Remote control for AC is needed. The AC unit is outside, and the unit in each room is usually high on the wall. Each room has a remote that sits in a cradle, either under the AC, or more commonly near the light switch, but it is important sometimes to put the remote on the side table for adjusting temperature in the middle of the night. It also needs to be noted that these AC units normally heat as well as cool, so effectively they work like central heating, but with individual temperature controls.
It's also common to have a split system - usually the interior piece (a moulded blower vent thingy) is mounted high on the wall (usually an external wall, although sometimes inside if there's a close roof drainage valley) and an external compressor pump, and that pump can run two internal units. These are controlled by a remote. Larger units can have wired control panels fitted to the wall, such as the American thermostat.
Another big reason for living rooms/kitchens at back of house is open to the backyard, where we live, where the pool is. And is usually a blurred space with big sliding or folding glass doors.
Yes right, and with your back patio/BBQ area overlooking your private oasis with the the kids enjoying splashing in the pool, instead of at the front of the house looking at the street with much less privacy. EDIT: Also this area is ideal for Family Christmas BBQ get togethers, the adults cook up on the barbie the the kids splash in the pool, everybody in one place!
There is nothing better than having the window over the kitchen sink facing the backyard. It makes the house seem much more homely when the rooms you spend most of the time in look out into the backyard.
Christmas in Aus is awesome. You start 6 weeks of school holidays, work holidays, it's daylight savings and stays light until 9pm, you're just in party/relax mode until after New Year (many people take holidays over this time,) it's such a great vibe.
It's too hot for Day Light Saving here in WA I think - that hot desert Sun setting in the west. But agree, you gotta love being able to party New years Eve in the summer - everyone's on holiday!
In reality, that Christmas holiday period really doesn't end at New Year! It continues on in some form until the week after the Australia Day holiday. At that point everything's officially back to business properly, but not before :)
Additionally, in Western Australia the majority of houses are made with double brick walls. That is, both the inner and outer exterior walls will both be brick. This creates an air cavity between the walls which assists with insulation against the extreme temperatures experienced in the summers we get here. Even the inner walls are single brick.
We don't have that in QLD. Our house is just brick veneer (built 2008). Our old house was a Queenslander with no brick - all timber. I thought it was just places like VIC and TAS that had brick houses.
@@bencodykirk If you build brick veneer in WA be prepared to invest in good insulation and air conditioning. You WILL need it! Not saying it's bad, but it has definite drawbacks in this climate. I stayed in a real Queenslander in Townsville a couple of times and they are perfect for that climate. The free air flow underneath and through the walls combined with no floor to ceiling walls inside and high ceiling really creates a great comfortable way to live there. I understand why it's tempting to fill in the space downstairs beneath the house with extra living space but you won't be as comfortable if you do. Air flow is the key.
Not the best for cold or hot weather tho. Straw bale, mud brick or reverse (brick inside, colourbond outside) are more efficient. Years ago , maybe the 70's? the WA govt had an arrangement with Midland brick which led to the proliferation of double brick housing construction.
A duvet is a soft quilt filled with down, feathers, or a synthetic fibre such that the inner is removeable. You buy the inner and the covers separately. A doona is an Australian trademark... effectively a duvet . A comforter is made to be used as is. The inner is not removable. Some people just call them quilts. Australia is the on place I've heard a duvet be called a doona.
I didn't realise that the Doona was originally made by a textile company in Melbourne called Kimptons in the 1970s. Tontine currently own the registered trademark. But yes, a quilt/duvet filled with down, wool, silk, or artificial filling with an out cover of sheet type material which is easy to remove and wash separately, much like a pillow case. My favourite is my doona cover made from two fleecy blankets sewn together with a zip which a doona is stuffed into and a bottom fleecy blanket for a bottom sheet. In winter I never have to worry about getting into a cold bed, just super cosy. Of course only for use in the coldest of months, haha.
I am an Australian. Queenslander now. When I was in Darwin we, for a few years, always had a champagne breakfast starting at 7am. Barbequed chicken, salad, and all sorts of sides. I would supply the champagne and orange juice and chickens, visitors brought a plate and any special type of drinks. This would continue until we either were in a food coma, or too pissed to continue. Then followed (after a sleep) to another house for xmas dinner with roast and trimmings or a barbeque. More drinks. The weather would be about 38 deg celcius and possibly raining.
You would have to explain what bring a plate is ha ha my first time to Bring a plate I actually took just a plate being a POM didn't know any different that was 1965 SA I was 21
She is from North Queensland so the tropics. Older houses in southern Australia often have no built in heating or cooling, at all. It’s very common to have one portable unit that you move around with you as you spend time in different rooms. Our houses are often freezing in winter.
Growing up in Victoria I never knew of a house that didn't have a heater, usually either a gas wall heater or the old space heater, always one in the lounge room and sometimes one it the kitchen. But yeah, almost no houses had AC when I grew up, it was a luxury to go visit my Nana who had a rattler wall refrigeration unit in her flat. We didn't live in a house with AC until the 2000s and my parents had a ducted evaporative system installed and that was the duck's nuts, but before then we just had oscillating fans.
My dad lives in South West NSW has 5 AC/heating units. 3 in bedrooms, 1 for dining-kitchen, 1 lounge room. They are set to timers for certain times of day. He gets as low as 6°F in winter and I have seen 133°F in summer on his verandah in the shade at 10am.
She showed you a Queensland house where the first story wasn’t a story it was just a house built on a set of poles. These are common in Queensland and they’re built that way because of flooding risk. Have to keep checking for white ants/termites as they are rampant in Queensland. Standard house in most states is a single brick veneer. That is a timber frame with bricks on the outside, and terracotta or concrete roof tiles.
One other design common in Australia is orientation of the house, the Bedrooms are on the south side, morning rooms (kitchen, breakfast) to the East, Afternoon rooms to the west (Dining, Family, etc.) And filtered windows to the North - minimal light in summer, maximising in winter. For America, flip the North/South orientation.
wtf? you design a house to have bedrooms on the south & dinning/family on the west????? Why on earth would you want the living areas to be where the hottest sun to be infiltrating the house at the times of day people are trying to relax in the living rooms? That's a TERRIBLE design! My place is perfect! Main bedroom & living room are on the north, so they get sun all day in winter when the sun's low in the sky, but the building is also set just slightly North East, rather than true North, so they also get to see the sunrise, but miss the hot late afternoon westerly sun in summer. West in my place is another villa & at the end of the block is a garden with gumtrees to block out the suns rays from the end villa. My kitchen is to the south, where the heat from the oven & other kitchen appliances helps to warm what is generally the hottest room in the house & generally keeps it cool, again with the angle meaning the sunset is visible from the kitchen window, but no sunlight is able to penetrate Why you would want bedrooms in the location that is the coldest part of the house in winter, living room in what is the hottest part of the house in summer and limiting the northern sun ie winter sun, from penetrating the house is beyond me! If there's no constraints on the build, in general in Australia (and everywhere, except reversing north & south in northern hemisphere), bedrooms are to the east, living rooms to the north, kitchen & bathroom to the south & garage to the west
@@mehere8038 I should have used the words "for example".... but it's also dependent on your locality, you may actually want your bedrooms to be cooler than living spaces, particularly in summer. The east west thing is having the morning sun for breakfast and afternoon sun for the evening, and this is coming from the Colonial ans Federation style farm house.... the other design is to create a central courtyard or quad, which could be cooler than the outside.
@@PiersDJackson no-one wants a living room facing west in Australia! Houses that have that have a far lower value than houses with a different set up! Try looking at real estate ads & see what they promote. It's NEVER "westerly facing living room" is it! Key rooms facing north is what they promote
@@PiersDJackson & just to add, beyond the heat is also the sun's glare issue. The house I lived in as a young kid had south facing double glass doors on the living room, but also a small window on the western side & that was a nightmare! impossible to see the tv screen before the sun set! We tried a range of curtains & blinds & I'm sure today there's good enough to stop all light, but back then there either wasn't, or my parents couldn't afford it, so effectively no tv before sunset, cause of that little westerly window! The huge glass doors were no issue, just the little westerly window was the issue The westerly bad is so well established that it's even a line in the song Ryan reacted to the other day "The block is awkward, it faces west"
@@mehere8038 forget the mcmansions and the ¼ acre homes, I will admit that the West is where the "good room", the formal dining room is, for the simple fact that you want evening light. Also look at a FARMHOUSE layout.
Christmas here in Australia definitely included Prawns (Shrimp in America) as a pre lunch appetiser and some actually still do the Turkey or Chicken with roast vegetables etc. and Plum Pudding and custard after - my mother always did the traditional Christmas Day lunch - we always had a snooze (sleep) after lunch - we always saved opening presents until Christmas morning- it was a lazy day for us but Mum definitely deserved a rest after lunch was over 👏🥰🇦🇺
We didn’t have “plum pudding” in my family. We had “Johnny in the Bag”. It’s wrapped in calico and boiled forever. My grandmother put in sterile, clean coins. I love it. My grandmother had 7 brothers and sisters so the “Johnny in the Bag” was enormous! It took at least a day to cook.
@@sherrylovegood - similar- Mum always called it Plum pudding- had heaps of fruit in it including dried plums also wrapped in calico to cook- put a sixpence in each kid’s puddings - a treat we looked forward to ❤️👍🏿🇦🇺
@@mariagrant2072 For me, Christmas was my grandparents. My grandmother cooked for days. My grandfather decorated the tree and the entire extended family would be there. After dinner & dessert was gift time. Christmas morning was great, but Christmas night was the best night of the year. All of the family together. I miss it.
All houses in Australia have the living area, kitchen, dining rooms/areas at the back...this way we can renovate our backyards into beautiful outdoor living areas that connect to the indoor living areas with large french or bifolding doors. Bedrooms are usually at the front and/or sides of the house. If a multi level house...then bedrooms are just on top but then the formal lounge room and dining rooms tend to be towards the front with the kitchen, dining and informal living areas towards the rear.
