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Imperial/Metric adverts

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  • 25-11-2007 12:00am
    #1
    mikemac
    Closed Accounts Posts: 19,986 ✭✭✭✭


    A friend is building a new house and I went along with them to a few tile shops today. I had helped measuring the room and so had a rough idea of the area to be tiled and had a quick plan drawn up in a notebook.

    Every single shop sold tiles by the yard. And I got strange looks when I asked prices per square metre. :mad:. I had to convert them on my calculator on my mobile. One shop did this for me though
    Why so, they stopped teaching feet and yards in school over 20 year ago.

    I know some will post that I'm being lazy and I should convert the plans I drew into yards but is there any consumer guideline on this.

    I'd prefer not to buy meat in a butchers by the lbs as I don't know anything about ounces (it's either 14 or 16 :confused:)

    Or am I just being awkward?


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    #2
    chuckles30
    Registered Users Posts: 1,380 ✭✭✭chuckles30


    I have to say that when I went to school it was all metric, but I bought my house last year and when I was measuring for floors or tiles I did all my measuring in feet & inches and had no problems at all. I found most of the people in the shops were still in yards, feet and inches. In general, most things in this country are still discussed in imperial measurements, even if officially it's metric.


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    #3
    davejones
    Closed Accounts Posts: 125 ✭✭davejones


    Your not being awkward ,i used to work in a hardware shop and guys would come in looking for drill bits....etc with imperial sizes, it used to wreck my head, had to get out the Verener's real pain in the nuts.

    Everything should be metric, thats what everybody's taught at school.
    So everything should be sold in those measurements.


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    #4
    Musha
    Closed Accounts Posts: 497 ✭✭Musha


    "Everything should be metric, thats what everybody's taught at school."

    Not everybody, Give us old timers a break,

    any way 1 sq meter + 1.1 sq Yard so there is no major problem if you are getting rough estimates

    this seems to be a issue for younger one who had calculators in school and where not taught to use the grey matter to work out problems


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    #5
    JohnC.
    Registered Users Posts: 3,428 ✭✭✭JohnC.


    I seem to have grown up in a transitional period and am fairly comfortable with both systems, but I do use metric whenever I can.


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    #6
    county
    Registered Users Posts: 6,800 ✭✭✭county


    i tend to use both its not rocket science tbh


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    #7
    Pythia
    Registered Users Posts: 7,469 ✭✭✭Pythia


    Both are allowed to be used, see this article for the recent EU decision about us being still allowed to use it.

    http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/11/style/metric.php


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