OMG MARK, Yours is SO BEAUTIFUL! 
I am IN LOVE!!!!! Thanks for the great inspiration! I was planning on just dropping cables to the floor and have a power board there but your idea is brilliant! The only problem is that my desk isn't easily moved (no castors), but I guess once it's all set up, I can just push it up against the wall. Having the electricity outlets all there would make life easier. I wonder if the outlets need to be installed by a licensed electrician here in Australia.... (I'm not one).
Can you tell me the heights of each shelves please?
I'm thinking that the first shelf needs to be deep as well so that I can put a long PSU in it, but that would severely reduce the desk space.
Thanks for the kind words
Regarding the height of the shelves, the lower one is 330mm above the bench surface, and the upper one is 695mm. This is the height to the surfaces. The bench surface itself is at desk height (710mm), and is 900mm deep. The surface is solid oak flooring (very nice), and I use a large cork mat to protect it - and bits of carpet if needed to protect gear from getting scratched. In a humid cellar, static is less of a worry...
As mentioned earlier, I have limited height in my cellar, so everything was a bit of a compromise. In my
previous workshop, which was in a garage, I put it at bench height (around 900mm IIRC), and the shelves were a bit more generously spaced. So this really was an attempt to make the best out of a bad situation, but it has worked quite well in practice.
The height of the first shelf is dictated by my favourite analogue storage oscilloscope (the
Telequipment DM63). When determining the position of the top shelf, I worked down from the ceiling height (less a bit for safety), deciding that 6U (267mm) would give the best compromise. I have about 11-12" of usable height on the lower shelf - the 4" support timber and hidden lighting obviously being a factor there.
Behind the (largely decorative) hardwood plank (100mm by 20mm) is a "4 by 2" joist that takes the worst of the weight. The side panels transfer the load down to the bench surface. That joist had to be cut down to fit, and it had a 45 degree section removed so that it didn't shadow the output of the light. It does seem pretty solid. I used 18mm spruce ply for the shelves/sides/rear/etc. It's cheap and not very nice, but strong. MDF is no good in a cellar, even a relatively dry one like mine.
There is another shelf under the bench - you can see the 4 by 2 that supports the leading edge. This is 420mm deep and 330mm off the ground, and is used for storage. I also have a couple of SFF HP PCs under there, nicely out of the way. A Belkin KVM allows me to switch between them, and I also use that for hooking up PCs that need time on the bench. Very useful.
As for the electrical installation, the whole desk plugs into a single 13A mains outlet, and is protected by the 13A fuse in the plug. So from a legal point of view, it's an "appliance", not an "installation" - little more than a glorified extension lead - and as such, is immune to electrical building regulations.
The die-cast box contains a DIN mounting rail which carries some terminal blocks, an RCD, and a 3.15A fuse for the light.
Look to the right of the 'scope, and you'll see 3 switches. The bottom one is the light (with a 0-10V dimmer), next is the white switch for the white sockets, and the top one is the red switch for the red sockets. The red sockets are intended to be left on 24/7, and are primarily for the computers.
In addition to the red sockets, there are 11 double sockets on the rear wall of the bench, and a double on the rear, just above the die-cast box (not shown on the picture) - this is for the 19" MDU (mains distribution panel) which powers all the stuff on the top shelf. This has 12 outlets, all individually fused at 3.15A.
A useful tip - all those sockets on the rear are hard to get to because the test equipment obscures them, and I didn't really think about that at the design stage. So I found a 19" rack-mount MDU that had conventional 13A outlets on the front, and mounted it in the right hand bay, along with the
dual isolating transformers that I made a few years back. I modified the MDU to include a cheap eBay mains voltage/current monitor (although I had to seriously re-engineer that - another story!), and included a couple of BNCs so you could (safely!) see the voltage and current waveforms. Finally I added a 10 thermal breaker. I'll attach a picture - although it's had a paint-job since then...
The RCD only protects the white sockets, in the hope that the computer gear wouldn't be disturbed by an accident on the bench. I really recommend having an easily accessible "breaker" breaker for all the sockets, as it makes things so much easier and safer. Should smoke emerge from something, you just want to hit the "panic" button! You might choose to use the RCD itself as the daily power switch, but as the RCD is quite large, I thought it was better to hide that around the back and use the 20A double-pole switch on the front.
It does seem like an awful lot to hang off a single 13A plug socket, but the current demand is pretty low most of the time. Heavy items like heaters and power tools get plugged into other sockets in the cellar; the bench is for low-powered test gear and "items under test".
Sorry this is such a long post, but I hope it helps to answer some questions and perhaps give some ideas. I will write it all up on my web site one day soon
All the best,
Mark
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