Our Company Blog

Placing a Television Over the Fireplace

Odds are, your fireplace plays a big role in the aesthetics of your home. You may even make your fireplace the focal point of your living or dining room. Many homeowners also like their television to be a focal point. So, combining the two is a match made in home decor heaven, isn’t it?

Methods of Installation

• Mounting a television above the fireplace.
  This method can be problematic for a few reasons. First, if you have a masonry chimney, mounting things on it should be avoided. Mounting a heavy television on your masonry should be a no-no, for sure, and if you’re not convinced about the risks, ask your chimney service provider. If your fireplace doesn’t use a traditional masonry chimney, and the wall above is drywall, it can be easy to mount the television. However, even this is discouraged among chimney professionals and techies alike. The smoke and heat from the fireplace can damage the television over time. If you rarely use your fireplace, this may not be a factor.
• Sitting a television on the mantel above the fireplace.
  This method is found a lot in homes with a traditional hearth and chimney, but should be avoided. Until recently, flat screen televisions were extremely heavy. Now they are extremely light, and both pose a risk for falling televisions. The heavy televisions can fall and severely injure or kill small children. From the height of a mantel, this can be devastating. While the risk of injury is less with a lighter television, the fact is that your television will be broken! Like wall or chimney mounts, the television is also susceptible to heat and smoke that can adversely affect the inner parts of the system.

Other Reasons You Should Mount Your TV Over the Fireplace

Besides the obvious risk of damage and television malfunction, there are a couple other reasons to avoid this design trend:

• Sore Neck
  Televisions not designed to be viewed at the extreme angles required for a high-mount, and our bodies aren’t designed to look up at those angles for extended amounts of time. Just like looking down at cell phones, looking up at televisions can cause a sore neck, and eventually injury.
• Visibility
  Many flat screen televisions cannot be seen properly from such an extreme angle. You may strain your eyes and never realize it until you recognize symptoms that affect your eyes and head. Strain on the eyes can cause tired eyes, blurred vision, headaches, and double vision.

Talk to a Professional

When you are designing your home, remodeling, or moving in it’s a good time to decide where the television will go. You can have this discussion with a CSIA Certified Chimney Sweep® (CCS) who is familiar with your case and you chimney. A Beach Stove and Fireplace expert can advise you about the best fire products that will have the least affect on your nearby television. You can view a gallery of our work and see some televisions above fireplaces. Ask one of our technicians what makes the difference, and what can be done so that you’re happy with your living room, including your fireplace and TV.

Call Beach Stove and Fireplace at 631-998-0780 today to discuss your fireplace!

Placing a TV Above the Fireplace

It’s become a common trend among homeowners since flatscreen TVs are versatile, can be wall-mounted, and are the focal point of a living space, like the fireplace. It makes since to mount the television above the fireplace if possible, but is it safe?

The Appliance and How it Vents

If you are using a vent-free gas insert, then the wall above the fireplace shouldn’t be hot. This would be perfectly safe for a television installation. However, if you have a gas or wood fireplace that vents through the chimney above the fireplace it will affect if and how you install a television above it. Even though the fireplace itself is the real heat source, how the chimney works is to draw the vapors from the fire up the chimney and out of the house. These vapors can be extremely hot, and can damage electronic devices like TVs.

Is There a Safe Way?

Fortunately, as much as TVs have advanced in technology, so have fireplaces. With an Ortal fireplace you don’t have to worry about the walls surrounding your fireplace. The Ortal cool wall technology allows the wall around the fireplace to breathe, cooling it naturally, and keeping the wall at a safe temperature. Not only can you hang a television above the fireplace, but also art, wall hangings, and it can even be painted without spending extra money on high-temperature paint.

What’s the Difference?

The wall above an average fireplace can easily stay above 300 degrees fahrenheit during burning season. These kinds of temperatures can ruin a standard flat screen television in just a few days or weeks. This isn’t the case with an Ortal fireplace. Ortal is the only company in the industry that offers a solution to this problem. It’s the only fireplace that guarantees a cool wall above the fireplace, and the only fireplace that keeps the walls around the fireplace under 160 degrees at all times.

Installation

An Ortal technician will not only install a fireplace using cool wall technology, but will also provide a television mount for your convenience. While other companies discourage putting anything on the wall above the fireplace, Ortal includes a television wall mount! In order to get best results you should have the cool wall technology and Ortal fireplace installed during construction, otherwise the area will have to be remodeled and a new fireplace installed. You should let your Beach Stove chimney sweep know if you’re interested in an Ortal fireplace during your first conversation.

When your living space has come together through a long remodel or construction, you may be excited to complete it with some finishing touches. A television mount is one of these finishing touches, but you should decide quickly if you want the TV to mount above the fireplace. If you decide to do so, then cool wall technology is for you!

Contact Beach Stove and Fireplace today to learn more about Ortal and cool wall technology.