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Comment by design-of-homes | Hacker News Reader

"Terraced houses? In a place with high housing demand?"

What's wrong with terraced housing? It is more suitable for high-density developments than detached or semi-detached housing. A mixed development of houses and flats brings in a variety of different households and people. This makes a place much more attractive to live in than a place with only one type of dwelling. Well-planned terraced housing doesn't have to lead to sprawl.

In the UK, families with growing children have an aversion to flat living. It may be irrational, but this attitude hasn't changed in decades and is unlikely to change in the future.

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> What's wrong with terraced housing?

It's less dense than apartments.

> In the UK, families with growing children have an aversion to flat living.

Maybe because of the abysmal quality and ridiculous size of most accommodations.

Brought to you by people that think carpet in a bathroom is acceptable.

We have separate taps for hot and cold water, and you think the carpet is the problem?

It makes a lot of sense having them separate. Tom Scott explains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfHgUu_8KgA

Here in California showers and much other plumbing are required to have backflow valves so that hot and cold don't cross contaminate.

Not from a usability point of view.

Given how important water is, the consequences of contamination etc, safety was given first priority, then simplicity. How would you have done better?

Mixed taps are all over the US and many other places in the world and have been for a while and we have no water safety issues from this. Water safety has nothing to do with it:

"Most bathroom sinks in Britain still have separate hot and cold taps today, 60 years after Mr. Churchill’s conversion and decades after nearly all dual taps were scrapped in the U.S. and most vanished from continental Europe. For reasons of thrift, regulations and a stubborn attachment to tradition, the British have resisted the tide of plumbing history. Even when they renovate old homes, many choose two-tap systems, and builders often install them in new, low-end housing. Separate taps account for an estimated 40% of all bathroom-faucet sales in the U.K."

From: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/mhillebrandt/entry/british_peculi...

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