Houses aren’t all the same here in Australia so it’s not something you can generalize on. Like any other country we build our homes according to climate, where the sun rises & sets, lifestyle choices, style appeal, family dynamics,
@@lorrainewalker9674 Everyone knows about the Queenslander, with its central rooms and covered in breezeways around the perimeter ...but in general...and in every other state, bedrooms always tend to be up front, especially the master. The only time this isn't the case, is if a house has had extensions added and extra bedrooms were added. The only other room out front is usually the loungeroom. I have lived in every state, in many locations for many years and I know that even in Queensland, a non-queenslander house will also have this layout...the only time a house might be different is if the house was built specifically as a holiday house...where the view is used to orient the layout.
Back in the 70s we lived in a weather board house (wood ) it was stinking hot 🔥 in summer with mosquitoes biting and plenty of tossing and turning flipping your pillow too get the cool side or running through the sprinkler and getting prickles in your feet which grew in the lawn
My family calls the doona a quilt most of the time. Good ones have eiderdown or wool inside. You can wash the cover in with the sheets. I think you're meant to dry clean the inside.
My family tends to do the seafood and the hot traditional lunch but now more of the seafood, cold chicken and salads. My Nan's house used to get super hot and everyone was stressed with the cooking. Easier to have the cold food and less stress.
I have AC in my bungalow plus a fan. Yes my AC comes with a remote. The beauty of this is, I can run my AC at it’s lowest fan power and my ceiling fan higher. If it’s not too hot then just the ceiling fan… saves on AC
Warm weather Christmases are what we're used to - it's quite natural to have a BBQ or go to the beach - though my family always had the traditional roast lunch despite the heat 😅 As for houses, ceiling fans and individually controlled air con in bedrooms are common where this woman grew up, but not so much further south where we have a proper winter. It's common to have bedrooms at the front of older houses, but not newer ones.
Those aircon units she is talking about are generally used in more tropical areas of Australia. Where I live in Western Australia we have central reverse cycle (heats and cools) and the vents are in the ceiling but in newer houses and new units you can shut off and turn on different areas and set the temperatures.
I live in Melbourne Australia 🇦🇺 and Christmas is fantastic! All the kids play outside with their Christmas presents, like bikes, rollers blades, skateboards and play in their swimming pools.
Zoned central heating and cooling as well as and exist in Australia depending what state you're in and how old the house is. Older home tend to have fans rather than central units seen in newer builds. Also my house has the main bedroom in the back of the house not the front. It is also a newer build.
I’m in Perth Western Australia and have lived in so many houses, they have been different ages, and had different features. My current house is newly built with no ceiling fans, but it has ducted reverse cycle. I’ve had main bedrooms at the front, at the back, and at the sides. And Christmas is bloody hot here, we’re generally in the pool, at the beach or under the sprinklers!
We also get to celebrate Christmas in July in Australia... where we eat the hot Christmas foods that we don't want to eat when it is stinking hot in December. Christmas in July is usually celebrated with friends rather than family groups.
@@richardmeyer2258 Not in this house in QLD haha. I've never done "Christmas in July". Anyway, I'd think it would be more a southern state thing as it's somewhat cold there in July.
We have 4 individual aircon/heater units in my house in Oz, one in each bedroom and another in the lounge room. Great for the dry hot summer and cold winter (I live in Melbourne). We have another gas wall heater which is used in winter. Christmas can get really hot but as I have an English heritage I still cook roast pork and veg but also have crayfish (lobster), prawns and oysters. Seafood at Christmas is a must.
Most AC remotes have a wall-mounted bracket. A little self-discipline means you never lose them. I'm a twice-divorced bachelor with a king to myself. When sleeping alone I am free to starfish. When a lady friend stays over, there's plenty of room for us both. Christmas in Aus families often features a game of backyard cricket, often with too many beers (too many Coopers Pale are barely enough), and rules made up to suit the environment. Happy times.
I'm in Perth, Western Australia, I have reverse cycle splits rather than the huge initial outlay of a ducted system, though a central system nicer looking. And as the norm in the west, full brick, double brick outer walls, single brick internal.
Many houses and apartments in Australia don't have air-conditioning at all. Those that do, it's almost always a reverse cycle (heat or cool) split system ... which is basically a single unit for each room you want to cool or heat. Ducted (central) heating and cooling is not common here. It's way too expensive to install, and the cost of running it would be astronomical. We really only heat or cool one room in the house here .. and stay in that room til bedtime. Not many people heat or cool overnight - again, it's just too expensive. Even in our coldest locations, we don't heat while everyone is asleep. You you get used to ice cold bathrooms in the middle of the night 😄. Finally, we have remote controls because we don't leave our heating/cooling on around the clock. If we're in a room for two hours, we only have it switched on for those two hours.
We had ducted central reverse cycle air conditioning installed when we built the house so the cost got absorbed into the mortgage. It is expensive to run, but we have 20 solar panels to help offset the cost. (I'm in Brissie, btw). My wife's medical conditions require that she stay cool so at the moment we're running the AC 24/7 pretty much.
As an Aussie living in Southern New South Wales; i can assure you that almost every house here has central heating and cooling, as well as wall mounted invertors for heating and cooling. My house is 2 storey and I have both systems because I don't like heating everything when I don't have to. FYI....our main bedroom is on the bottom floor.
In North Queensland, we rarely if ever need heating and when it is cooler, it's a novelty to have to put a doonah/comforter/duvet on your bed. We didn't even have ceiling fans in our Queenslander, always had to have box fans or the ones on a stand. I'll never forget the excitement I had when we finally did get ceiling fans installed. I don't know how my mum managed all those years, coming from NSW, to the sweltering tropics. Loads of people who come up here can't handle it in summer and they go what we call, troppo 🥵 🤣 . They go crazy, get cranky, or just act really weird. Sometimes it's like being in an outdoor sauna, except you can breathe and it's actually really good for your skin. Anyway, everything is upstairs, while the laundry, garage and workshop are downstairs.
Christmas feels totally different in Summer but still wonderful our way. I wear air conditioning to bed and a sheet. We downsized to retire, we had central heating and cooling but we could turn off the rooms we weren’t using. Now we have split system air conditioning and heating in every bedroom with a remote that is attached in a holder to the wall, my art room and both living rooms, dining and kitchen. In 6 years we tried the heating once to see what it felt like. That was enough. Our bedroom A/C and my art room get used the most. During the day we leave the doors and windows open so living on the ocean we almost always have a sea breeze. We only use a doona cover for one third of the year with out sheet and a quarter of the year we use a doona or duvet in it. I live in the tropics and I still send my kids fluffy things to sleep in to keep warm down at the bottom of Aus. My last 3 homes were two storey but yes, the master is at the front. I love looking at the ocean in bed and hearing it. My Dad built our first home in 1953. The master bedroom was at the front. We have moved 39 times and I cannot think of one home where it wasn’t at the front.
Hi Ryan, it is so fun watching your reactions to life in Australia. I have ‘vacationed’ (US term for ‘holidayed’….the Aus term) in US quite a few times…and there are definitely a lot of differences. One thing that stands out to me is that the reason for a main or ‘master’ bedroom being at the front of the house in a single story house here in Adelaide, Australia, is that we have living areas that ‘spill’ onto our outdoor living areas which are in our back yards. My house has our main bedroom at the front along with one living area, but the main living area opens to our expansive under-cover outdoor area. Our other bedrooms are also towards the back of the house allowing more privacy for parents. Also, we have fans in bedrooms plus individual controls for the temperature of air-conditioning and heating for each room, and yes, it is via remote controls that have their homes in a ‘holder’ by the door to the room. We don’t seem to lose the remote controls because we use them so often….I often wake at night and ‘nudge’ our bedroom temperature up or down a degree….i keep the remote within reach for this….as well as the remote for the ceiling fan and lights.
I always thought that the master bedroom was at the front of the for security reasons, so our parents could see who was out the front or incase anyone broke in they would have to get past dad and mum before they could get to the rest of the house and us kid's.
Sup!Could you react to “which commonwealth force did the British love or value the most?” By the front Could you also react to how New Zealand could be the hiding 8th continent? *zealandia* Any video would be okay Edit: actually react to “is New Zealand the 8th continent?” By atlas pro The front is also Australian btw
The term 'doona' for duvet or continental quilt came about because the first Australian company to introduce them was Kimptons and they marketed them as Doonas. Much like we often call tissues 'Kleenex', even if they aren't. Brits refer to their vacuum cleaner as a 'Hoover', again even if it isn't. The main difference I noticed about US bedrooms is there is no ceiling light, and the light switch turns on the bedside lamps. I would always forget to turn them back on in the morning, so at night I would flick the switch and nothing happens; still stuck in a dark room. Also found no ceiling fans in most places in northern states, eg CA, OR, WA, ID, New England.
Happy Arvo! I lived in NYC and Massachusetts. No ceilings fan. No central cooling, but central heat. Also, no ceiling lights which I found so odd! No laundry. I had to go to the laundromat. I refused to go in the basement which had a dirt floor. I was very puzzled by that. Had it a proper floor and a washing machine, I would have gone down. I didn’t see the point of bring up musty old dirt into the house. I really enjoyed Thanksgiving and it was bitterly cold in NYC for Christmas and New Year’s Eve in Times Square. My Drizabone was life to me!
I live with my son, he has a super king here in Australia. He thinks it's awesome because it's square & he no longer makes the mistake of putting the fitted sheets on the wrong way around. lol
Ryan, I also have a remote for the Air conditioner 😅 I sit in my seat and point it when I want it on. If it gets too cold, I'll adjust the temp from the remote. Very handy
I live in Melbourne and I have an air con in my bedroom, no ceiling fans anywhere. In my case I have 3 air conditioners in the house. All have their remote controls but I can control them via my phone too via a Wi-Fi app. The house you see in her video are known as Queenslanders, not really seen down here. Most houses here are either solid brick or brick veneer (brick cavity) homes, many look like Californian bungalows or are somewhat in that style. Over the last 20-30 years two storied homes (a ground floor and one above) are by far the most common newly built homes here now. Bungalow style NEW homes are not common anymore, not in Melbourne anyway, I can't speak for other states or cities.
