Hiding wires behind wall-mount TV above fireplace

10 years ago

My husband and I are currently building our new home. We just did our electrical walk-thru and was discussing placing the TV above the gas fire-place. The electrician wants to charge us $300 to install a "tech tube" to run cables from TV down to the components. This will be installed before the dry-wall is put up. I have searched online everywhere and can't seem to find a way to do this ourselves. We will have build-in shelves on each side of the fireplace to hide the components. Any advice on ways to do this ourselves? Can any wire tube be placed in the dry wall? Will there be any heat issues? Thanks in advance. I wasn't sure if this was the correct forum to place this question or should I go to the electrical forum?

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Comments (4)

lazy_gardens
10 years ago
$300 sounds like a lot for something that will have no wiring in it.

All you need is a fire resistant tube: 1 1/2 inch metal conduit will do just fine

Post a picture of the fireplace area - a lot depends on how far away the rest of the stuff is.

And consider going WIRELESS to the TV from wherever you want the components. The TV would have a power plug over the fireplace and a small reciever on the back of the TV. The components would be across the room, with a transmitter sending to the TV.

Current reciever/transmitter pairs are under $200, so that's saving $100 right there.

Here is a link that might be useful: example wireless setup
nhbaskets
10 years ago
We are also building a new home and plan to have the tv over our gas fireplace mantel. Our builder ran the tubing from above the fireplace to the basement and then from the basement up to the study, which is where the components will be kept. I believe we were only charged $50, so yes, $300 sounds excessive.

This Tuesday we have Best Buys Geek Squad coming over to look at our setup and recommend a tv size for our space. We plan to have them do the install. One thing that we were told at BB was to have the outlets (power and tube) located toward the top of where the tv will be installed. Of course, ours are located right in the middle of where the bracket would be installed. We'll see how that is dealt with.
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xc60
10 years ago
We were not charged anything extra for our tube (but of course, I'm sure it's somewhere in the overall cost of our home). They also installed the tubing and power outlet where the TV mount would be, but we noticed it and had them move them lower down the wall on one of the many times the fireplace surround had to be reframed. Idiots.
cfvh
10 years ago
We ran plumbing pipe in our walls to the basement (false ceiling down there) and to connect each side of the living room (to feed speakers for surround sound). We did it ourselves and it was very inexpensive. We were able to easily pull through whichever wires we needed to. I would not go wireless if I didn't have to. We used the Leviton QuickPort devices (you can snap in HDMI, coax, ethernet, phone, speaker jacks, etc).

Install tubing yourself. Google "smurf tube". You can get it at any electrical supply store.