilet or simply turning on the lights is expensive, demand for energy and water efficient solutions rises. Where do you think innovations such triple glazing or LED lightbulbs came from. Not from the US, but primarily from EU because it is requested by the consumers and/or pushed by legislation.
I hate LED lights. I have dozens of incandescent flood lights in my ceiling. I bought a "life time" stash of those bulbs so I'll never have to switch to LED solely because my goverment wants to make me.
A real door handle, like the one on the inside of the apartment door, is absolutely preferable to round knobs in the US. Because such a door can still be opened with your elbow and foot if you have both hands full of stuff.
It's often the little things that make life easier...
In Finland one does not have any moving handle, just the lock mechanism that one operates. Inner doors have a handle. A handle is bad if you have a dog.
@@okaro6595 I am aware that there are dogs that can also open a door in this way. But for one thing, not every breed of dog has the ability to do that. And not every dog understands how the mechanism works. But if you actually have a problem with this, you can still put the handle vertically. The possibility of opening the door with full hands remains, but neither the dog nor the cat (they can do it, too) then have a real chance of opening the door. Sometimes you get the impression that other people believe that the Germans have never been confronted with this animal problem, or that they are somehow underexposed...
American here - I had the lever handles in two of the houses I had built. I love them, although I had to be careful about locking them because my German shepherd could open them. My veterinarian has the same locks. They also have to watch out for some dogs being smart enough and tall enough to open the doors. The house I live in now has the typical knobs. I may eventually replace them.
@@okaro6595 You can change the position of the door handle so that it shows upwards. Then your dog cannot open the door anymore. Our last dog used to open doors. So we changed the handle position and it worked. Greetings from Bavaria, Germany :)
The reason you don't find closets too often, is because most dwellings in Germany are not single family houses, but multiplexes, which means they have a limited and defined footprint to fit into. A tiny spur of space hanging off the side of every room either means that you are taking space away from the next room, you can't fit rooms snugly up against each other, or you have a random bit of façade sticking out to accommodate a closet. Moreover a free standing wardrobe is 100% custom to your needs both in size and in placement.
In Europe you can also buy the same refridgerators as in America. Here in The Netherlands we call them "Amerikaanse koelkast" (American refridgerators). From your reaction I guess you think the American size is standard throughout the world, but it's actually the other way around 😉
Also, this wasn't mentioned in the video about the toilets, but in Europe (at least western Europe), in single family homes (not in flats/apartments) you will also find a separate toilet at the ground floor. So not just in the upstairs bathroom 💩
Koelkast? Kühlkasten? Interesting :)
we basically call them "Cooling Closet" (Kühlschrank) :D
Most American fridges are a refrigurator/freezer combo. In Europe we usually have them seperate. A European fridge can easely be just as big as the refrigerator side of a US style fridge.
@@RSProduxx in Afrikaans koelkas is fridge and Frieskas is freezer.
@Phillip Banes you're right but that's what Americans do. They say constantly that's different in every state, they pretend that there are 50 different countries within 1 country. So because they feel that way of there own country and the size of Europe and America are almost similar, that's not a strange comparison. But I agree that my life here in the Netherlands is almost the same as our neighbors Germany and Belgium but nothing to compare with the southern countries like Spain or Portugal.
lol I am sure in the USA they have super enormous fridges as compared to elsewhere in the world. It is crazy how back in the day the normal size was smaller and now they keep getting bigger.
Austrian here!
- We have a garage as an extended storage space for bicycles, wood, large tools ... and a car-port for the car ;-)
- Your amazement about the "hidden" fridge was very funny!
- Having no closet makes you able to arrange the room better to your fitting
- Your amazement about the windows was also funny!
Hungarian here! Screens again bugs exists aswell.
Steep roofs might be an adaption to snow loads. In the Schwarzwald (kind of mountains), the traditional farm house has quite a steep and large roof, so snow would not accumulate too much but glide down more easily, reducing the static load on the roof structure. The room under the roof was usually for stacking hay, so in the end probably building material was saved. Also, the room under the roof tended to be storage area even in city buildings. Later, owners might have decided to build flats from that storage place and thus earn more rent.
In general, land in Europe is much more at a premium than in the USA.
The houses in Germany usually are stone houses. The advantage if you do not have inbuilt closets is that you can add wardrobes in the way you want it - and with the kind of storage you need - into the appartments/houses. And take them with you to the next house. Renting in Germany is far more usual especially in cities as elsewhere. Usually when you rent a house or an appartment it comes empty not furnished. Empty means that you bring your own kitchen, your own wardrobes, beds and appliances. Even screens, holders for the shower curtain, lamps etc. We Germans (apart from students and young people) are long time renters. As soon we are settled and are finished with the family planning we really seldom move. The average time a German rents an appartment is 8 years and more than 40% are in their rented homes more than 10 years.
Germans usually have freezers. Either a combined freezer/fridge combination (but in "normal" size not American size, the freezer part often is just a small segment of the normal refrigerator - we shop differently) or a seperate freezer (about 50%). There is only a handful of people that do not have atleast a freezing segment in the refrigerator.
I don't think there's a reason for the built in wardrobes other than 'style'. It's a typical American building style that didn't break through here in Europe.
@@BamBamGT1 you might be right there, I've seen it a few times with newly built, customized housed by younger folk that they had a walk-in closet installed, and they said they saw it on TV or online growing up and wanted to have it themselves.
Isn´t it common for american kitchens to have a huge freezer? In opposite in germany there is only a refrigerator with a small freezing segment in the kitchen and the freezer is in the cellar.
@@brauchebenutzername I do not think that there is a "common" standard anymore - atleast when it is about new installments of the recent 10 to 20 years. My mom e.g. has a normal German sized refrigerator hip high installed and an about as big freezing department beneath it. My fridge starts on the floor and is a little higher - and I have a freezing department that has about the double size of that "usual" freezing segment above my fridge - that is enough for me as I am single and buy most items fresh. Apart from bags of vegetables or fruits I just need it when I cook a meal for more than two days but I usually use that again in the next fortnight. But I do not eat any frozen pizzas or do keep icecream at home. It was different when my son still lived at home - than it usually was full with pizza, icecream and meat as I usually freeze that when I do not need that in the next 2 days.
