Tag Archives: Home

Daylight Robbery

Daylight robbery

With the building of the new house, or should I start again with: when planning to build a home, all sorts of interesting developments tend to crop up.

After plans were drawn up I was surprised to hear about the new law that prescribes the percentage of windows that is allowed in any specific room in a house, especially where western and eastern windows are concerned.This is to ensure optimal energy consumption in the home.

While this makes sense in an economic unit I think it should be my choice if I bought property that would enable me to have a home with an incredible view, I should be able to build the house of my dreams with the view of my dreams. Why should I be penalized because of a new law if all the houses in the area is not compliant, because they were built before the new law was written. I did take a lot of precautions already, but I don’t want to give up on having a great view.

While I was pondering this Frederika asked me an interesting question. “Where does the saying: Daylight robbery come from.” I had no idea.

Apparently in England people, in the late Middle Ages, were taxed for the amount of glass windows that they could afford to have in their homes. This forced many of them to have either very small windows or even no windows at all in some rooms. It led to very dark interiors even in daylight hours. Hence the term; Daylight Robbery.

This new law that prohibits bigger windows make me want to proclaim out loud that this is absolute daylight robbery! Is