Friday, March 10, 2023

What floor are you on?

In Australia multi level buildings have a ground floor then a first floor and then a second floor and so forth.

As I understand in North America it works that what we call the ground floor is the first floor and so our first floor will be their second floor.

I have readers all over the world. Is your ground level floor called ground level or first floor?

Over to you for an answer from England, Belgium, Canada, South Africa, France, Japan, India and anywhere I have missed out. I will already guess that ground floor then first floor is used in Britain.

I actually think the North American system makes more sense, though it is not what I am used to.

29 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Jaycee, as I kind of knew but thanks for the confirmation.

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  2. Here in Canada the 1st floor is the ground floor.

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    1. Yes Pat, as I remember, the same as the US.

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  3. Well you know what I know. Did you see the report about someone in a highrise in Sydney who keeps vomiting over their balcony onto the residents below? I thought of you and the urine filled condom. Not sure which would be worse!!

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    1. I didn't see that story Caro. NYE about 2004 someone vomited above and it landed on our balcony. Hung over on NYD, R asked me to clean it up. It did. A boarder whose window is a metre away from our balcony vomited out his window and down the wall. The stain remained for years.

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  4. Australia is more of a british framework with american contents in it

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    1. Nicely put Roentare. I may use that phrase.

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  5. Being from the US, you don't need my input, as you already know how it goes here. Right now for instance I am sitting in a chair on the ground floor, first floor main floor, one and only floor of this house. However, if I were really on the floor, I wouldn't be sitting on this chair would I.

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  6. I've been in several elevators that start with G and I find them very confusing;) Good post, Andrew:)

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    1. That's interesting to learn Sandra. I assume you mean in your country. In theory it should not cause a problem as the lift buttons accurately have the floor numbers.

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  7. Worse still, the Americans write "story" instead of "storey" and it takes me a while to understand the sentence.

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    1. Hels, it is one of those attention breaking words for us when we are reading.

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  8. I don't agree, a ground floor is the one level with the ground and shouldn't be called a first floor. I live on the ground floor and upstairs is the first floor and that's all there is where I live, nothing more than two storeys in the whole complex and the original old house is a single storey divided into four flats.

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    1. Your reasoning is quite sound River. Interesting to learn about the original house.

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  9. Where did my comment go? Usually it pops up right away.

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    1. All three of you comments went to spam River. I'll leave you second comment as it has more information.

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  10. Perhaps I forgot to click on "publish". Anyway, I said I don't agree with you. The ground floor is the one level with the ground and shouldn't be called a first floor. I live on the ground floor and upstairs is the first floor and that's all there is here, nothing higher than two storeys in the whole complex and the original old stone house with a lovely veranda is single storey divided into four flats.

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  11. Try getting into a lift that has LG - G - UG…….then finding out they are all visible to each other through a huge arena. Each ‘floor’ separated from each other by small set of stairs but with no disabled access - hence the lift.
    LG is at street level!

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    1. Cathy, ground should be street level at the main entrance. I like B1, B2 etc for anything lower than ground. Try UC at the QV shopping centre. Undercroft, a posh word for basement.

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  12. Most of the time here in America it's as you said, "ground" and "floor" are one and the same, but every so often I'll get into an elevator going down where there is such a distinction, and if I don't catch it right away, I'll end up higher up than I want to be.

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    1. Kirk, as Sandra mentioned above. Sometimes you have a ground floor. Going up wouldn't be a problem but I can see the instinct to press 1 rather than ground.

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  13. I find lifts here in England confusing because they call the ground floor 0 and I am always caught thinking do I really want 0. Every time my brain can't quite cope with it. No lift ever says Ground floor.

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    1. Well, I didn't know that Rachel and having visited a few times, I should have noticed. 0 floor further confuses the issue. Who would have thought floor numbering could cause such confusion. This is one of my last minute dashed off posts and is proving to be rather interesting.

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  14. 27th as the lobby is the first floor, however, we usually don't have a 13th floor in most buildings.

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    1. Oh dear Jackie. That complicates things. We have a 13th floor but no apartments in ending in four, an unlucky number for some Asian people. There was a time when our lifts did not display the fourth floor, even though there is one.

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