Garages: Yes there are garages in Germany. Most apartment blocks have underground parking, fgamily homes have a garage and/or a carport. I think it all depends on where you live, in cities carports are more common, but on the outskirts of the cities and smaller towns garages are the norm, but it all depends on the climate. In areas where winter is not as harsh, you don't need a garage a carport is fine and for a lot of people a carport is the thing the build when they build the house to save money and they might add a garage at a later time.
Fridges: Yes, our fridges are smaller, but most of them have a freezer department, most households buy an additional freezer for deep-freezing preopped meals and left over.
Closets: We don't have built in closets, we usually just buy a big wardrobe and they can be massive and tbh, the closets in US bedrooms are so tiny, I would not be able to put all my clothes in a normal built in closet.
no one floor houses: Of course do we have houses with only one floor. Back in the 60s and 70s one floor houses with a flat roof were very popular, they were called bungalow. Nowadays most houses have two or more floors, but one floor houses are still in the mix.
The reason why everything is smaller in Germany is that we don't have as much space as the USA we live much more compact than the USA population. Germany has the 6th highest densisty in population in Europe with 233 people/km² while the USA has a population density of 36,7/km², meaning you have far more space to build and live like we do.
A garage in a real winter environment is amazing, no need to scrap the windshield of snow/ice, brush off the snow or shovel the snow from under and around the vehicle. At worst you just shovel some snow from your garage door to the road/alley and go.
not having a closet is actually a good thing. It frees up some space and your just have to buy a wardrobe or a cabinet, which gives you more options as to how you arrange the room.
Freezers in the Fridge: Yes we do have them.
Double door Fridges (with Freezers): Yes we do
Newer windows have 2 more positions:
Microventilation on top only: So it is tilting like shown with a smaller gap
Microventilation all around: Is it parallel offset to the window frame by just 5mm or so. So fresh air can enter on one end and used air exits on the other.
Newer roller shutters will actually have screens in addition to the shutters, but they are not permanently fixed! You can roll them down like a roller blind on the outside. So in summer time you put them down, in winter time you can leave them up for better ventilation or better view or to ventilate your pillows and blankets in your bedroom.
Yes, we can have also shower curtains (or movable glas sections in the newer bathrooms) and yes we can also have a holder for the shower head to fix higher up.
Living in Austria (next to Germany), I'm a bit astounded by the claim that garages/carports tend to be separated from the house. Of course that can be the case but more often than not, the garage is connected to the house. This might be different in northern Germany though.
Regarding heating systems: Of course radiators are still used but floor heating seems to be the predominately used system nowadays.
No you are right. I’m danish and it all depend on how the House is build.
german building restrictions want to keep house and garage parted...in case of fire, CO2,...
by metallic security door, construction and material
Ohhhhh, you mean Australia! Can't be confusing the American readers like this. I've apparently been Swedish all my life. Never knew until i spent a year in the US
@@AllroundSwizzy Mnie też rozbawiła ta uwaga, że chodzi o Austrię leżącą koło Niemiec!!!!😂
When you punch a wall in a Us house : Oh no ther is now a hole.
When you punch a wall in a German house : Oh no my arm is broken 🤣🤣🤣
@Phillip Banes German houses are indestructible
@Phillip Banes Nature disagrees. It's always the first thing that pops up in my mind when i see images from a big hurricane destruction in the US. In fact i can still remember one where they panned the camera around 360 degrees and everything was completely destroyed except for one stone/concrete building still standing like nothing had happened.
@Phillip Banes WTF amarican houses are out paper.
Not this video again... yes, we have garages and freezers. xD
and window screens too Ü
In Europe it´s normal to have a combined fridge/freezer unit, typically the freezer is in the lower part and such device can be single or dual motor.
@Phillip Banes the question is, where do you live that you dont have them?
Austria
In Sweden it really depends on the size of the house or apartment.
Is it a bigger home, to house a family, it's usually one fullsized fridge and one full sized freezer, but if it's a smaller home for just one person, or a couple there could be a combined unit with the freezer either below or above the fridge.
@Phillip Banes Yeah, that's true. In rural areas in Sweden, it's pretty common to have an big extra freezer, like in the garage, especially if you're a hunter.
@Daniël Europe and EU are totally different things, so that's super confusing since everyone will assume you only mean the 27 countries in the EU when you write "EU" instead of the 44 countries of Europe.
Typing 4 more letters isn't going to kill you...
I live in The Netherlands, and age of your home does also make a difference, my apartment is from the 70's and it has a toilet on the floor.
It also does not have the same windows, only seen those at the cantine of my work place.
My refrigerator has a freezer section at the bottom, so its both in one but with seperate comparments.
There really are a lot of options to get the home you like, it just depends on what you want to spend and how old the building is.
Hi from germany,
first of all, there are garages here ;-) But as mentioned, they are often not part of the house. This is for many reasons, for example most germans don't own a house but living in an apartment house for rental. If these houses have a garage, they are usually underground beneath the house. If you own a house, it is common that the houses and the garages of your neighbourhood are separated, so the houses stand together and so do the garages. The reason is in my opinion to keep traffic out of this neighborhood for safety reasons, especially for children.
Heating:
Yes, it is common to have radiators in every room and you just turn it on the needed. Plus the houses in europe are different than in the U.S. Here they are made of cement, and often built in a connected row, which is also more energy efficient than separated houses. They're keeping the heat in the winter and don't heat up as much in the summer.
Fridges:
Yes, german refrigerators blend in the kitchen, but the most have at last a small freezing department, too. There are also fridge/freezing combos which are about 6 foot tall, the upper half is for fridging and the lower part (with a separate door) got 3 or 4 drawers for freezing, and it all blends in. But there are also american-like fridges, too ;-)
Bathrooms:
Yes, bath tub and shower is separated, IF you have a bath tub that is ;-) Especially if you 're living in an apartment, there is usually only a shower.
