ProDave

God I hate light fittings like that. INCOMPLETE. They expect you to make it up as you go along. WHAT secures and takes the strain of the flex? WHAT connects the flex to the fixed wiring? I would take it back as not fit for purpose unless you are prepared to sort out the missing bits. Earthing, which is the original question, you could to a lot worse than a ring terminal under one of the screws that fixed the bracket thing to the ceiling.

Yes but I am sure you will always be able to get a lead from the original USB A to USB z or whatever they choose to call it next week. We have 3 different phones in the house, with 3 different "USB" sockets, but all have a lead to fit the standard USB A

The bit that fixes to the ceiling. All I see at the moment is the cover, but not what the cover goes over.

All things being equal yes. But I had the unique requirement of wanting the socket to collapse into a 70mm wide void. This one appears to be the only one that will do that, and without USB sockets. Others are typically 90mm or more diameter.

Received loud and clear. Some people seem to see the poor search facilities of some websites as a "challenge".

Can you unwrap the bit that screws to the ceiling with the flex coming from it and take a better picture of that bit.

Bugger I hate you. Just shows how carp CPC's search is "pop up socket" only found 5, and not that one, and all much more expensive. ebay search works a whole lot better.

I say well done. I would never have attempted it as I know it's beyond my skills. When the beer has gone down and you have mellowed I am sure you will agree it is a success.

And £4.99 plus VAT delivery. The ebay one was cheaper.

That's the point. When it is down, the socket is nice and smooth. It's not intended for people to charge phones and be left up, there are USB sockets for that elsewhere. The pop up socket is for food processors etc when cooking, and gets put back down when all is done.

I suspect at the end of a let, they frequently find phones left behind in that drawer and have to post them back to their owners.

^^ put some boards under the wheels. or by the time you next come to move it, you may find it has sunk to the axles (it would in our ground in winter)

It is is an ellipse. I have the unit fronts face to face 1400 apart with a small worktop overhang. As it happens I still have the same circulation space the other side when you allow for the worktop overhang. But I suspect my Island might move a little after sign off.

If it backs up, it's when it gets to downstairs WC pan level that your "problems" start.

Our island is just a single run of 600 units. It is not fixed down, it just stands there under it's own weight. There is so much stuff (all the pots and pans) that it is not going anywhere.

Pleased with it. It seems well made and works well. As I say it was the only one that was small enough for our particular application and it achieves this by putting the sockets on their side. Drilling the 6cm hole in the 40mm oak worktop gave my hole saw a bashing. I would say 1200 between opposing units is about right, which is probably where ours will end up eventually.

It is unseasonally cold at the moment. Last night was down to 7 and it's barely been above 15 in the daytime. If we were in the 'van now we would be using some form of heating, either electric or the WBS.

Beware of activity spaces and circulation spaces. You will have to check English BR but up here one must have a 1400mm by 1800mm "circulation space" in the kitchen. This has forced me to leave a 1400mm gap between the main run of kitchen units and the island. That seems "too big" and makes the space the other side cramped for the larder, so we are likely not to build the larder yet and after sign off, move the island closer to the main unit then build it. You need a solid top on your mocked up units and then make cardboard templates for a sink, a hob etc and you can position them in different places. For us, the island was as much about a seating area to get the view to the west over the mountains as any cooking purpose, thought he hob is on the island. Re sockets, I have fitted a pop up socket bank on the Island. I chose this one https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pop-up-Power-Extension-Sockets-for-Kitchen-Worktop-Office-desktop-Ã-6cm-cable/132544570559?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649 I chose that, because it is only 6cm diameter, so when retracted drops down into the 7cm wide gap between the back of the island kitchen units and the back panel. You can get better ones that have USB sockets built in, but they are all much larger diameter, so would have had to drop down inside a cupboard which we did not want. Remember the standard width of an island is 900mm. Our island is 900 by 1800mm and gives ample seating room for 3 along the back edge. All our units sit on the finished floor.

The purpose of the tumble dryer, is not to "dry" things, but make them "fluffy" towels and socks in particular. Though it also does save on ironing. The TD only gets used for the bare minimum time. Stuff comes out still damp and goes on the airer to finish drying, but as long as it has had some tine in the infernal machine, it passes the fluffyness test.

I would like the tumble dryer to be used less, but that is "outside my control" At least it is a condensing dryer so any waste heat stays in the house, so for half the year it is contributing to the heating (but not as eficciently as the heat pump would) I have already mentioned the desktop pc, that perhaps I should use less (only for office stuff) and use the laptop more for browsing etc. I have some satellite receivers on 24/7, I could put them on a timer, but that creates other issues. I know our "stuff" usage is lower than in the old house, but can't really think of anything we are doing different (though I always had a suspicion the FF at the old house used a lot more than i should)

Not easily. My heat pump has no data logging. As a VERY rough guess, it seems to spend about an hour per day heating water, and I think I once measured it's power consumption as a peak of 1.5KW, so that would only be 1.5KWh so not very much. I think I need to buy a cheap electricity meter just to measure what the heat pump uses to get a separate reading of "real useful" energy usage compared to just "stuff"

The biggest issue you need to address, which is so common in Scottish stone buildings, is the "plasterboard tent" that you are living in. With the gap between the plasterboard (lath and plaster?) and the stone walls open to the loft space, then that space will be full of cold air and your heat losses will be horendous. I regularly work in this type of building and if you remove a socket or light switch in winter you are greeted by a howling icy cold blast of air. Having the sloping skeillings is not going to make this easy to fix, and sadly the only real solution is strip the ceiling off the skeillings to get it back to the bare frame, seal up the tops and insulate behind the wall voids, insulate in between the rafters and replace the ceiling.

Back to energy usage. I have just taken a meter reading so now have the first full months usage now we are in the house. It comes out at 15.08 KWh per day, and with my present energy supplier that's £2.46 per day. Extrapolating that to a full year gives a total of 5504KWh and a cost of £897. In square metre terms, that's 39KWh per square metre or £6.48 per square metre. That is everything other than space heating which obviously not using at the moment. That is still an unknown. I am not expecting winter lighting to add much as the house is all LED lighting. That figure worries me because so much of it is "stuff" not actually running the house. But I struggle to think of any major saving I can make to that other than use the desktop pc a lot less and use a more energy eficcient laptop more (e.g when I am only browsing)

The problem for me at the moment is my landline is used for people to contact me in relation to my business. Any VOIP offering as far as I know will not allow me to port an existing landline number to it?

Save that argument for your appeal.