Hi Toggle
Standard ceiling height is 2.4 metres. My new place is 2.55 metres (not a standard size but I cut the timber so I could make it whatever I want.)
Plywood sheets are 1.2 x 2.4 (yep that's 4 ft x 8 ft)
Pipe sizes are 1/2 3/4 1 etc. Only in the last couple of years they have started to call them in millimetre sizes - 12mm, 15mm, 19mm, 25mm.
fluoro tubes - don't know
Metric is SO EASY - the only difficulty is that the building industry didn't want to re-engineer all its machinery so it stuck with imperial sizes and put metric names on it. If we actually had 100 x 50 timber available in half metre increments then the maths would be dead easy.
A metre is a whisker more than a yard, a metre is a good pace, weighing 85 kilos means I need to eat less chocolate, being 1.8 metres tall means I never quite made it to six feet tall, ten degrees is a cold day, twenty degrees is a mild day, thirty degrees is a hot day, 100 degrees is boiling water, 100 kilometres is a good hours drive, metric is SO easy.
Funny thing is despite us having been a metric country for over 30 years, babies birth weight is still bragged about in pounds and ounces, and anatomical boasting is done in inches. I'd better stop there.
chris.