Air conditioning in Australia varies depending on where you live (and your budget). In SA, southern WA and far western NSW the lower humidity makes evaporative air conditioning a good option, it’s lower cost and better health wise because it’s basically fresh air circulating through your house. When I lived in Perth most houses had an evaporative unit on the roof. We used ours with the water running through it during the day and at night when it cooled down outside we would switch the water off and just have the outside air blown through the house. Most split systems and ducted air con are reverse cycle, it cools in summer and warms in winter. When I lived in Sydney we had individual split systems in various rooms. It was an older house and we added units to the rooms as we could afford them. Where I live now on the NSW east coast I have air con ducted right through the house with ceiling vents and it is zoned so I can do the whole house or just sections of it. My daughter lives nearby and she has mostly ceiling fans with a split system in the living area but she is high on a hill and catches the sea breezes. A cousin in southern Tasmania doesn’t have cooling but has double glazing and a heat pump or alternatively a wood stove for the winter. As for Christmas we have the best of both worlds, a hot Christmas Day with family, barbecues and swimming and Christmas in July parties with hot roasts, mulled wine, Christmas pudding and decorations.
yes that's correct you can have your own air con in your own bedroom its been done for years and it dosnt cost a lot of money having ducted heating/cooling the master bedroom back in the 1950's right up to now in australia was *always at the front and the second and third bedroom was at the back
@@naomimoran5564 when i used to live in a three bedroom house back in the 1970's the master bedroom and bedroom one and lounge were at the front bedroom three was at the side and you have the kitchen,toilet and bathroom at the back
Its probably not a statue but a cast. Possibly of the lady herself during a get children period. Its a thing some people do. A friend of my daughter had one of herself in her hall. The Australian air conditioners are ducted to all rooms and often controller by zone, bedrooms and living may form zones as one type and split systems as the other. The split systems are generally one per room in the desired location and are found everywhere, they are designed for single rooms of almost any size. They are controlled by a remote control, the cheap ones only have on off and temperature up and down and cooling only. The better ones are reverse cycle have air swing vanes and have programmable automatic on and off times and temperatures that can be set or revoked from the controller. I have 3 units, one in the kitchen and family room, one in the lounge and of course one in the bedroom. They just get turned on as needed. The house is insulated (Australian housed are not often insulated) but when its 40C outside they still get used a fair bit. The split systems are popular as Australians tend to live inside and outside with outside just being an extension of the house. But at 40C that outside friendship can vanish, or it can be maintained by having one room shut off and cooled as a relaxing recovery room. Best of all worlds.
Lol. It doesn't matter how big your bed is. The ladies want it all. Kind of like our souls ha ha. (Just kidding, the world hasn't gone that mad has it?)
Here in Tasmania, my christmas usually consists of a BBQ lunch with the family, generally catching up with family members you haven't seen since last christmas. Everyone usually drinks and eats too much, then we go out back for a game of cricket, or kick the footy around, everyone usually gets involved, and we generally all have a good laugh at how bad we are at it, then everyone goes home very full of food, usually with a hefty haul of leftover pavlova, trifle, some christmas cake, a platter of roast meats and whatever else is left. people still do the tree, and decorations and all that stuff, but i'd say it's a little less extravagant than in the US, though back when I was a kid in the early 90's there seemed to be a lot more christmas lights on peoples houses than there is today
We have ducted gas heating and ducted evaporative cooling. It's not normally muggy in Melbourne but when it is, this cooling is useless, but cheap to run and works most of summer. Our main bedroom is on the second floor at the front of the house. She didn't touch on ensuites, is it normal to have an ensuite in America? All modern homes have one now and older homes are renovated to include one. Also walk in robes are standard in the main bedroom and smaller walk in robes are popular now in the secondary bedrooms if they don't have walk in robes they almost always have built in robes. I know in England they still have freestanding wardrobes mainly.
I spun out to see that Your houses eat the dust piles You's sweep up! It's a sucker thing in the skirting boards. I had an American chick stay at My place in 2006 while visiting My Brother, she couldn't grasp the concept of the clothesline and that I didn't have a dryer and this was in Summer lol
ducted vacuum systems have been in Australia for decades ..and my old post clothesline is just about buggered ,might have to get a new fandangled rotary hoist ..sad face..never a dryer though,they just want to burn your house down
@@cheryl1766 wait...what?! I have ducted air con but I cant sweep My dust piles into the house and it sucks it away! Is this an option I can have? Cause I keep forgetting a new dustpan and brush every bloody time I go shopping!
Ceiling fans are common in Qld and NT but not so much the southern states so I think she may give the impression all Aus houses have them when they just don't. Not all houses have bedrooms at the front either. We would never call what goes into a doonah cover a blanket - it's a doonah or quilt. We have comforters too but they are a bedspread with the quilt sewn into the cover so they're not detachable ( I have one of these). I liked her bed comparison though - that Alaskan sounds amazing!
Bollocks! Ceiling fans are standard in Adelaide, often in combination with ducted reverse cycle air conditioning. That’s what happens when electricity is expensive - fans most of the time in summer, air con when it gets really hot.
@@I_hate_Vegemite sorry to lump SA into Southern stares when you obviously have lots of ceiling fans there! Anywhere that gets hot will have them but you don't see them much in Melbourne so her comments don't represent the whole of Australia in my opinion!
She's generalising a lot. Where bedrooms & living rooms are situated vary. She talks about Queensland but even there it varies. My Aunty's main bedroom is on the side but at the back of her house with the living room at the front & she doesn't have any ceiling fans or air-conditioning. Everything is relative to needs. I live in South Australia & the main bedroom & living room is at the front but for others in my family the house design varies. I have ceiling fans in the bedrooms & my air-conditioning is a water-cooled evaporated unit. I use a multi-finned oil heater which is electrically powered. Assuming all houses in Australia are as she describes is crazy. Not to mention Pyjama wear. It depends on where you live we wear what the weather determines. We vary in weather from tropical to temperate, to close to the Antarctic (Tasmania), arid desert to coastal, mountainous to fertile plains, islands to mainland, so one cannot generalise & I imagine the same applies to the US. Just my opinion 🤔🇭🇲
our A/C is evaporative, like a giant water cooler on the roof that it disperses around the whole house... so we put the comforter, or quilt or duna inside a cover, this is what she's referring to 2 sheets.... our comforters are plain white and the cover goes over the quilt. quilt may be a term used in SA we also call it a duna
In Tasmania the bedrooms are all at the back of the house, i have never seen a house with a bedroom at the front of the house unless its a small apartment or the livingroom doubles as the bedroom. 2 story houses are also not that common but have been becoming more common in recent years.
When you and your family do eventually get here for a holiday make sure it’s at Christmas. A summer Christmas is just joyful (so long as there aren’t fires).
We have a heater that is in the living room(for the whole house) and an A/C in the living room also, that has a remote control, it only cools one room. the rest of the rooms we all have desk fans to cool us off when we are trying to sleep. I live in Melbourne Australia. It's very wet here at the moment (floods) I really enjoy your videos, thank you for sharing with us.
🤣we have remote control for ceiling fans and their lights as well We have many different air cons Swampy which is evaporative uses water over filters knocks about 10 degrees off temp but don't work in humidity Then refrigeration which are reverse cycle for heating as well Basically like your central units and will be set up like your 5 to 6 vents Our new ones now you can heat or cool individual rooms and if you change room you can transfer the temperature from one room to another this way it's cheaper to run as transfer hot and cold air to what ever room your in You should try having a x mas party in middle of summer then you know what Oz x mas People surf boat out in parks BBQ Most homes have a TV in their bedrooms as well and side table next to bed either side We have multiple types air cons and some remote control now we can turn on and off by using your phone so as your heading home you can turn on so house is cool when you get their
Christmas in Australia is brilliant. You get up early, open the presents, cut the ham and have ham and eggs for breakfast, probably have friends in for drinks before lunch, cook a vast meal served about 2pm with turkey, roast pork, lobster, huge bowls of asparagus, potato salad, Brussels sproutsetc; then Christmas pudding boiled in a cloth, brandy sauce, and vast bowl of strawberries in liquor of some kind, and cream. Then you either collapse in a food coma with the book that was in your presents, or you go and try to assemble the darn swing set. On Boxing Day (26th) you pack up an enormous picnic of leftover turkey, pork, ham, salads, watermelon, and cold Christmas pudding, and go to the beach where you get terribly sunburnt. Perfect! Yay! 🇦🇺
We only have aircon in our bedroom. No fans anywhere. I'm in Canberra so we get cold here, mostly. But summer can be a killer so aircon is a must for me.
A doona goes inside a doona cover ( the cover being like 2 sheets sewn together with buttons at the bottom to close it once the doona - a standard white puffy quilt is inside it ) !!! A comforter is a stand alone coloured or printed quilt that doesn't usually get put into a cover but is used on the bed on top of sheets and perhaps also a standard blanket between the top sheet and comforter. Having never known anything but Australia our Summer Christmas is awesome except for the years that we get a cold rainy Christmas day because many of the kid's presents are outdoor ones and after lunch we typically enjoy a game of cricket in the street with neighbours followed by a long afternoon swim. Kids have 6 weeks of school holidays, one usually starting the week leading up to Christmas Day and five following it. If the adults can get time off work many families head off for a week or two of camping on Boxing Day with a group of friends with all the new bikes, scooters, various games etc coming along for the fun. Access to water is a must be it swimming pools, beaches, lakes or rivers . It's our favourite time of year. Kids start a fresh school year following this 6 week break.
My current house has evaporative air con, but it is turned off because it isn’t very efficient & needs a lot of water which is not good during a drought. Instead, the previous owners (it’s now about 10yrs old) have installed individual reverse cycle air conditioners in the Master Bedroom, Loungeroom and Dining/Kitchen. Each has their own remote control & can heat OR cool as required. It even has a timer function so I can turn it on when I go to bed and it will turn off in an hour, by which time I have usually fallen asleep. The master bedroom in this house is the first room of the house. The other bedrooms are at the back of the house.