Most single family houses here in Germany do have garages but they often are for one car only and they aren't connected to the house via a door. It's also common that a row of houses ("Reihenhäuser") shares a separate row of garages ("Garagenhof").
Carports and garages are common. But they often are next to the house . Not attached to the house.
Carports are just a canopy with a car below. A garage is something where you can lock a car in.Up until the 19th century, in big cities, many apartment buildings had a stall for horses at the ground floor. A garage for horses.
You do realize a garage usually has concrete walls on 3 sides. The 4th side is the metal garage door. A carport is just a metal roof over a car. It's open on all 4 sides.
Closets: True. There are walk-in closets in German houses, but those would be in really luxurious homes. The normal place you live in will not have a walk-in closet, and you will end up buying some wardrobe from IKEA for your clothes. I think it is a question of size. A wardrobe along the wall is not as space consuming as a walk-in closet, which basically is a separate room. Space in Germany comes at a price, and often times you want to use the available space for something else.
It's very likely that the closet thing originates from the spacious development of suburbs in the US with also the necessity of having stuff just bigger and more spacious. There are also many more toilets in American homes than in European ones.
Also, Europeans have usually lived much tighter together so special built in closets truly are luxury stuff. Usually when there are such closets then they are for dry food, vacuum cleaner, cat litter any other thing you might want to specifically store away or hide from light.
I see another advantage of having wardrobes over closets: I can use any room multipurpose. Imagine I'd move in a 3 room flat with my partner (plus kitchen and bathroom, as they aren't counted in those rooms in germany). We start out as a young and happy couple, maybe in need of an office to work from home, one becomes the bedroom, one the living room. Our lives go on and one day we expect a child. We can now change the office to a bedroom and include it in the living room e.g. Yet, all the time we hadn't have the need of a closet in our office, the space was free for us to design as we chose. We could've had a couch in there as well as our own gym
the real question is why you need a closet ? you can make every room your bed room. you can pick the one you want just put an wardrobe in it :D
We do have freezers typically (I´m from Austria, but I know Germans do as well), they are either a really tiny compartement at the top of a fridge that looks like the one in the video. In my apartment for example, our fridge also looks like a cabinet of the kitchen, but the fridge and the freezer are seperate and have the same size, they look like 2 cabinets, frisge in the upper part, freezer with 3 drawers in the lower part.
Having door handles and not knobs has fire safety reasons. When they get hot you can always find a way to push them down without your hands and you are not trapped in the room
Handles are also better for people who have disabilities that prevent them from being able to grip and turn knobs easily.
I think the auto locking part negates that though.
@@MrUnkasen I meant the doors inside. The front door has no auto lock. It has a normal handle inside and no handle outside. So you can open it only from inside without a key. But you are not trapped when you are in the house
@@pixelbartus [citation needed]
As to the front door and being trapped? That's absolutely possible, because you *can* lock (most?) front doors (not just close, but really lock it).
@ but that has nothing to do with handle or door knob. You can lock every door. That is not what we are talking about
9:58 That kind of window (and also doors, e.g. for balconies) is pretty much everywhere in Europe, right now. (I mean, older houses didn't have them, but people increasingly install them when they do renovations).
They are very effective in terms of isolation (both termal isolation and acoustic isolation), unlike sliding widows, which always allow some draft and noise in.
besides that, they are all double even trpple glased with a gas filling in the middle
@@genugist Yes, but that feature you may also put in slide windows.
@@GazilionPT 🤔That somehow defeats the insulating purpose of double glazeing cos you can´t get such a tight pressure seal with a sliding window and only one locking point, where as the windows in Germany have up to 8 locking pins per window that pull the window into the frame and so create an air/water tight seal. I cant think of a way this is managed with sliding windows (not tilt slide).
@@genugist Yes, I know. That's why I replaced my sliding windows.
Yes, we've got lots of garages here in Germany. It's a quite new thing having a carport - it's much cheaper than a garage. A garage may be connected to the house via some roof, quite seldom in american style with a second entrance to the house
The heating system is getting more and more setup into zones, so you don’t burn gas/energie to warm up rooms that doesn’t really need to be heated, you will hover need to install thermostats for every independent zone
Separate garages are actually only found in older houses. These were built at a time when most of the population did not have their own car. When one could later afford one, the building was supplemented by a garage, which was then set up where there was still space.
The refrigerator thing is a generalization (as are many things in these kinds of videos). Yes, on average refrigerators are certainly smaller. Families are smaller and people go shopping for fresh stuff more often. But if you want or need a large refrigerator they are easily available. Getting a floor to ceiling ones, or a broader with double doors isn't a problem.
I worked in construction for 30 years, 15 of which as a Project Manager. I worked for a good time with and as a consultant to our American coworkers at our American branch (exhibitions construction). And most of the time as a Project Manager in Windows and doors. What style of opening you want for your door, is completely up to you. Germans prefer the entrance door without a handle where in Switzerland handles are common. But they use the same hardware.
The windows in your clip are of the cheapest kind. They are made of plastic, inside and out. If you spend more money, you could get wooden windows, all aluminium is more expensive or the best variant, aluminium outer skin and wood inside. The Rolladen is by far not the only way to shade your windows. If you're a rich guy they can be integrated, between the layers of glass, while the glass is still insulating.
It is ridiculous how far the US is behind in technology concerning housing. I actually don't know if I had a project other than with triple glassed windows for the last 15 years.
I have half of them on my house the cheap plastic and half of them the mid level wood... and the woods windows are just so much nicer, don't even compare.
Of cause.. if you going the rent it.. its no question about it.
Wood is for people who need tell everyone they have wood windows. Elitist. Metal is terrible compared to either wood or plastic. Zero insulation qualities and that is huge here in Canada. Yeah, I spent most of my life in construction too. There are a thousand ways to do it right.
