You may see it in a magazine, or a picture of interior design inspiration on a social media site, people mounting their televisions and sound equipment in their living room or dens. There’s nothing wrong with this concept, but be wary of images and ideas that could harm you and your family. For instance, putting up electronics over the fireplace presents a seriously hazardous situation, and should never be done. Even if it looks amazing in a picture, it’s not a practical thing to do, and you could end up dealing with a wide variety of problems.
In fact, here are a few major reasons you should not hang electronics near or above the fireplace. Even if you think it looks great based on an interior designer’s magazine layout, it could prove to be foolish in practice.
Heat Exposure Can Ruin Electronics
Today’s televisions run hot – even the energy efficient ones. The screens run hot, and the vent systems in place are adequate to handle them. But when you have a fire in the fireplace and the heat is coming upwards towards your electronics, the television can overheat and could even cause problems with delivering a solid picture. If that’s not enough, the smoke that comes through could ruin the electronic components, reducing the life of the television. It slowly deteriorates the components and could ruin all nearby devices including speakers that deliver surround sound.
Households with children or teenagers could also experience problems, especially if they are fans of video games as most consoles do not do well with heat at all. Consoles and computers, like televisions, are designed to handle the heat that naturally runs through them. The addition of an external heat source could cause internal components to melt.
Emergency Situations
Those who live in areas where shaking may occur, you don’t want to risk your television coming off the wall and into flames or smoke. Earthquakes, tornadoes, heavy storms, and a lot of other things could cause movement. You may even find that the weight of the television you have mounted could cause deterioration on the wall, and eventually fall out of the blue, and that means your electronics could hit the fire and break. While this may seem unlikely here in Delaware County, it’s a precaution that should be noted.
It’s Just a Bad Idea
Overall, hanging electronics above or around the fireplace is just a bad idea. The heat from a fireplace can cause damage to the LED or Plasma screen televisions that are the norm today. Furthermore, you will be running wires alongside your fireplace and that heat is not good for that either. It may seem ok at first glance, but if you’re seriously going to run your fireplace, even if it is gas powered, it’s not a good thing to have combined with a television set. Much like you wouldn’t put a television mounted in the shower or near a tub, you don’t want to do this as it could be hazardous.