AC units now come with a little shelf you can attach to the wall to store the remote, I installed mine right near the light switches below the AC so I can always find it.
there is a remote, but it usually sits in a cradle on the wall. we don't even have AC or a fan in the house. I live in tassie and a coastal area at that, so our normal temperature range is lower and also less extreme, for example we only got about 3 frosts this year winter, but last summer I don't think it got above 27c (80f). we use a wood heater for heating and just open windows in summer. as we are in a costal area, its pretty breezy and if it ever gets to hot to stand, the beach is only down the road. we do have a 'heat transfer system' which consists of an intake vent in the loungeroom ceiling and outlet vents in each of the bedrooms with a duct fan in the middle. our house is ~30 years old and the bedrooms are at the back, lounge/dinning/kitchen is at the front but the house I grew up in is over 110 years old at this point and the bedrooms are at front and the loungeroom is at the back and would have originally been the kitchen as well, the kitchen/bathroom/laundry were all an extension on the back, the house originally had a detached laundry and an 'outhouse', that was before indoor plumbing was common, particularly in country areas.
Our house (built in the 70's) has all the living areas at the front of the house and the bedrooms at the back. Earlier houses pre wars had the kitchens way at the back or separate to the house due to it being more menial work and not to be seen and of course the heat and smell factor - you didn't want your guests smelling your sunday roast or sweating from all the heat from the stoves and oven. The house I grew up in was built in the late 1800's early 1900's and the laundry and kitchen were originally in a separate building at the back (as well as the outhouse), but when they upgraded at one time in the 60's or 70's (before my time) they built an addition to the back of the house where they put the eat in kitchen and bathroom etc. and as time when on we (as a nation overall) migrated to blending our indoor kitchen and living areas to the outdoor entertaining area which is now pretty common. This is what I have studied and observed over the years, but everyone is different and Australia being such a diverse climatic country it is not all the same. Oh and the concept of central heating and cooling is not all that common as it is commonly viewed as wasteful to heat and cool areas of the home you don't actual use or aren't in.
11:11 The biggest one story house I worked on was 400m squared. Most times there is a sitting room for guests and then the kitchen. Bedrooms are in the back. My House is open plan so upstairs is Lounge and kitchen. then in the hallway the toilet and bathroom. bedrooms branch off from the hallway.
We need remote controls for our AC as the weather is so hot by the time you try to sleep you have heat exhaustion you can't be bothered getting out of bed.
As an Aussie teen in the 60's, I was always envious of American closets. Back then, we had free-standing wardrobes, that didn't fit all that much. Years later, built-in wardrobes became standard, and later again walk-in wardrobes .
So, in Australia, ducted air is like central air, and yes, most systems support the ability to control the flow to each room. Split systems are like air conditioners that can heat or cool and best suit individual rooms.
Qld is very different to Victoria when it comes to climate and housing. Ceiling fans are great but not standard in Vic. AC is also not standard but becoming very much more common as properties are built and renovated. We also have evaporative cooling. The house we renovated and extended was originally double brick. So the original rooms had no air-conditioning. We did however put individual a/c in the extension in the bedrooms and family rooms. Much of the time it wasn't needed. We put in central hydronic heating throughout the house. Where I am now has centralised ducted heating and a centralised evaporative cooling.
Assuming by "Central HEating/Cooling" she basically means "ducted", then you're not always cooling the whole house anymore (most of them are zoned systems now, I think)... The bedroom location is interesting....we wanted to build a house with living area at the front and bedroom at the back, but builder basically said "can't do it" (they actually used the excuse that it was to do with getting sunlight into the living area.....but that seemed a bit odd, because the house over the back fence would face the opposite way). Single storey was common in Aus because we got so much space. Increasingly townhouses (and appartments) are becoming very common close to city-centres
I think a pillowy blanket is a comforter, whilst what she is referring to is a quilt/doona which is stuffed with (traditionally) feathers/down (now can be wool) and the put in a quilt/doona cover.
I like having the main bedroom at the front of the house because then I can see who is coming up to the house. I like the kitchen as close to the car too, because it is easy to move food shopping in.
I know in Melbourne with new houses you can get a thing called Zoned Ducted Heating/Cooling, which is just Central Heating/Cooling but each room be be adjusted separately.
Someone in the family hosts a part of the feeding frenzy on the day. Someone will do brekky, another will do lunch and then dinner after that. Everyone normally sleeps in between or plays games like backyard cricket etc.
Christmas Day here in Melbourne as kids we were not allowed to wear our bathers/swimmers to the dinner table for formal Aussie Christmas dinner.. we at least had to wear shorts and a tshirt. In Melbourne we don’t all have ceiling fans as a mandatory. It’s cooler here not tropical and our heat is dry not humid.
A comforter in actually often a cheap one with the polyester wadding sewed inside and quilted, non removable, causing pilling when the filling ends come out in the wash. A quilt cover is clipped closed at one end around a quilt or doona, depending where you come from in Oz. The thick inner quilt/doona is aired and only maybe washed after winter the quilt/doona cover can be washed much more often and changed with the sheets. Not every house has ceiling fans or aircon, building in "airflow methods" help to save money, we need to change aircon temps here at least twice a day. My cat knocked my floor fan remote under the furniture last summer, still not found yet. It won't work without it, hmm. the cartoon dog on her jammies was from the aussie cartoon "Bluey," your son may grow to love them? My English sis-in-law said aussies have too much room in our houses, that we only need 2 power points in the kitchen... we have fridge and freezer, microwave, toaster and kettle. plugged in permanently and need a blender/food processor/sanger toaster/cake mixer, power "plug or 3" as well as phone and internet depending where they are.
For us Christmas is about everyone, children and adults enjoying the day. Kids get to play with the toys and adults get drunk af at the beach.. perfect day😁
My air conditioner/heat pump is not only remote controlled, but I purchased a remote for it that can be voice controlled via a virtual assistant device such as an Echo Dot smart speaker. If I tell it I'm not, it switches to air condition mode at my preferred settings. If I tell it I'm cold it switches to heat pump mode, again, at my preferred settings. If I'm too hot I can tell it to turn off, or to set the temperature to a specific degree, or to reduce the temperature by 1 or more degrees, with the opposite possible if I'm too cold.
We do Christmas at the Beach, BBQ, Cricket, Zinc Cream. COLD WINE. Australians usually have Ducted Air-conditioning or Split Systems. But most of us also have ceiling fans in every room .. but then that's also dependent on where in Australia you live
We just built a house here in Aus and we have central heating and cooling and we have zones we can alter to the other. We operate it by a central panel and an app on our phones.
So in summer, when I go to sleep, I first turn the AC on (via the remote), hop into bed. By the time I get the pillow and sheet organised, I grab the trusty remote, set the timer and then go to sleep. The timer will turn the AC off after about an hour or so, etc.
NEVER talk about fire at Christmas in Australia. That is Australias only fear, fires at Christmas
bushfires are why I don’t look forward to summer I’m kinda scared of summer
Cap
@@e7267 I live in the south coast NSW, in 2019 I remember 3 day that were like night with 0 sun light, just black smoke
@@jaytee9308 Cap???
@@Aquarium-Downunder CBR firestorm...
Remote control for AC is needed. The AC unit is outside, and the unit in each room is usually high on the wall. Each room has a remote that sits in a cradle, either under the AC, or more commonly near the light switch, but it is important sometimes to put the remote on the side table for adjusting temperature in the middle of the night. It also needs to be noted that these AC units normally heat as well as cool, so effectively they work like central heating, but with individual temperature controls.
It's also common to have a split system - usually the interior piece (a moulded blower vent thingy) is mounted high on the wall (usually an external wall, although sometimes inside if there's a close roof drainage valley) and an external compressor pump, and that pump can run two internal units. These are controlled by a remote. Larger units can have wired control panels fitted to the wall, such as the American thermostat.
Got one myself!
And then there's some houses, like mine, that have central AC with zones. No remote control though, just a control panel near the kitchen/dining area.
Another big reason for living rooms/kitchens at back of house is open to the backyard, where we live, where the pool is. And is usually a blurred space with big sliding or folding glass doors.
Yes right, and with your back patio/BBQ area overlooking your private oasis with the the kids enjoying splashing in the pool, instead of at the front of the house looking at the street with much less privacy. EDIT: Also this area is ideal for Family Christmas BBQ get togethers, the adults cook up on the barbie the the kids splash in the pool, everybody in one place!
There is nothing better than having the window over the kitchen sink facing the backyard. It makes the house seem much more homely when the rooms you spend most of the time in look out into the backyard.
Our living room/ kitchen faces the front as we live across from beautiful Lake Macquarie
@@FM-qm5xs not for us. Our front faces Lake Macquarie so all our living is at the front
Christmas in Aus is awesome. You start 6 weeks of school holidays, work holidays, it's daylight savings and stays light until 9pm, you're just in party/relax mode until after New Year (many people take holidays over this time,) it's such a great vibe.
It's too hot for Day Light Saving here in WA I think - that hot desert Sun setting in the west.
But agree, you gotta love being able to party New years Eve in the summer - everyone's on holiday!
In reality, that Christmas holiday period really doesn't end at New Year! It continues on in some form until the week after the Australia Day holiday. At that point everything's officially back to business properly, but not before :)
@@mehere8038 Yeah spot on ✌🏻
Yep it's holidays now I love it
Only in the southeast corner. The majority of Aus is NOT on DS
Additionally, in Western Australia the majority of houses are made with double brick walls. That is, both the inner and outer exterior walls will both be brick. This creates an air cavity between the walls which assists with insulation against the extreme temperatures experienced in the summers we get here. Even the inner walls are single brick.
Yeah thank goodness for that.
Australia traditionally knows how to build homes well at least.
