Friday, April 7

Numbers

Why oh why do people make the single biggest investment of their life’s, spending tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds and then fail to furnish it with a £2.00 number. How they expect people to find them when I regularly find whole sides of a street with only one or two houses numbers between them I don't know. It’s bad enough in daylight but how on earth can they expect the emergency services to reach them in a crisis at night. Come on folks you can even get self-adhesive numbers buy one for your house now; it may save your life one day. Maybe there is a business or fund-raising idea here apparently it’s been tried successfully in other countries so why not here.
And maybe we should ban those pretentious house names and numbers in an illegible script. Whilst on the subject I know of at least one street in Barrow numbered 12/a instead of 13 and another which doesn’t have a number thirteen at all.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

man. i used to be a pizza delivery boy. i feel your pain. oh i feel it.

the worst are those people who insist that their house doesn't have a number because its called 'the mews' or some other made up name.

Anonymous said...

Take a look at http://www.999whereareyou.org with regards to house numbers

Anonymous said...

Yep, same frustration when I deliver - but thankfully mine are done in daylight. I loathe the ones where numbers are spelt out eg "seventeen", typically in a schmancy illegible font.

Back when I lived in a leafy suburb of Melbourne, enterprising folk would periodically trawl the streets looking for poorly numbered houses. They'd explain the problem for deliveries and especially for emergencies, then offer to paint reflective numbers on the kerb for a $5-10 fee. It was a useful service and they did a good job: same paint as road markings, showed up beautifully at night, consistent location - no more looking all over mailboxes and housefronts trying to spot the number.

Maybe local charities could provide the service in your area, pocketing those fees as a fundraiser. Liaise with police etc to ensure they're happy with paint, font, location etc.

Cheers from the font-conscious
RipSkater

Anonymous said...

Bob,
Here, in Texas, the Boy Scouts sometimes organize a fund raiser where they paint or transfer the numbers onto the curb. All curbs are supposed to be numbered in case of emergencies. I only remember the number on our gate on Walney but standardised curb numbering seems to be an intelligent idea.
Steve

Anonymous said...

A problem for us meter readers at times too but at least they standardized numbering in the country instead of the useless RMB numbers (Rural Mail Box). Now all country properties have been made to put on a standard white number on black background on their gates/fences. Makes sense for emergency services too.

Anonymous said...

Here on Kihei, all the homes use RURAL MAILBOXES. Typically located at the curb, near the driveway, either mounted on a pole (wood or metal) or encased in a decorative cement pillar.

Most are painted a medium primer gray. It is not uncommon to have the house number penciled on the side of the box. Try reading that at night.

Those boxes that do have numbers, have the digits varying in size down to 1/2 inch (1.27 centimeters). Most are missing at least one of the digits and are seldom reflective.

Address sequencing varies by location, also. Seldom do you find a "1-5-10-15-..." progression. Most are between a 6 and 18 spread.

Some as with you folks, finding the exact address becomes a matter of deductive intuition.

New subdivisions have centralized multi-mailboxes, usually located in the middle of each block. Not useful for locating a specific residence. These houses normally have the number displayed near the garage door and typically have a yard spotlight, shining directly towards you, just above the number. Quite often these numbers are painted the same color as the house. The use of "script" letters, rather than digits, is becoming more common.

This is obviously a worldwide problem, based on the post and comments here.

bob mullen said...

Well this one sure had a few biting it was going to be a small piece in my weekly column but now when I get time I will expand on it with all the input you all have given, hope no one minds if I pinch a few ideas, Thanks all!!

Anonymous said...

I try to find any number I can as soon as I turn on the street then do my best to get the pattern down just in case the number I am looking for is not on the house.

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_floor