@Phillip Banes German cars are used for twenty years and than they do not pass TÜV, so you have to buy a new one. Who repairs cars?
@Risto Kempas the downsidw with integrated blinds is that the window can't be fully argon.
@Phillip Banes Yeah, that's why some americans waste as much energy in a month europeans need in a year.
In Germany you also have a lot of garages, but they are not directly at the house (mostly), but separated. Sometimes even completely away from the house, for example, several garages for different people. These are usually rented in addition.
In big cities, on the other hand, you often have underground garages.
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The thing about refrigerators is also not quite correct. Many have a large double refrigerator, in which the upper half is a normal refrigerator and the lower half is a freezer. Or often you have an additional freezer (usually in the basement). But yes, American fridges are (as far as I've seen) usually much larger and we don't have the ice machines in the fridge (almost none) because we're not so ice-crazy here.
Also be careful if you order an iced coffee (Eis-Kaffee) here! It's a little different here than it is in America. Here you get a coffee with (usually) vanilla ice cream in it! Not ice cubes, as in the USA!
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And also that about the screens is not correct. They are usually not standard on the windows, but you can retrofit them without any problems. Only we haven't needed that so much in the past. Only in the last 10-30 years it has become worse with mosquitoes. That's why many now have screens on the windows.
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Even with the toilets, it is not quite as shown. Yes, we also have the toilets mounted on the floor (and have the drain there) and the water tank mounted behind it. What is shown in the video are mostly newer / more modern houses / apartments.
I believe the yanks would call this a detached garage. Garages are super common, I don't know where this dude in the video lives preciesly but seems like he's missed em or they are locally rare.
First time I went to open the windows I thought I broke it. My host family put drinks outside during winter. I tended to go to the store more for smaller shops as I lived not far from the town centre.
That we dont have the ice maker thing in our frige is 50/50 i would say,much people have it
@@tim.n5395 I haven't heard of anyone having it, but I don't know many people making a lot of money ^^. We make ice cubes sometimes, but I think it would be a waste to have a machine for it.
One big difference from my experience is that many houses in Germany do have deep cellars. I live in an old house, that was build around 1900 and it has a vaulted cellar. Vaulted cellars have always nearly the same temperature and they are very good to store vegetables and potatoes and keep them fresh. These cellars are also very good to keep drinks at lower temperature without the need of a fridge.
The thing with these un-twistable ‘doorknobs‘ on exterior doors is that even when the door is unlocked you can’t open it from the outside. Kinda like if you couldn’t push down the handle on a normal door. This means you don’t have to stress about locking the door when you leave.
I lived in Germany for a number of years and I would say that about half of what he said just depends on the house just like it would have to depend on the house here in the states.
what I've always wondered:
In America there are also multi-story houses
with windows that you can only push up halfway to "open" them.
But how the hell do you guys clean the outside of them?
A lot of windows have an option where you can tip the bottom part of the window down and clean. You can't see this feature from the inside or outside. If your window is too old from the tip feature you get a ladder, hire someone, or there is glass cleaner that you hook up to a hose and spray the windows.
I think thats the reason why American houses doesn´t have two floors.
@Kaphew YT lol. A lot of American houses have at least 2 floors. It became popular for a house to have more than 1 floor in the 1990's. My mom's house has 3 floors. The living room and family room are on the 1 st floor, kitchen, eat in kitchen, bedrooms, and dinning room is on the 2nd floor, and the 3rd floor is the bonus/game room. My mom also has a basement. My daughter's preschool was an old restaurant and that's 2 floors. The first floor was shops and the 2nd floor was the actual restaurant.
@Kaphew YT if you went and looked at statistics 52% of homes in USA are 2 story as of 2021.
@@jessicaely2521 ok. And I wonder how you clean the windows.
I looked at Google and it seems like you have to detach it?
My parents-in-law had build their house initially with a single floor and cellar and a flat roof and have a lot of problems with rain and water that came through the roof. When they inherited they built a 2nd floor and change the roof to a massive version with roof tiles to solve the rain problem.
Most German fridges have a small freezer compartment on top and many households have a freezer in the basement - we do not want these things cluttering our kitchens.
One can definitely have a net against bugs in their window in Europe. The difference is it doesnt come with the frame and you just put it on the window frame. Its more hassle but the size can be universal and you cut it to the size of your window yourself.
You have to keep in mind that a lot of cities and villages are quite old, built in times where there was no airconditioning, no cars. You had to pay for your house by the amount of sqm on the ground not sqm in total, so building small but more-storied houses was the way (Middleage cities e.g like in my hometown in southern Germany).
Garages are fairly common in Germany, more common than carports certainly. In inner cities both are a lot less common, though you may have an underground carpark. It's really a question of space and cost.
Freezers again are common, at the very least a combo unit freezer & fridge, but often enough also a separate freezer, though often that may be in the cellar instead of the kitchen, so maybe that is why he didn't notice them.
As for the Refrigerators, you can buy the "American Refrigerators", smaller ones with only a small Freezer Unit at the Top or Bottom, or buy a Refrigerator without Freezer and place a big one (that can be as big as a normal Refrigerator) in your Basement or so.
Mosquito Nets are available here without a Problem, though if you build a House you have to specifiy that you want to have them installed, or let them get installed later (my Father works for a Company who installs those Shutter and Mosquito Nets)
Garages are not connected to the House as others mentioned for various Reasons, you might find connected Garages in older Homes, but its rare to see them nowadays.
The Rest is mostly Stuff that was already mentioned here.
In Bulgaria our windows also open like German windows but they also come with screens. Like 90% of the time you change your windows for newer ones, the company includes screens to your windows. It's the best of both worlds
About the freezer... although some people buy freezers for long storage, most people have refrigerators that are really a combo, part freezer, part refrigerator on the same machine, with a different door that separate both parts, vertically.