We don't have that in QLD. Our house is just brick veneer (built 2008). Our old house was a Queenslander with no brick - all timber. I thought it was just places like VIC and TAS that had brick houses.
@@bencodykirk If you build brick veneer in WA be prepared to invest in good insulation and air conditioning. You WILL need it! Not saying it's bad, but it has definite drawbacks in this climate. I stayed in a real Queenslander in Townsville a couple of times and they are perfect for that climate. The free air flow underneath and through the walls combined with no floor to ceiling walls inside and high ceiling really creates a great comfortable way to live there. I understand why it's tempting to fill in the space downstairs beneath the house with extra living space but you won't be as comfortable if you do. Air flow is the key.
We’re in a double brick house in Adelaide. 1964, was normal.
Not the best for cold or hot weather tho. Straw bale, mud brick or reverse (brick inside, colourbond outside) are more efficient. Years ago , maybe the 70's? the WA govt had an arrangement with Midland brick which led to the proliferation of double brick housing construction.
Loved how you panned to your ceiling fan! 😄 😂
A duvet is a soft quilt filled with down, feathers, or a synthetic fibre such that the inner is removeable. You buy the inner and the covers separately. A doona is an Australian trademark... effectively a duvet . A comforter is made to be used as is. The inner is not removable. Some people just call them quilts. Australia is the on place I've heard a duvet be called a doona.
Definitely called a doona here 😁
Yet in the shops you buy a quilt and a quilt cover. Doona is the brand of quilt. Mine is filled with wool.
@@tiredworkingmum6693 so all quilts must be the doona brand 🤷🏻♀️
I didn't realise that the Doona was originally made by a textile company in Melbourne called Kimptons in the 1970s. Tontine currently own the registered trademark. But yes, a quilt/duvet filled with down, wool, silk, or artificial filling with an out cover of sheet type material which is easy to remove and wash separately, much like a pillow case. My favourite is my doona cover made from two fleecy blankets sewn together with a zip which a doona is stuffed into and a bottom fleecy blanket for a bottom sheet. In winter I never have to worry about getting into a cold bed, just super cosy. Of course only for use in the coldest of months, haha.
@@lynnetrathen4587 no. That’s not right.
I am an Australian. Queenslander now. When I was in Darwin we, for a few years, always had a champagne breakfast starting at 7am. Barbequed chicken, salad, and all sorts of sides. I would supply the champagne and orange juice and chickens, visitors brought a plate and any special type of drinks. This would continue until we either were in a food coma, or too pissed to continue. Then followed (after a sleep) to another house for xmas dinner with roast and trimmings or a barbeque. More drinks. The weather would be about 38 deg celcius and possibly raining.
I spent 6 months in Darwin at school age, and "possibly raining" is such an understatement
You would have to explain what bring a plate is ha ha my first time to Bring a plate I actually took just a plate being a POM didn't know any different that was 1965 SA I was 21
She is from North Queensland so the tropics. Older houses in southern Australia often have no built in heating or cooling, at all. It’s very common to have one portable unit that you move around with you as you spend time in different rooms. Our houses are often freezing in winter.
Plenty of houses up here don’t have air conditioning, especially the older ones. I only put my air con in 2 years ago. Until then we hadn’t had any.
Growing up in Victoria I never knew of a house that didn't have a heater, usually either a gas wall heater or the old space heater, always one in the lounge room and sometimes one it the kitchen.
But yeah, almost no houses had AC when I grew up, it was a luxury to go visit my Nana who had a rattler wall refrigeration unit in her flat. We didn't live in a house with AC until the 2000s and my parents had a ducted evaporative system installed and that was the duck's nuts, but before then we just had oscillating fans.
why does the water in the toilet in the US is so high your nakers would be swimming I came across this in Dubai
Ryan has 'baby brain' 🤣🤣🤣 And Ryan, that statue is a pregnant belly cast, probably hers. It's a thing
LOL. It’s a thing. Love it 🤣
In my room it wasn't my actual belly cast, just one I sculpted out of clay!
Hee seriously questioned the obvious pregnancy cast 😂
My dad lives in South West NSW has 5 AC/heating units. 3 in bedrooms, 1 for dining-kitchen, 1 lounge room. They are set to timers for certain times of day.
He gets as low as 6°F in winter and I have seen 133°F in summer on his verandah in the shade at 10am.
She showed you a Queensland house where the first story wasn’t a story it was just a house built on a set of poles. These are common in Queensland and they’re built that way because of flooding risk. Have to keep checking for white ants/termites as they are rampant in Queensland. Standard house in most states is a single brick veneer. That is a timber frame with bricks on the outside, and terracotta or concrete roof tiles.
Also allows for sir circulation in summer around the whole of the house. Even lowset houses were set about 2-3feet off ground.
Brick veneer on slab is the most common type of house in Queensland and everywhere else now. It's another disease from south of the border.
One other design common in Australia is orientation of the house, the Bedrooms are on the south side, morning rooms (kitchen, breakfast) to the East, Afternoon rooms to the west (Dining, Family, etc.) And filtered windows to the North - minimal light in summer, maximising in winter. For America, flip the North/South orientation.
wtf? you design a house to have bedrooms on the south & dinning/family on the west????? Why on earth would you want the living areas to be where the hottest sun to be infiltrating the house at the times of day people are trying to relax in the living rooms? That's a TERRIBLE design!
My place is perfect! Main bedroom & living room are on the north, so they get sun all day in winter when the sun's low in the sky, but the building is also set just slightly North East, rather than true North, so they also get to see the sunrise, but miss the hot late afternoon westerly sun in summer. West in my place is another villa & at the end of the block is a garden with gumtrees to block out the suns rays from the end villa. My kitchen is to the south, where the heat from the oven & other kitchen appliances helps to warm what is generally the hottest room in the house & generally keeps it cool, again with the angle meaning the sunset is visible from the kitchen window, but no sunlight is able to penetrate
Why you would want bedrooms in the location that is the coldest part of the house in winter, living room in what is the hottest part of the house in summer and limiting the northern sun ie winter sun, from penetrating the house is beyond me!
If there's no constraints on the build, in general in Australia (and everywhere, except reversing north & south in northern hemisphere), bedrooms are to the east, living rooms to the north, kitchen & bathroom to the south & garage to the west
@@mehere8038 I should have used the words "for example".... but it's also dependent on your locality, you may actually want your bedrooms to be cooler than living spaces, particularly in summer. The east west thing is having the morning sun for breakfast and afternoon sun for the evening, and this is coming from the Colonial ans Federation style farm house.... the other design is to create a central courtyard or quad, which could be cooler than the outside.
@@PiersDJackson no-one wants a living room facing west in Australia! Houses that have that have a far lower value than houses with a different set up! Try looking at real estate ads & see what they promote. It's NEVER "westerly facing living room" is it! Key rooms facing north is what they promote
@@PiersDJackson & just to add, beyond the heat is also the sun's glare issue. The house I lived in as a young kid had south facing double glass doors on the living room, but also a small window on the western side & that was a nightmare! impossible to see the tv screen before the sun set! We tried a range of curtains & blinds & I'm sure today there's good enough to stop all light, but back then there either wasn't, or my parents couldn't afford it, so effectively no tv before sunset, cause of that little westerly window! The huge glass doors were no issue, just the little westerly window was the issue
The westerly bad is so well established that it's even a line in the song Ryan reacted to the other day "The block is awkward, it faces west"
@@mehere8038 forget the mcmansions and the ¼ acre homes, I will admit that the West is where the "good room", the formal dining room is, for the simple fact that you want evening light. Also look at a FARMHOUSE layout.
Summer Christmas is good because you can just have a bbq in the sun with all your family, go for a swim and play some cricket. Overall a good time.
Christmas here in Australia definitely included Prawns (Shrimp in America) as a pre lunch appetiser and some actually still do the Turkey or Chicken with roast vegetables etc. and Plum Pudding and custard after - my mother always did the traditional Christmas Day lunch - we always had a snooze (sleep) after lunch - we always saved opening presents until Christmas morning- it was a lazy day for us but Mum definitely deserved a rest after lunch was over 👏🥰🇦🇺
Haha…you forgot the Chrissy Ham
@@leithbelbin1438 - you’re right - oops ! 😂😂🥰
We didn’t have “plum pudding” in my family. We had “Johnny in the Bag”. It’s wrapped in calico and boiled forever. My grandmother put in sterile, clean coins. I love it.
My grandmother had 7 brothers and sisters so the “Johnny in the Bag” was enormous! It took at least a day to cook.
@@sherrylovegood - similar- Mum always called it Plum pudding- had heaps of fruit in it including dried plums also wrapped in calico to cook- put a sixpence in each kid’s puddings - a treat we looked forward to ❤️👍🏿🇦🇺
@@mariagrant2072 For me, Christmas was my grandparents. My grandmother cooked for days. My grandfather decorated the tree and the entire extended family would be there. After dinner & dessert was gift time. Christmas morning was great, but Christmas night was the best night of the year. All of the family together. I miss it.
All houses in Australia have the living area, kitchen, dining rooms/areas at the back...this way we can renovate our backyards into beautiful outdoor living areas that connect to the indoor living areas with large french or bifolding doors.
Bedrooms are usually at the front and/or sides of the house.
If a multi level house...then bedrooms are just on top but then the formal lounge room and dining rooms tend to be towards the front with the kitchen, dining and informal living areas towards the rear.
@Frances Williams I have lived in a few places in Queensland and always the bedrooms were in the back of the house., living room in front.
@Frances Williams okay then, 98% of houses.
Houses aren’t all the same here in Australia so it’s not something you can generalize on. Like any other country we build our homes according to climate, where the sun rises & sets, lifestyle choices, style appeal, family dynamics,
@@lorrainewalker9674
Everyone knows about the Queenslander, with its central rooms and covered in breezeways around the perimeter ...but in general...and in every other state, bedrooms always tend to be up front, especially the master. The only time this isn't the case, is if a house has had extensions added and extra bedrooms were added. The only other room out front is usually the loungeroom.
