For all the complaints of the EU’s uptight regulation and policies, they sure could stand to normalize their building codes.
Posted by
Mop (aka rburriel)
Oct 8 '22, 10:31
|
OK, so I’m complaining about stuff built before the EU, but man… in the 40+ years I’ve been visiting Spain, things haven’t really gotten any better.
Light switch placement on the walls…
Power receptical placement…
Door knobs…
Door *sizes*…
Faucets…
Shower placement…
It’s a surefire validation that if you leave a contractor to their own devices, they’re just going to make shit up - and make it up differently - every single time!
I stayed in 5 different hotels while in Spain. It is true that not a single one of them was probably constructed in the 21st century so this is all archaic and probably not true any more. But I’ll give some examples…
Show heads placed on the horizontal. What does that mean? Literally, if not for the shower curtain, you’d be spraying right into the bathroom. Add to that narrow bathtubs and shower curtains that are too long to place inside the tub (you’d literally be walking on the hem of the curtain) but cannot be placed outside the tub as the water would pour out.
Bath faucets that are separate so that you have to run the hot water and then turn on the cold to moderate the temperature. A clear path to scalding yourself.
Light switches that are *outside* the bathroom (this is practically universal). And their placement that is either too high or too low on the wall, and often times far from the door frame.
Doorknobs that aren’t knobs. You can’t turn them. One was just for pushing and pulling. Another had a button that you’d think was for the lock but no it was for latch.
Most rooms had too few - if any - outlets to plug in stuff. And while all rooms had AC, it was clear that many of them were spewing mold as the grates around the AC were… you know… moldy.
Sure, this isn’t “I went to the jungle and had to shit in a hole in the ground!” levels of entitlement, but some of these things, in retrospect, seem pretty obvious. But I’ll admit that until someone recognized the obviousness of it and wrote it into building codes, no one seemed to realize there was a problem. The problem is largely rooted in the fact that I leaned towards bargain hotels and that’s just what you get. As these hotels get remodeled (or collapse under their own decrepitude), things will change.
I will regale you all with more tales in the coming days!
|
Responses:
-
We went to a pub last night that had two faucets. One was 10000°F, the other was 32.001°F
-
JaxSean
Oct 8, 13:35
-
You go to Europe FOR all that stuff. It isn't like home. Also, two faucets isn't that odd anywhere. -- nm*
-
Andie
Oct 8, 11:35
-
Did any of them have bathrooms as big as the bedroom, because that's what they were originally? -- nm
-
Meg
Oct 8, 10:37
-
About this one...
-
Marlowe
Oct 8, 10:35
4
-
My house was originally constructed in the 20s. I have separate faucets, a switch on the outside, and too few outlets -- nm
-
crash davis
Oct 8, 10:34
4
|