Although you can buy a only-refrigerator, and freezer separately, it's more common the combo. The freezer of the video is a smaller one. It's more common a refrigerator of similar width, but slightly taller than a person.
One reason for separate garages from the house is also fire protection. If the garage is built directly connected to the house, you need to prevent the spread of a possible fire, so you need to have (expensive) temperature- and fume-resistant doors, for example.
Not needed here. As long as you don't have one of those Tesla chargers that are known for catching fire. Why else would a garage catch fire? The door between our house and attached garage is an ordinary exterior door. The shared wall is covered in sheetrock same as the interior rooms of the house.
You're from Switzerland i bet
@@pornoobs8884 Nope, Austria! 😜
Not needed whatsoever. If you park a normal gas powered car there's really no reason for there to be a fire.
@@jessicaely2521 Well, maybe yes. But the law says something different. You will just get no building permit...🥺
Windows on the tilt setting can be locked that way, letting fresh air in but keep burglars out. Houses in The Netherlands are similar, although triple glass is getting standard. Our houses are required to have an energy label based on insulation, solar panels, window paning and so on.
Wow, that's so different than the USA, but it makes sense. Here you can't sleep with the window open unless you live in country side or idk if that's even safe, I guess people can sleep leaving the springs on the window on to get fresh air, which is "somewhat safe" lol but that's cool other countries make it an option to have it open at night time and safe, that would be awesome.
3:45 important to know about door KNOBS: You will never find any door knobs in German houses or rooms with turn action to open the door. All doors in Germany have handles to push down to open the door. The advantage of handles (or push lever?) is the possibility to operate them not only by hand, but als with other parts of your body (ellbow, foot, chin, etc.)
oh yes door knobs are quite dangerous too. I lived in Canada end of the 60ies. My daughter 22 months old, locked herself in the bathroom with those kind of knobs. Of course too small to know how to open it. It took us hours to finally free her. I think it was a neighbour dismanteling almost the complete door. She was very brave, did not cry much. Maybe today those knobs are designed to open more easily?
The same here in Spain, we have handles not door knobs.
@@mariar.6741 0f course door handles are common in europe. Why the hell door knobs are common in the "new World"? And the imperial measurement system? And the crappy sliding windows? And the 110 V electric AC system? Are they all crazy in "good's own country"?
@@sinusnovi3826 I don't know. My theory is that countries are like people, they have their mental age. The United States is so new, it seems to be at that age in adolescence that you want to do everything differently than your parents do, even if it is worse or more uncomfortable. let it grow up and discover the world for itself XD.
@@juttaweise Well, that won't happen in The Netherlands as well, but that's more because if a child should lock the bathroomdoor and not understand how to unlock it again, a big flat screwdriver will usually be enough to unlock the door from the outside. There's always a slot in the revolving mechanism that drives a pin into the doorframe.
The window shutters have a double function, keeping your house cool by keeping the sun out and for safety as well.
*although* shutters being closed for several days are seen as an invitation for burglars, since noone seems to be at home for a while. this is why some use automatic opening/closing systems to simulate someone being at home, while you in fact are on vaccation for days/weeks.
@@montanus777I would say the opposite as people don't know if uou are in or out
I leave my shutters down alot (when it's too hot)
I love how you do your channel and your videos!!
very impartial and interested. That's contagious! :) Connects cultures and peoples. Thanks! Warmhearted regards from Vienna/Austria
It's a personal choice whether you want a kitchen with the refrigerator (like this) incorporated in the whole kitchen design and furniture, so it will look the same (incognito as you call it) or to choose a standalone refrigerator, which is generally bigger and will likely have its own freezer unit (while the smaller ones may have an extra freezer or you get a single small freezing compartment). I think, generally, if you rent a place with furniture already there, you'd typically get a kitchen like this one with the refrigerator built in. Most places will rent to you without kitchen--these pre-furnished apartments are more common for students or other short term renters. From how he talks about his kitchen, I get the impression that it was already in the house when he moved in. If he actually had put his own kitchen together, he would've noticed that there are a lot of stand alone refrigerators. Though, I'd say they generally probably aren't these huge double door refrigerators, unless you have like a huge family to feed.
I'm a German living Australia. 71 years old and a trained carpenter in Germany. Here in Oz the building techniques are seemingly very similar to the American building style for the single family home. There are building companies that will be able to build to your specs if you want something special and you have the money to afford it. The doors in most German homes are solid in general, rarely are they of the honeycomb variety as they are in Australia.
Keep in mind that not all houses are like that. In my house, I had bug screens, the toilet was the normal style like in the States. The windows are double or triple glass, for insulation purposes. The main difference is that most houses in Germany have a basement. This is where the freezer, usually a chest freezer, is located, as well as the utility room.
One thing I didn't see mentioned is that the front door is typically separated by a separate room from the living room over here.
Hey,
I'm from Germany and will let my thoughts about the 10 main differences down below:
Nr. 1: Yes, that's right. Most of the houses are build next to each other and stand together to form cities/ towns. Sometimes you can find "resettlement farms", especially in the rural area. There are less houses, many times also two, three or four houses. But that's rare at all.
Nr. 2: Also right. Most (single-household) houses are build up with two or even three floors. Then there are houses with multiple apartments, which are even bigger, e.g. with four, five or more floors. But there is a trend in Germany in building the house-type Bungalows, which are only one-floored.
Nr. 3: That's not right but also not wrong. So first if all, carports & garages are both common in Germany. Which you choose depends in the needs and expectations you have or them of the owners. Very often the garage has a connection to the house (e.g. from downstairs when you're building on a hill or from same level).
Nr. 4: Yes, there are no door knobs in Germany or I've never seen any. You need a key and have to turn it around to open the door.
Nr. 5: Additionally we use a heating system which is installed in the ground/ floor. But it can also be used separated. So you can heat only the rooms you're really using.
Nr. 6: That's true. In many kitchens the refrigerador is blended with the same front-material like the whole kitchen. Some kind of "build-in-solution". But the "american-way" is also used here, which I personally prefer.