I have lived in every state, in many locations for many years and I know that even in Queensland, a non-queenslander house will also have this layout...the only time a house might be different is if the house was built specifically as a holiday house...where the view is used to orient the layout.
Back in the 70s we lived in a weather board house (wood ) it was stinking hot 🔥 in summer with mosquitoes biting and plenty of tossing and turning flipping your pillow too get the cool side or running through the sprinkler and getting prickles in your feet which grew in the lawn
My family calls the doona a quilt most of the time. Good ones have eiderdown or wool inside. You can wash the cover in with the sheets. I think you're meant to dry clean the inside.
My family tends to do the seafood and the hot traditional lunch but now more of the seafood, cold chicken and salads. My Nan's house used to get super hot and everyone was stressed with the cooking. Easier to have the cold food and less stress.
I have AC in my bungalow plus a fan. Yes my AC comes with a remote. The beauty of this is, I can run my AC at it’s lowest fan power and my ceiling fan higher. If it’s not too hot then just the ceiling fan… saves on AC
Warm weather Christmases are what we're used to - it's quite natural to have a BBQ or go to the beach - though my family always had the traditional roast lunch despite the heat 😅 As for houses, ceiling fans and individually controlled air con in bedrooms are common where this woman grew up, but not so much further south where we have a proper winter. It's common to have bedrooms at the front of older houses, but not newer ones.
we used to go to my grandparents for xmas and that was normal, all hot food but it was cooked with the wood stove as well as electric.
Those aircon units she is talking about are generally used in more tropical areas of Australia. Where I live in Western Australia we have central reverse cycle (heats and cools) and the vents are in the ceiling but in newer houses and new units you can shut off and turn on different areas and set the temperatures.
G'day Mate, my home has 5 separate cool & heat air-cons. I live in Brisbane, so heating is not a big thing. Each room has a split system air-con.
Sunshine Coast here we have 9 split systems and ceiling fans in each bedroom.
Insulation! That's one of the biggest differences. Our older homes usually have barely any insulation. Cold in winter, hot in summer.
I live in Melbourne Australia 🇦🇺 and Christmas is fantastic! All the kids play outside with their Christmas presents, like bikes, rollers blades, skateboards and play in their swimming pools.
Remote control for the AC is standard in Nigeria, where I live at the moment. Nearly all appartment or houses have no central cooling
Zoned central heating and cooling as well as and exist in Australia depending what state you're in and how old the house is. Older home tend to have fans rather than central units seen in newer builds. Also my house has the main bedroom in the back of the house not the front. It is also a newer build.
Xmas in summer is about drinking cold beer, relaxing on the beach, and chucking a steak on the barbie.
I’m in Perth Western Australia and have lived in so many houses, they have been different ages, and had different features. My current house is newly built with no ceiling fans, but it has ducted reverse cycle. I’ve had main bedrooms at the front, at the back, and at the sides. And Christmas is bloody hot here, we’re generally in the pool, at the beach or under the sprinklers!
Here for this. Ducted reverse cycle is bliss, especially when you can control each "environment" individually.
We also get to celebrate Christmas in July in Australia... where we eat the hot Christmas foods that we don't want to eat when it is stinking hot in December. Christmas in July is usually celebrated with friends rather than family groups.
Clearly a QLD thing
NO THE FUCK WE DONT
That sounds like something foreigners in Australia would do, any typical born Aussie would think how stupid and money grabbing that idea is
@@richardmeyer2258 Not in this house in QLD haha. I've never done "Christmas in July". Anyway, I'd think it would be more a southern state thing as it's somewhat cold there in July.
@@bencodykirk South Australia isn’t Melbourne thankfully. We do not celebrate Christmas in July ever 😂
We have 4 individual aircon/heater units in my house in Oz, one in each bedroom and another in the lounge room. Great for the dry hot summer and cold winter (I live in Melbourne). We have another gas wall heater which is used in winter. Christmas can get really hot but as I have an English heritage I still cook roast pork and veg but also have crayfish (lobster), prawns and oysters. Seafood at Christmas is a must.
Most AC remotes have a wall-mounted bracket. A little self-discipline means you never lose them. I'm a twice-divorced bachelor with a king to myself. When sleeping alone I am free to starfish. When a lady friend stays over, there's plenty of room for us both. Christmas in Aus families often features a game of backyard cricket, often with too many beers (too many Coopers Pale are barely enough), and rules made up to suit the environment. Happy times.
I'm in Perth, Western Australia, I have reverse cycle splits rather than the huge initial outlay of a ducted system, though a central system nicer looking.
And as the norm in the west, full brick, double brick outer walls, single brick internal.
Many houses and apartments in Australia don't have air-conditioning at all. Those that do, it's almost always a reverse cycle (heat or cool) split system ... which is basically a single unit for each room you want to cool or heat. Ducted (central) heating and cooling is not common here. It's way too expensive to install, and the cost of running it would be astronomical. We really only heat or cool one room in the house here .. and stay in that room til bedtime. Not many people heat or cool overnight - again, it's just too expensive. Even in our coldest locations, we don't heat while everyone is asleep. You you get used to ice cold bathrooms in the middle of the night 😄. Finally, we have remote controls because we don't leave our heating/cooling on around the clock. If we're in a room for two hours, we only have it switched on for those two hours.
We had ducted central reverse cycle air conditioning installed when we built the house so the cost got absorbed into the mortgage. It is expensive to run, but we have 20 solar panels to help offset the cost. (I'm in Brissie, btw). My wife's medical conditions require that she stay cool so at the moment we're running the AC 24/7 pretty much.
As an Aussie living in Southern New South Wales; i can assure you that almost every house here has central heating and cooling, as well as wall mounted invertors for heating and cooling. My house is 2 storey and I have both systems because I don't like heating everything when I don't have to. FYI....our main bedroom is on the bottom floor.
In North Queensland, we rarely if ever need heating and when it is cooler, it's a novelty to have to put a doonah/comforter/duvet on your bed.
We didn't even have ceiling fans in our Queenslander, always had to have box fans or the ones on a stand. I'll never forget the excitement I had when we finally did get ceiling fans installed. I don't know how my mum managed all those years, coming from NSW, to the sweltering tropics. Loads of people who come up here can't handle it in summer and they go what we call, troppo 🥵 🤣 . They go crazy, get cranky, or just act really weird. Sometimes it's like being in an outdoor sauna, except you can breathe and it's actually really good for your skin.
Anyway, everything is upstairs, while the laundry, garage and workshop are downstairs.
Christmas feels totally different in Summer but still wonderful our way. I wear air conditioning to bed and a sheet. We downsized to retire, we had central heating and cooling but we could turn off the rooms we weren’t using. Now we have split system air conditioning and heating in every bedroom with a remote that is attached in a holder to the wall, my art room and both living rooms, dining and kitchen. In 6 years we tried the heating once to see what it felt like. That was enough. Our bedroom A/C and my art room get used the most. During the day we leave the doors and windows open so living on the ocean we almost always have a sea breeze.
We only use a doona cover for one third of the year with out sheet and a quarter of the year we use a doona or duvet in it. I live in the tropics and I still send my kids fluffy things to sleep in to keep warm down at the bottom of Aus.
My last 3 homes were two storey but yes, the master is at the front. I love looking at the ocean in bed and hearing it. My Dad built our first home in 1953. The master bedroom was at the front. We have moved 39 times and I cannot think of one home where it wasn’t at the front.
How does one "wear air conditioning to bed"? 🤣
Hi Ryan, it is so fun watching your reactions to life in Australia.
I have ‘vacationed’ (US term for ‘holidayed’….the Aus term) in US quite a few times…and there are definitely a lot of differences.
One thing that stands out to me is that the reason for a main or ‘master’ bedroom being at the front of the house in a single story house here in Adelaide, Australia, is that we have living areas that ‘spill’ onto our outdoor living areas which are in our back yards. My house has our main bedroom at the front along with one living area, but the main living area opens to our expansive under-cover outdoor area. Our other bedrooms are also towards the back of the house allowing more privacy for parents.
Also, we have fans in bedrooms plus individual controls for the temperature of air-conditioning and heating for each room, and yes, it is via remote controls that have their homes in a ‘holder’ by the door to the room. We don’t seem to lose the remote controls because we use them so often….I often wake at night and ‘nudge’ our bedroom temperature up or down a degree….i keep the remote within reach for this….as well as the remote for the ceiling fan and lights.
I always thought that the master bedroom was at the front of the for security reasons, so our parents could see who was out the front or incase anyone broke in they would have to get past dad and mum before they could get to the rest of the house and us kid's.
Sup!Could you react to “which commonwealth force did the British love or value the most?” By the front
Could you also react to how New Zealand could be the hiding 8th continent? *zealandia*
Any video would be okay
Edit: actually react to “is New Zealand the 8th continent?” By atlas pro
The front is also Australian btw
Agree👍
That is indeed something I wanna see
More of the zelandia video then the other video
As a New Zealander myself
That would be something I would LOVE to see🇦🇺🇳🇿
So many comments this quickly?
The term 'doona' for duvet or continental quilt came about because the first Australian company to introduce them was Kimptons and they marketed them as Doonas. Much like we often call tissues 'Kleenex', even if they aren't. Brits refer to their vacuum cleaner as a 'Hoover', again even if it isn't.
The main difference I noticed about US bedrooms is there is no ceiling light, and the light switch turns on the bedside lamps. I would always forget to turn them back on in the morning, so at night I would flick the switch and nothing happens; still stuck in a dark room. Also found no ceiling fans in most places in northern states, eg CA, OR, WA, ID, New England.
Happy Arvo!
I lived in NYC and Massachusetts. No ceilings fan. No central cooling, but central heat. Also, no ceiling lights which I found so odd! No laundry. I had to go to the laundromat.
I refused to go in the basement which had a dirt floor. I was very puzzled by that. Had it a proper floor and a washing machine, I would have gone down. I didn’t see the point of bring up musty old dirt into the house.
