Recommend me a pop-up socket for a kitchen

[havoc]

Final stages of planning a new kitchen, and figure we'll want power available on a central island. Don't want to put the sockets down the sides, so the answer feels like a pop-up socket.

...except I know f-all about the brands selling them, and all the ones I'm seeing seem to be silver/chrome/black. And we're having white-ish patterned quartz.

Our quartz supplier suggested there are ones that come with a recess in the top where you can fit a plug of quartz to further disguise them...but I'm damned if a web-search is showing anything so useful!


Don't care if it's manual, gas-strut or powered, but do want something decent quality and ideally discreet.

Thanks,

Martin.

[loughran]

You're not exactly inundated with suggestions.

I too was interested to hear recommendations because my in my experience these pop-up sockets are wobbly cheap ste and to be avoided at all costs. Surely there must be someone making an uber cool, quality version that rises majestically from the work surface at the touch of a finger, then falls again with a mere whisper, lying perfectly flush and sealed against spillages.

There is a company called S Box that do something that might be good but I've never seen one in the wild.

https://www.the-sbox.com

To me they're just another thing to go wrong and I always manage to find somewhere suitable on the side of an island.

[K50 DEL]

Check out the S-Box™ Chameleon 2-port mini
It's the only one I could find with the ability to have a "worktop" top

[Han Solo]

I’ve got a few S Box in our kitchen.

Any decent worktop installer will be able to fit them and they come with all the instructions dependent upon the depth of the worktop.

Not cheap but they look brilliant compared to anything else and are counter weighted so require no power to lift, etc.

Loads of options too re plugs / usb / usc.

[Mr Pointy]

There's a thread here about why outlets in the worktop surface might be a bad idea:

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

This is the S-Box outlet that uses a piece of worktop as the top surface:

https://www.the-sbox.com/

[havoc]

Mr Pointy said:

There's a thread here about why outlets in the worktop surface might be a bad idea:

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
/

Ah, that doesn't make good reading.

S-box - nice idea, and far more discreet. Not such a stupid price either if it's powered.


Here's an image of our new kitchen layout - island has quartz waterfall sides (so no plug sockets marring those lines), and then a recessed breakfast bar opposite the hob. So no obvious locations to fit a plug socket, short of putting it in a cupboard. Possibly could fit a box on the inside of one of the sides, facing the stools...but it'll then have to have the whole socket visible (and the wiring), not just the front-plate. So almost as untidy and a lot more of a faff to use.

[SunsetZed]

havoc said:

Mr Pointy said:

There's a thread here about why outlets in the worktop surface might be a bad idea:

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
/

Ah, that doesn't make good reading.

S-box - nice idea, and far more discreet. Not such a stupid price either if it's powered.


Here's an image of our new kitchen layout - island has quartz waterfall sides (so no plug sockets marring those lines), and then a recessed breakfast bar opposite the hob. So no obvious locations to fit a plug socket, short of putting it in a cupboard. Possibly could fit a box on the inside of one of the sides, facing the stools...but it'll then have to have the whole socket visible (and the wiring), not just the front-plate. So almost as untidy and a lot more of a faff to use.
][/URL]

I agree that there's no obvious location but I'd suggest that you think about what you want to use the sockets for and how important they are versus a small amount of storage. On our breakfast bar people will sit there using their phones so having them plugged in there helps.

If it were me I'd be tempted to have 3 larger or four small cupboards with a narrow blanking panel at each end and then fit vertical sockets on each end, something similar to this:
https://www.screwfix.com/p/knightsbridge-13a-2-gan...