Nr. 7: In newer houses there are also closets, which I like very much. But yes, many times you only find wandrobes.
Nr. 8: Our windows are great. I was totally shocked that americans don't know that systems. Also the windows are very well isolated, with two or three glases and a great frame. Screens are add-ons to our Windows but very common in some areas, especially in rural areas.
Nr. 9: Some houses have a low ceilings other do not. Depends how you want it (when you're building a new one)
Nr. 10: The tanks of the toilets are often but not every time build-in into the wall. Also not all toilets are mounted in the air, many are standing on the ground. The flushing is very efficient, just to save water, and it's reliable, too.
Best whishes for all, have a great day ;)
I'm from Poland, we have handles both sides of the door. If the door is unlocked, you can use the handle both sides. When you lock the door, you can still move the handles, but the door is locked so it won't move :) Obviously :)
How can you not have laterally opening windows in US? Entire Europe (it's not just a German thing) has this system of vertical tilt opening by about 30 degrees and lateral opening all the way like regular door. Since like...forever.
I mean... My whole life I thought this is the same worldwide xD Can't you just use whatever works better in the US and not the other way around? And btw, how do you clean your windows from the outer side? You have to use ladders and clean them from the outside? This is nuts man xD
And central heating - we also have air heating, but you can close the vents automatically (via app) or open them not all the way in some rooms where you don't need heating. Or in case of radiators, you only heat up the ones you need and there is a regulated power of heating from 1-5. Also - depending on what region or country you are in or how much money you have, central heating uses coal, natural gas or electricity (most common are with natural gas and heat pump system used with PV panels, however if you're poor you use coal). This is such a logical thing I just don't understand how you do not use this in US. This is crazy xD
For freezers, you can buy a separate one or in most cases it is a fridge with freezer on top or bottom - two separate doors. It can stand on it's own or it could be put into kitchen furniture, so the front will look like the rest of the furniture in the kitchen.
Bedrooms usually don't have closets, we buy wardrobes for clothes ;) It takes up place in the bedroom, but well, bedroom is used for sleeping and clothes storage only, so whatever.
You guys don't have roller shutters? It is anti theft & protects you from the sun. It also protects from wind - when it's shut, it helps keep heat in house better.
In case of garages - whatever works for the owner, either garage alongside with the house or close by.
There are one floor houses in Germany and Austria (mostly called Bungalow). I have some in my neighborhood, but they are rather rare. More so as land is expensive nowadays and you pay much more for the same space in the house. Roof and basement or baseplate need to be there in both cases.
The roullettes are deffinetly my favorite part of this video THEY ARE ALWAYS SHUT since people in the back can just watch inside and I don't want any burglar to know what's in my room.
About the door handles, the one without the knob outside is called a "shield" or "door shield" and it's purpose (outside of locking you out accidentally) is to ensure you can't forget to lock the door when you leave your home leaving your house unlocked. Also aesthetics I guess.. We have this kind of door and on our model we have a little blue switch which we can flip and then it won't lock itself when you go out, for example, going back in you can push the door with your elbow or foot and it will open. This way.. it can work as a traditional door where you are responsible to lock it when you need it locked
Actually we have both in Germany Floating toilett seats and those mounted to the ground. And we also have two systems for tanks. Those who are inside the wall and, like in my home, tanks that are mounted to the wall. At older buildings those canister are mounted to the wall but right under top of the room and you have to pull a chain after you're done.
Comming to carpots and garages:
We have both. In my home, that was build in 1994, so it's not that old, we have a garage also connected to the main house but no way to enter it from garage but of course the main entrence is just like 10 steps so no problem. We also have garages connected to the house that also have an entrence to it so you don't need to go to the main entrence but according to my experience most have a Garage that is connected to the house without an entry to it or carpots and not to forget the pre-build garages that will be, totally ready to use, transpoted to your property but those are not connected at all to the main building.
The part with the main door has totally simple reason called "Safty". When I watch American movies I have the feeling that every stranger who wants could open the door and come in in best case unnoticed by the owner so easy going to sneak around and steal stuff while you are maybe in your room with you PC and don't recognize anything at all cause you may wearing headphones with music or the sound of the game you are playing.
Fly-screens. I Fly-screens on windows at least in Spring till mid of autumn,
there are even two additional 'flush systems', that tbh are somewhat old fashioned. one being the 'high tanks' that are also mounted to the wall, but being almost at the ceiling using more of the gravity force, when the water runs down (nowdays rarely found in private homes, but still in some public toilets). the second being the 'direct flusher' that doesn't have a tank at all, but just opens a valve to the pipes and lets the water run into the toilet (super ineffecient in regards of water consumption and loud as hell).
The low ceilings is not really everywhere. In my apartment, we actually lowered the ceiling because the actual height was 2.95m ( about 9feet). We lowered it, to keep the heating costs in winter down. One really great thing with high ceilings, Christmas and tall xmas trees. Having said that, one of the rooms does have a slanted ceiling, but it is a little higher than the one shown in the video. Toilets, not all of them are mounted on the walls. It really depends on the house/apartment, and if you are building your own place, you choice.
In Germany, people can only afford their own house if they are wealthy.
In America, people afford to buy their own (cheap) house and believe that this makes them wealthy.
That is the difference.
More appearance than reality.
This is America. 🙄
Garages are very common in Germany. Single famiy houses have garages, but are not connected to the house. And houses for more families have to have garages, you cannot build without garages.
the town has a law that when you build you have to build with garages.
Interesting, though not exactly true in certain areas
1, Most houses got separate garages because they were built before owning a car become a common practice, especially in Eastern Europe.
2, No door knobs is a bit of a stretch, while there are houses that don't have doorhandles and knobs, it's uncommon.
3, Radiators are everywhere, and in larger cities it's fairly common to have central heating for entire districts.
4, While European fridges are generally smaller, they're uncommon to be this cabinet style. We also have freezers, either as a freezer shelf, a separate freezer section under the fridge, or a separate unit altogether. The one in the video is a fairly small unit even by our standards.
