Need furniture arrangement advice (heat and electronics)

Shadowfire

I'd like to re-arrange our living room. It's not just because I want a change... there's a functional problem here, too.

We bought a new TV a couple months ago. It's a plasma, which obviously generates a lot of heat. Problem being, our old TV was located under our thermostat, and that caused no problems. This TV constantly heats the air around the thermostat to around 72 degrees, sometimes a bit warmer. The thermostat gets tripped, and the heat shuts off. Did I mention it's about 10 degrees out right now, and supposed to be down to around -5 tonight?

Here's the layout right now (warning, crappy MS Paint image incoming!) The little squares in the top corners, the rectangle in front of the TV, and the squares by the couch are the speakers.



This is what I'd like to arrange it like:



Just a note - the walls that look bare in that picture won't be bare. There are a couple DVD racks to place in the room, as well as posters and a couple standees should we need them. I just couldn't be bothered to
draw more crap in Paint. ;-)

My concern is that the TV, as well as our electronics (360, PS3, Wii, HD DVD player, DVR, receiver) will be right over the heating registers. Is this a major concern? It seems like having things that don't like heat running right next to sources of heat would be a bad idea...

Any other ideas? Unfortunately, the room's layout doesn't lend itself to many other ideas, but I'm open to suggestions.

Edit: For some reason it's showing the original drawing, even though that's not what it looks like now. Photobucket Print Screen up instead.

Szechuanosaurus

Only other I can think of is to stand things away from the side of the walls, which could work depending on the size of the room.

As a lazy example, using your second layout as a reference, switch the location of the couch with the TV unit. This'll result in being able to see your entertainment centre's naughty bits but at least it'll be able to breath.

Alternatively, take that whole configuration and just move everything up and too the right so it's in the middle of the room with a reasonable gap behind the TV unit (perhaps fill the resulting 'dead space' behind the unit with DVD shelving or something?).

Improvolone

TV between the windows, entertainment center where the TV is in the second layout, blackout curtains.
Then you can watch TV from the Kitchen!

Shadowfire

Improvolone wrote: »

TV between the windows, entertainment center where the TV is in the second layout, blackout curtains.
Then you can watch TV from the Kitchen!

Wait, what?

Er... I can see the TV from the kitchen now. That isn't too important to me, however.

The TV between the windows was a thought, but I wasn't sure where to stick the couch then. Also, that still doesn't settle the issue of the heating registers being close to the electronics. And, of course, where would the speakers go too? :P

If I were to go with my original setup, how much clearance do I need between the registers and the devices? 1 foot? More?

Quoth

I'd recommend that you test any layout using something like the Icovia Space Planner to be sure that it all fits before you start moving it around. You may already be drawing to scale, but if you're not, it's an invaluable resource.

Improvolone

Float the couch in the middle of the room facing the windows.
I don't know if the plasma would affect the sensors, how far from center of the windows to the first sensor?
Speaker layout would be just as difficult with the TV anywhere else. If we're talking about surround sound and you have an attic above you, you're golden. If you've got carpet, that works too.

Shadowfire

Improvolone wrote: »

Float the couch in the middle of the room facing the windows.
I don't know if the plasma would affect the sensors, how far from center of the windows to the first sensor?
Speaker layout would be just as difficult with the TV anywhere else. If we're talking about surround sound and you have an attic above you, you're golden. If you've got carpet, that works too.

Sensors? Only sensor is the thermostat, which is what I'm trying to fix.

We are talking about surround sound... above us is another apartment. There is carpeting in here, but since it's an apartment, there's no way to run the wires underneath really.

Edit: Quoth, thanks for that link.

Improvolone

By sensor, I meant heating register.

Are you renting? How long do you plan to be there? I ask because running wire under a carpet isn't too hard and it is easy to retack the carpet.

AtomBomb

I know it's an apartment, so you can't just tear shit up, but have you tried pulling the thermostat? It's probably just a couple of wires. You could extend those and run the thermostat to somewhere that it will actually work and keep your current setup.

If you want to dump $200 you could get this. Install that and put the sensor wherever you want.