"Until now, it has been unusual for estate agents to quote the floor area of
properties that they are advertising"
However without exception Estate agents advertise the length and widths of
room. In most cases this is in feet and inches only but sometimes a
bracketed meter amount is included.
I remember when I sold my last house the first agents I used did this and
apparently my living room was 23 ft long (33.1 metres). Obviously someone
wasn't very good with the calculator!
So with houses sqft tends not to get used but instead a LxW figure is quoted
which I think is a better way of describing a room (system aside)
Also - office space is "mainly" in sq ft - but you are right in saying that
some show "sq m" (although very very few and this tends to accomany the sq
ft size).
Office space and house dimensions seem to be an area where metric has not
really made in-roads, probably because you tend not to buy a house by its
dimension.
From: "Martin Vlietstra" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Subject: [USMA:39167] Re: Pure SI for area in UK?
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:50:13 +0100
The situation in the UK is a "Very British Mess"
Sometimes office space is advertised in square feet, sometimes in square
metres, sometimes in both. Farming subsidies (which are set by the EU) are
paid per hectare so farmers know exactly how large their farms are in
hectares. Of course, the moment some journalists see the word "hectare",
they whip out their calculators and give an Imperial equivalent to a
ridiculous number of decimal places. The Farmers Weekly on-line magazine
is
a right mess when it comes to land sales, but all of the figures that I saw
regarding British crop yields were in metric units (even though many had
Imperial units in brackets).
Next month sees the introduction of Home Information Packs in England and
Wales. What this means is that before you sell a house, you must get
together a dossier that has an "Energy Certificate" and copies of various
other papers regarding your property. One of the mandatory features of the
Energy Certificate is the estimated energy required to heat the property to
a specified temperature, taking into account the method of construction,
the
"useful floor area in square metres" and the energy per square metre.
Until
now, it has been unusual for estate agents to quote the floor area of
properties that they are advertising. (Typically they are advertised as
being 3/4 reception rooms, 3/4 bedrooms).
The EU Commission working party has stated its position regarding the
proposed amendment to the EU directive on units of measure. Basically, it
seems that the 31-Dec-2009 deadline will be removed, but that the directive
will be extended to included areas of "customer protection" in addition to
"commercial purposes". I understand this to mean that it will be mandatory
for advertising literature to have metric units. Also, the acre is being
dropped form the list of imperial units that might be used.
_____
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Mike Millet
Sent: 23 July 2007 03:17
To: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:39150] Re: Pure SI for area in UK?
I don't think it's gone quite totally. I hear lots of references to the
acre
in various BBC shows such as My Family and some of the earlier ones.
If I recall correctly, there is still some confusion as to whether or not
the UK uses square foot or square meter for things like office space.
At least most other references on the shows are in SI though. I remember
one episode of My Family where the husband was mad because the neighbors
had
taken ten centimeters of his property and built a fence.
Mike
On 7/22/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote:
I noticed in this BBC News science article that only the hectare is used
for
area.
It looks like non-SI units for area are either a vanishing breed or gone
altogether:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6909249.stm
Perhaps UK readers can confirm.
Ezra
--
"The boy is dangerous, they all sense it why can't you?"
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