I really enjoyed Thanksgiving and it was bitterly cold in NYC for Christmas and New Year’s Eve in Times Square. My Drizabone was life to me!
Quilt or Doona in Australia. She is correct about OZ main bedroom is usually at the front near front door
Come on, Christmas wouldn't be the same without the surfing Santa's!
I live with my son, he has a super king here in Australia. He thinks it's awesome because it's square & he no longer makes the mistake of putting the fitted sheets on the wrong way around. lol
Ryan, I also have a remote for the Air conditioner 😅
I sit in my seat and point it when I want it on. If it gets too cold, I'll adjust the temp from the remote. Very handy
I live in Melbourne and I have an air con in my bedroom, no ceiling fans anywhere. In my case I have 3 air conditioners in the house. All have their remote controls but I can control them via my phone too via a Wi-Fi app. The house you see in her video are known as Queenslanders, not really seen down here. Most houses here are either solid brick or brick veneer (brick cavity) homes, many look like Californian bungalows or are somewhat in that style. Over the last 20-30 years two storied homes (a ground floor and one above) are by far the most common newly built homes here now. Bungalow style NEW homes are not common anymore, not in Melbourne anyway, I can't speak for other states or cities.
“Skipping this! Sorry Lawrence!” 😂😂😂 It was the no hesitation to skip that cracked me up!!
Air conditioning in Australia varies depending on where you live (and your budget). In SA, southern WA and far western NSW the lower humidity makes evaporative air conditioning a good option, it’s lower cost and better health wise because it’s basically fresh air circulating through your house. When I lived in Perth most houses had an evaporative unit on the roof. We used ours with the water running through it during the day and at night when it cooled down outside we would switch the water off and just have the outside air blown through the house.
Most split systems and ducted air con are reverse cycle, it cools in summer and warms in winter. When I lived in Sydney we had individual split systems in various rooms. It was an older house and we added units to the rooms as we could afford them. Where I live now on the NSW east coast I have air con ducted right through the house with ceiling vents and it is zoned so I can do the whole house or just sections of it. My daughter lives nearby and she has mostly ceiling fans with a split system in the living area but she is high on a hill and catches the sea breezes. A cousin in southern Tasmania doesn’t have cooling but has double glazing and a heat pump or alternatively a wood stove for the winter.
As for Christmas we have the best of both worlds, a hot Christmas Day with family, barbecues and swimming and Christmas in July parties with hot roasts, mulled wine, Christmas pudding and decorations.
yes that's correct you can have your own air con in your own bedroom its been done for years and it dosnt cost a lot of money having ducted heating/cooling the master bedroom back in the 1950's right up to now in australia was *always at the front and the second and third bedroom was at the back
That's something I've noticed in new houses.
The kids rooms at the front of the house I prefer my room at the front
@@naomimoran5564 when i used to live in a three bedroom house back in the 1970's the master bedroom and bedroom one and lounge were at the front bedroom three was at the side and you have the kitchen,toilet and bathroom at the back
My bedroom is full of 80 and 90 nostalgia because those were the days 😌
my whole house is 80s 🤣🤣
Except for the lack of air-conditioning... You were lucky if you had a fan in summer or a heater in winter. In Australia. 😁
Yep, I have both a ceiling fan & remote controlled air-conditioner in my bedroom.
Same
AC is 100% the most important thing in my bedroom haha couldn't sleep without it on, BBQ down at the beach for Christmas ♥️
My life goal is now to own an Alaskan king bed haha.
And then you could change your name from "Ashley King" to "Alaska King" 😂
Its probably not a statue but a cast. Possibly of the lady herself during a get children period. Its a thing some people do. A friend of my daughter had one of herself in her hall. The Australian air conditioners are ducted to all rooms and often controller by zone, bedrooms and living may form zones as one type and split systems as the other. The split systems are generally one per room in the desired location and are found everywhere, they are designed for single rooms of almost any size. They are controlled by a remote control, the cheap ones only have on off and temperature up and down and cooling only. The better ones are reverse cycle have air swing vanes and have programmable automatic on and off times and temperatures that can be set or revoked from the controller. I have 3 units, one in the kitchen and family room, one in the lounge and of course one in the bedroom. They just get turned on as needed. The house is insulated (Australian housed are not often insulated) but when its 40C outside they still get used a fair bit.
The split systems are popular as Australians tend to live inside and outside with outside just being an extension of the house. But at 40C that outside friendship can vanish, or it can be maintained by having one room shut off and cooled as a relaxing recovery room. Best of all worlds.
Lol. It doesn't matter how big your bed is. The ladies want it all. Kind of like our souls ha ha. (Just kidding, the world hasn't gone that mad has it?)
Here in Tasmania, my christmas usually consists of a BBQ lunch with the family, generally catching up with family members you haven't seen since last christmas. Everyone usually drinks and eats too much, then we go out back for a game of cricket, or kick the footy around, everyone usually gets involved, and we generally all have a good laugh at how bad we are at it, then everyone goes home very full of food, usually with a hefty haul of leftover pavlova, trifle, some christmas cake, a platter of roast meats and whatever else is left. people still do the tree, and decorations and all that stuff, but i'd say it's a little less extravagant than in the US, though back when I was a kid in the early 90's there seemed to be a lot more christmas lights on peoples houses than there is today
We have ducted gas heating and ducted evaporative cooling. It's not normally muggy in Melbourne but when it is, this cooling is useless, but cheap to run and works most of summer. Our main bedroom is on the second floor at the front of the house. She didn't touch on ensuites, is it normal to have an ensuite in America? All modern homes have one now and older homes are renovated to include one. Also walk in robes are standard in the main bedroom and smaller walk in robes are popular now in the secondary bedrooms if they don't have walk in robes they almost always have built in robes. I know in England they still have freestanding wardrobes mainly.
I spun out to see that Your houses eat the dust piles You's sweep up! It's a sucker thing in the skirting boards. I had an American chick stay at My place in 2006 while visiting My Brother, she couldn't grasp the concept of the clothesline and that I didn't have a dryer and this was in Summer lol
A new export market for the good old hill hoist.
I have a dryer, only ever use it when it's raining, been getting used alot this year,
ducted vacuum systems have been in Australia for decades ..and my old post clothesline is just about buggered ,might have to get a new fandangled rotary hoist ..sad face..never a dryer though,they just want to burn your house down
@@cheryl1766 wait...what?! I have ducted air con but I cant sweep My dust piles into the house and it sucks it away! Is this an option I can have? Cause I keep forgetting a new dustpan and brush every bloody time I go shopping!
Ceiling fans are common in Qld and NT but not so much the southern states so I think she may give the impression all Aus houses have them when they just don't. Not all houses have bedrooms at the front either. We would never call what goes into a doonah cover a blanket - it's a doonah or quilt. We have comforters too but they are a bedspread with the quilt sewn into the cover so they're not detachable ( I have one of these). I liked her bed comparison though - that Alaskan sounds amazing!
Bollocks! Ceiling fans are standard in Adelaide, often in combination with ducted reverse cycle air conditioning. That’s what happens when electricity is expensive - fans most of the time in summer, air con when it gets really hot.
@@I_hate_Vegemite sorry to lump SA into Southern stares when you obviously have lots of ceiling fans there! Anywhere that gets hot will have them but you don't see them much in Melbourne so her comments don't represent the whole of Australia in my opinion!
I love my central heating and cooling system. It is zoned so we don't heat/cool unused rooms.
She's generalising a lot. Where bedrooms & living rooms are situated vary. She talks about Queensland but even there it varies. My Aunty's main bedroom is on the side but at the back of her house with the living room at the front & she doesn't have any ceiling fans or air-conditioning. Everything is relative to needs. I live in South Australia & the main bedroom & living room is at the front but for others in my family the house design varies. I have ceiling fans in the bedrooms & my air-conditioning is a water-cooled evaporated unit. I use a multi-finned oil heater which is electrically powered. Assuming all houses in Australia are as she describes is crazy. Not to mention Pyjama wear. It depends on where you live we wear what the weather determines. We vary in weather from tropical to temperate, to close to the Antarctic (Tasmania), arid desert to coastal, mountainous to fertile plains, islands to mainland, so one cannot generalise & I imagine the same applies to the US. Just my opinion 🤔🇭🇲
our A/C is evaporative, like a giant water cooler on the roof that it disperses around the whole house... so we put the comforter, or quilt or duna inside a cover, this is what she's referring to 2 sheets.... our comforters are plain white and the cover goes over the quilt. quilt may be a term used in SA we also call it a duna
In Tasmania the bedrooms are all at the back of the house, i have never seen a house with a bedroom at the front of the house unless its a small apartment or the livingroom doubles as the bedroom.
2 story houses are also not that common but have been becoming more common in recent years.
When you and your family do eventually get here for a holiday make sure it’s at Christmas. A summer Christmas is just joyful (so long as there aren’t fires).
We have a heater that is in the living room(for the whole house) and an A/C in the living room also, that has a remote control, it only cools one room. the rest of the rooms we all have desk fans to cool us off when we are trying to sleep. I live in Melbourne Australia. It's very wet here at the moment (floods) I really enjoy your videos, thank you for sharing with us.
High velocity fans are amazing for hot weather
🤣we have remote control for ceiling fans and their lights as well
We have many different air cons
Swampy which is evaporative uses water over filters knocks about 10 degrees off temp but don't work in humidity
Then refrigeration which are reverse cycle for heating as well
Basically like your central units and will be set up like your 5 to 6 vents
Our new ones now you can heat or cool individual rooms and if you change room you can transfer the temperature from one room to another this way it's cheaper to run as transfer hot and cold air to what ever room your in
You should try having a x mas party in middle of summer then you know what Oz x mas
People surf boat out in parks BBQ
Most homes have a TV in their bedrooms as well and side table next to bed either side
We have multiple types air cons and some remote control now we can turn on and off by using your phone so as your heading home you can turn on so house is cool when you get their
Evaporative cooling will knock as much as 20° off if you have low humidity and open enough windows to let the air flow properly.