5, Walk-in closets are rare, though there are built-in wardrobes in many houses.
6, Our windows are also double or triple paned, for better heat retention. We also have mosquito nets, often the type you can actually pull up like the roller on the video
7, The ceiling height varies on many things, like the age of the building, where it's located, so on and so forth.
8, Toilets come in a large variety of designs, even the "bowl" is not the same. Many toilets have a "step" inside, for example, and can be standing or hanging, and even the waste pipe can exit both downwards or backwards. The tank is also usually located above the toilet, instead directly on the back for greater pressure.
9, Separate showers and bath tubs are rare, usually we either have one or another. The toilet however, is often has it's own room, and is in fact not in the bathroom.
8:50 absolutely standard for a few decades now... I wouldn´t try and find an apartement without windows like those...
They are also very good insolated, not only regarding wind/ temperature, but also noise. I´m living right next to a main road
and I hear nothing when the windows are closed :)
I am German.
and this isn't my Fav vid on this Theme.
he's very short sighted (only says what is in his ''region'').
and hes telling it like there is no differencs he says a lot of ''thats common'' when i see it very rarely so this is my list =
1 = There are houses in the middle of nowhere. (literly just random in the forest with a dirt road)
2 = I live in a house only with 1 floor above ground and 1 below - i see almost as mutch 1 floor buildings as 2 floor buildings.
3 = i never saw just a carport i only see Garages, i saw houses with one but they there the roof of the garage that was made longer.
4 = Refrigerator i only saw this kind of Refrigerator in old Buildings (here i can just tell my experience).
(5 = Roladen are rare atleast where i am from you can see them installet but rare are they build in the house like his) (this is short sighted from me).
6 = Bug Screens super common where i am from, i see them everywhere but in bigger city's i didn't so is very rigion based i feel like.
7 = i was in the US and never felt a difference in the ceilings (ofcource some houses have higher ones then others).
8 = if there is a normal shower no curtains around the tub if there isn't a normal shower then there are curtains (from what i saw).
I ask that everyone who read this picks a number they dont agree with and write is as an answere i want to know what you see common and as rare!
again this is from my view so don't say i am wrong because i live my live you live your's.
8:36 In Italy there is actually a bit of a legend on this one. There was this German inventor that invented this kind of window. He wanted to show his friend and invited him over. As soon as his friend saw it, he said "Was ist das?" and that's how it got the name. No joke, here in Italy we call them the "was ist das windows"!
Bug screens in Italy are farely common in the countryside and on the coast, and sometimes in cities as well, but not as much. Impossible to find it in mountainous areas because it's simply not a problem there.
that is funny, because in France, small windows in the roof of houses are called "wasisdas" But that has been like
that for ages, more than you stated about the inventor. Might have been the time of Napoleon riding around Europe ;o))
A garage requires a permit in Germany, is considered a separate building and it must meet requirements such as: E.g. wastewater connection, electricity and exhaust air. A garage may not be used as storage space in Germany.
In the Black Forest where I will be moving to, it is imperative that you have your key with you at all times or you will get locked out for sure because the door automatically is locked upon closing! It feels really insecure to me that I can’t leave the door unlocked when I go outside for just a moment, such as to bring the groceries into the house in several trips.
They don’t really think about it over there because that is what they are used to. But for me, I have to think each time. I think having an emergency key stashed outside somewhere secret and safe if essential.
The windows are helpful over there esp for when it rains because the tilt allows fresh air without the rain coming in, but we had to make our own frames for fly screens and they are nailed into the outer window frame. I know we get more insects in the USA than over there, but I still can’t sleep if even one mosquito is buzzing in the room.
Roofs are shingled with ceramic tiles over there. The houses mostly have strong thick walls, not wooden thin ones such as we have here. There is so much that is different over there that one just takes for granted here in the States and gets confused or disoriented when faced with the differences.
That last part with the bathroom was interesting to me as a Norwegian. The toilet on the wall with the hidden cistern has been part of all new bathrooms for the last twenty years or so. At first I thought it could be impractical in case something went wrong, but most things are accessible from behind that flushbutton cover.
Also, I'm 42 years old, and have never lived in a home with a bathtub. Shower only is the norm in standard bathrooms. Villas or larger houses might have a larger, more "luxurious" bathroom with a corner bathtub in it, but othervise you might have to install one "aftermarket".
I never lived in an appartment or house in Germany that had no bathtub. It's more common in appartments that you have a bathtub, but no extra shower. Houses usually have a shower and a bathtub in Germany.
It largely depends on when the house was built. While you'll rarely see an older apartment without a bathtub in Germany, they've been falling out of favor in recent years.
@@pardinensis yes that is a very bad development. To me a bathtub is absolutely essential.
@@vorrnth8734 That's for the most part a subjective matter, but one can assume that the demand for bathtubs have declined since this is the general development across northern Europe.
German doors have so called "Schnappers" (Snatchers) that you can click inside the lock frame so that it doesnt lock, for example if you are just going outside to throw away the trash or moving stuff. Pretty sure there are a lot of names for that in English and German but I cant be bothered to look it up right now 😄
Never knew they had a name. Seen them across multiple European countries and mine at home has it. I just called it "Shit, I forgot my keys" lock
I will have to look if the doors I use over there have this feature. I haven’t seen it, but I know my sister in law often keeps her back door unlocked by leaving the key in the outside lock when they are in the garden and going in and out a lot.
A lot, if not most houses in Germany have garages, but they are not connected to the house - they may be attached, but there is rarely a door.
In older houses we had built in garages. But they were constructed for much smaller cars than we have now and sometimes were narrow even then. So your are limited with the size of the car or you need to park outside. Years ago a neighbor discovered that after he came home with the new car 🙂. Friends of us took a car for a test drive to check that and needed to switch to a different model as planned.