We go skiing, Water Skiing.
Christmas in Australia is brilliant. You get up early, open the presents, cut the ham and have ham and eggs for breakfast, probably have friends in for drinks before lunch, cook a vast meal served about 2pm with turkey, roast pork, lobster, huge bowls of asparagus, potato salad, Brussels sproutsetc; then Christmas pudding boiled in a cloth, brandy sauce, and vast bowl of strawberries in liquor of some kind, and cream. Then you either collapse in a food coma with the book that was in your presents, or you go and try to assemble the darn swing set. On Boxing Day (26th) you pack up an enormous picnic of leftover turkey, pork, ham, salads, watermelon, and cold Christmas pudding, and go to the beach where you get terribly sunburnt. Perfect! Yay! 🇦🇺
We only have aircon in our bedroom. No fans anywhere. I'm in Canberra so we get cold here, mostly. But summer can be a killer so aircon is a must for me.
Many houses here have ducted a/c with zones selectable,room by room,so you only cool/heat what you need.🙃 My comforter talks back
A doona goes inside a doona cover ( the cover being like 2 sheets sewn together with buttons at the bottom to close it once the doona - a standard white puffy quilt is inside it ) !!! A comforter is a stand alone coloured or printed quilt that doesn't usually get put into a cover but is used on the bed on top of sheets and perhaps also a standard blanket between the top sheet and comforter.
Having never known anything but Australia our Summer Christmas is awesome except for the years that we get a cold rainy Christmas day because many of the kid's presents are outdoor ones and after lunch we typically enjoy a game of cricket in the street with neighbours followed by a long afternoon swim. Kids have 6 weeks of school holidays, one usually starting the week leading up to Christmas Day and five following it. If the adults can get time off work many families head off for a week or two of camping on Boxing Day with a group of friends with all the new bikes, scooters, various games etc coming along for the fun. Access to water is a must be it swimming pools, beaches, lakes or rivers . It's our favourite time of year. Kids start a fresh school year following this 6 week break.
My current house has evaporative air con, but it is turned off because it isn’t very efficient & needs a lot of water which is not good during a drought. Instead, the previous owners (it’s now about 10yrs old) have installed individual reverse cycle air conditioners in the Master Bedroom, Loungeroom and Dining/Kitchen. Each has their own remote control & can heat OR cool as required. It even has a timer function so I can turn it on when I go to bed and it will turn off in an hour, by which time I have usually fallen asleep. The master bedroom in this house is the first room of the house. The other bedrooms are at the back of the house.
AC units now come with a little shelf you can attach to the wall to store the remote, I installed mine right near the light switches below the AC so I can always find it.
there is a remote, but it usually sits in a cradle on the wall.
we don't even have AC or a fan in the house. I live in tassie and a coastal area at that, so our normal temperature range is lower and also less extreme, for example we only got about 3 frosts this year winter, but last summer I don't think it got above 27c (80f). we use a wood heater for heating and just open windows in summer. as we are in a costal area, its pretty breezy and if it ever gets to hot to stand, the beach is only down the road. we do have a 'heat transfer system' which consists of an intake vent in the loungeroom ceiling and outlet vents in each of the bedrooms with a duct fan in the middle.
our house is ~30 years old and the bedrooms are at the back, lounge/dinning/kitchen is at the front but the house I grew up in is over 110 years old at this point and the bedrooms are at front and the loungeroom is at the back and would have originally been the kitchen as well, the kitchen/bathroom/laundry were all an extension on the back, the house originally had a detached laundry and an 'outhouse', that was before indoor plumbing was common, particularly in country areas.
Our house (built in the 70's) has all the living areas at the front of the house and the bedrooms at the back. Earlier houses pre wars had the kitchens way at the back or separate to the house due to it being more menial work and not to be seen and of course the heat and smell factor - you didn't want your guests smelling your sunday roast or sweating from all the heat from the stoves and oven. The house I grew up in was built in the late 1800's early 1900's and the laundry and kitchen were originally in a separate building at the back (as well as the outhouse), but when they upgraded at one time in the 60's or 70's (before my time) they built an addition to the back of the house where they put the eat in kitchen and bathroom etc. and as time when on we (as a nation overall) migrated to blending our indoor kitchen and living areas to the outdoor entertaining area which is now pretty common. This is what I have studied and observed over the years, but everyone is different and Australia being such a diverse climatic country it is not all the same.
Oh and the concept of central heating and cooling is not all that common as it is commonly viewed as wasteful to heat and cool areas of the home you don't actual use or aren't in.
11:11 The biggest one story house I worked on was 400m squared. Most times there is a sitting room for guests and then the kitchen. Bedrooms are in the back. My House is open plan so upstairs is Lounge and kitchen. then in the hallway the toilet and bathroom. bedrooms branch off from the hallway.
"a family of 7.....and a puppy !"🤣 cracked me up. Another entertaining video 👍
I have a Daikin Inverter split system air-conditioning unit within my bedroom and it's a godsend in summer.
We need remote controls for our AC as the weather is so hot by the time you try to sleep you have heat exhaustion you can't be bothered getting out of bed.
As an Aussie teen in the 60's, I was always envious of American closets. Back then, we had free-standing wardrobes, that didn't fit all that much. Years later, built-in wardrobes became standard, and later again walk-in wardrobes .
So, in Australia, ducted air is like central air, and yes, most systems support the ability to control the flow to each room. Split systems are like air conditioners that can heat or cool and best suit individual rooms.
We have central heating here in Victoria it is cold for summer and hot for winter yes the unit comes with a remote
Qld is very different to Victoria when it comes to climate and housing. Ceiling fans are great but not standard in Vic. AC is also not standard but becoming very much more common as properties are built and renovated. We also have evaporative cooling. The house we renovated and extended was originally double brick. So the original rooms had no air-conditioning. We did however put individual a/c in the extension in the bedrooms and family rooms. Much of the time it wasn't needed. We put in central hydronic heating throughout the house. Where I am now has centralised ducted heating and a centralised evaporative cooling.
Assuming by "Central HEating/Cooling" she basically means "ducted", then you're not always cooling the whole house anymore (most of them are zoned systems now, I think)...
The bedroom location is interesting....we wanted to build a house with living area at the front and bedroom at the back, but builder basically said "can't do it" (they actually used the excuse that it was to do with getting sunlight into the living area.....but that seemed a bit odd, because the house over the back fence would face the opposite way). Single storey was common in Aus because we got so much space. Increasingly townhouses (and appartments) are becoming very common close to city-centres
I think a pillowy blanket is a comforter, whilst what she is referring to is a quilt/doona which is stuffed with (traditionally) feathers/down (now can be wool) and the put in a quilt/doona cover.
I like having the main bedroom at the front of the house because then I can see who is coming up to the house. I like the kitchen as close to the car too, because it is easy to move food shopping in.
I know in Melbourne with new houses you can get a thing called Zoned Ducted Heating/Cooling, which is just Central Heating/Cooling but each room be be adjusted separately.
Someone in the family hosts a part of the feeding frenzy on the day. Someone will do brekky, another will do lunch and then dinner after that. Everyone normally sleeps in between or plays games like backyard cricket etc.
Christmas Day here in Melbourne as kids we were not allowed to wear our bathers/swimmers to the dinner table for formal Aussie Christmas dinner.. we at least had to wear shorts and a tshirt. In Melbourne we don’t all have ceiling fans as a mandatory. It’s cooler here not tropical and our heat is dry not humid.
A comforter in actually often a cheap one with the polyester wadding sewed inside and quilted, non removable, causing pilling when the filling ends come out in the wash. A quilt cover is clipped closed at one end around a quilt or doona, depending where you come from in Oz. The thick inner quilt/doona is aired and only maybe washed after winter the quilt/doona cover can be washed much more often and changed with the sheets.
Not every house has ceiling fans or aircon, building in "airflow methods" help to save money, we need to change aircon temps here at least twice a day. My cat knocked my floor fan remote under the furniture last summer, still not found yet. It won't work without it, hmm.
the cartoon dog on her jammies was from the aussie cartoon "Bluey," your son may grow to love them?
My English sis-in-law said aussies have too much room in our houses, that we only need 2 power points in the kitchen... we have fridge and freezer, microwave, toaster and kettle. plugged in permanently and need a blender/food processor/sanger toaster/cake mixer, power "plug or 3" as well as phone and internet depending where they are.
For us Christmas is about everyone, children and adults enjoying the day. Kids get to play with the toys and adults get drunk af at the beach.. perfect day😁
My air conditioner/heat pump is not only remote controlled, but I purchased a remote for it that can be voice controlled via a virtual assistant device such as an Echo Dot smart speaker. If I tell it I'm not, it switches to air condition mode at my preferred settings. If I tell it I'm cold it switches to heat pump mode, again, at my preferred settings. If I'm too hot I can tell it to turn off, or to set the temperature to a specific degree, or to reduce the temperature by 1 or more degrees, with the opposite possible if I'm too cold.
We do Christmas at the Beach, BBQ, Cricket, Zinc Cream. COLD WINE. Australians usually have Ducted Air-conditioning or Split Systems. But most of us also have ceiling fans in every room .. but then that's also dependent on where in Australia you live
In Australia, we celebrate Christmas twice: on December 25th and sometimes "Christmas in July".
Love your side eye Ryan, damn straight we have remotes, for the ceiling fan too
We just built a house here in Aus and we have central heating and cooling and we have zones we can alter to the other. We operate it by a central panel and an app on our phones.
We have aircons in our house. One in each bedroom and one in the lounge room!😊❄️❄️❄️
Hi Ryan, that lady is talking about a Doona/Quilt and we put decorative covers ( quilt covers )over them.
So in summer, when I go to sleep, I first turn the AC on (via the remote), hop into bed. By the time I get the pillow and sheet organised, I grab the trusty remote, set the timer and then go to sleep. The timer will turn the AC off after about an hour or so, etc.
Remotes for AC/heating units have a small bracket that you can screw to the wall and place the remote into.