7:52 closets are furniture basically 🤷♀️
Tables are necessities for most, but you rarely just get one
9:48 regarding windows, there is another position (at least where I live). You have a position between the 0-90 degrees at 45 degree which lets you vent the room without actually opening anything. There is this rubber sealing between the window and the support frame, and if you turn the handle to 45 degrees, it lets *just* a tiny bit of airflow in to keep the mold away without opening the window.
I live in the Netherlands and our houses mostly use the same Windows. We also have screen inserts in the window so we can open them (tilted or all the way) but the bugs can stay out.
Most of this house is also very common in the Netherlands. I was really surprised that you heat or cool the whole house in the US, it makes no sense at all. It costs a fortune to heat. I guess these type of houses in the US are very poorly insulated compared to the concrete and brick houses in Europe.
It's so cool watching you react to things that are normal to us with such awe 😆😆😆
For the garage part: I'm from Hungary, and when I was a kid, it was pretty common to park your car in the basement of your house. In this case the basement was accessible from the street-facing side of your house and it had a wide enough ramp and door for your car. My parents and all the other families on our street had a basement like this as well.
Nowadays carports are more popular, I have one too. But you can also see more and more "American style" houses as well with a "built-in" garage.
It's easy to go wrong with those garages though, I've seen so many of them after a bigger rain. It's only a good idea if the terrain of the street is ideal, otherwise water can easily go in. Not to mention trying to go somewhere when the ramp is frozen (because lack of preparation, salting etc).
@@hcorEtheOne if the weather ofrecast its rainy then you don't park the car there that day and problem solved. Not such a drama
@@Jorgerally35 it's not about
or car, it's the garage full of equipment and the walls. They will be soaked in water. Basically it's the basement of the house.
@@hcorEtheOne Yes, I see what you are saying. There were some precautionary measures that worked pretty well though. Like every house had at least 2 drain ditches in front of it + a pretty deep one in front of the basement door, covered with a grille. The ramps were made with little built-in ridges to help traction during winter time, and people always made sure to put salt or sand on the ramps.
I understand that this solution might be problematic in different countries or even in different areas of the same country, but I can't remember any cases when someone's basement got flooded here, even though we had some heavy rains over the years. In the worst case, you might get like 1-2 centimeters of water, but not high enough to damage your car or equipment. You pump out the water, let the basement air out, and you are good to go.
We've had those windows in the UK for decades now.....they're called "tilt and turn".
I live in Spain now and we also have them here.
Also, I've been fitting kitchens for years now with integrated appliances....not just the fridge/freezer, but the washer, dishwasher, dryer etc. all built into units with doors on.
It's so funny to see that every American react freaked out to the Windows 😅👍🏼
I lived in both places. Main difference is that houses in Germany are built from stone bricks (lumber is only used for sheds 😄), so German houses not only look but actually feel waaaaay more robust or sturdy than in most places in the US. What I like better in US vs Germany are built-in closets. Why aren't they common here? 😭 They make so much sense. In Germany you'll find closets (walk-ins) in newer luxury apartments/houses more often now, it seems to be a relatively new concept though. Sometimes people convert small/spare rooms into a walk-in closets.
They don't make sense when most people don't need an entire room for clothes. We've made it with a simple wardrobe for decades. The clothes don't complain, you can have bigger rooms for the same footprint, and you can choose almost any room as a bedroom and arrange stuff from there.
In EU our Cars can handle weather 😁
I feel that's not necessarily true, it's common knowledge that used cars in Germany or Austria tend to rust a lot, and a lot of them may have hail damage. It's just it's not important if it disintegrates after the first 8 years, that's poor people's problem.
Here in the UK garages or carports are uncommon, most people who have them just use them as storage or as a shed and park outside. For the most part your car doesn’t need protected from the elements, it doesn’t get too hot in the UK so most of what you have to worry about is snow and ice and that doesn’t damage the car if you are careful.
Most "affordable" houses have door handles, it depends on if you prefer to live in a big city or smaller villages with distance between houses, our houses in Europe are very insulated because of our weird weather situation, the fridge and such it depends on the size of the kitchen we have freezers smaller upper part of the fridge and lower part opens like a fridge as well with small drawers to place frozen items in.
And the closet situation that is just normal way to have more living space, so easier to put up a built in if you need yourself or a small dresser for clothing items.
im construction worker. A friend from merica sent me pic of him renovating a house. it was made of wood and drywall. I was quite shocked. Here they're isolated from inside and outside, made of brick etc.
5:11 what is important with the radiators: he touches the thermostat. The thermostates allow to heat each room up to your favourite temperature for the specific room.
In Austria we have door knobs, and three Pan glass is actual Standard because we get additional money from the goverment and mich thicker Walls.
They freezer is missing in the kitchen, mostly, when the house has a big garden or a big family. Because then you have a big freezing chest in the basement.
I dont live in a really common house for german standards because it was built in about 1860 and has a roof out of reed. Back then farmers used it for them and their animals. Its really interesting how the whole construction was done and how good the circulation of temperature is working here. In the winter the heat is staying inside and in the summer its nicely cold. Such buildings are mostly found in the north of Germany or Denmark.
As a German I would prefer the American way of building and using garages. It exists here but it’s not that common to be integrated into the house.
a lot of the differences come down to the fact that germany/ europe has a higher population density than the usa so of course they have to fit more people in a tighter space so they had to be clever with tight spaces. most german towns are just wayy older then american cities especially compared to the typical suburban us towns which were errected in the 1950‘s/1960‘s where things like cars were already established. so in comparison to my hometown, the city was already like 900 years old when the first cars were invented.
so i try to keep it brief:
europe:
-cities were designed without cars in mind
-most of the time a car isn’t really necessary bc you‘re quicker using other types of transportation
-everything is more packed in european cities
-europe is often higher priced so they kinda had to be more efficient with their ressources (space in general/electricity/fuel/heating/etc)
the biggest difference is probably that american houses have more „comfortable“ features regularly as compared to standard european houses. european houses are therefore more efficient and usually build with better quality.