Newbuild house has an electric fireplace. This mounts in a mantel which
is attached directly to an outside wall, but there is no vent and no
chimney.

Kinda like this, but designed by someone sober..
http://tinyurl.com/7dkre

There are no skirting boards on at the moment, so I have access to the
little gap between the plasterboard wall and the floor. Will I be able
to use this gap to route wires behind the mantel, or will it get too hot ??
I assume there will be lots of heatproof gubbins behind the fire to stop
the plasterboard getting messed up...

In message , NC
writes
Newbuild house has an electric fireplace. This mounts in a mantel which
is attached directly to an outside wall, but there is no vent and no
chimney.

Kinda like this, but designed by someone sober..
http://tinyurl.com/7dkre

There are no skirting boards on at the moment, so I have access to the
little gap between the plasterboard wall and the floor. Will I be able
to use this gap to route wires behind the mantel, or will it get too
hot ??
I assume there will be lots of heatproof gubbins behind the fire to
stop the plasterboard getting messed up...

I suspect it doesn't get that hot down there, but.....

However, are these mains electrical cables, or speaker or what? You
should not run mains cables behind the skirting board unprotected.
--
Chris French

chris French wrote:
In message , NC
writes
Newbuild house has an electric fireplace. This mounts in a mantel
which is attached directly to an outside wall, but there is no vent
and no chimney.

Kinda like this, but designed by someone sober..
http://tinyurl.com/7dkre

There are no skirting boards on at the moment, so I have access to
the little gap between the plasterboard wall and the floor. Will I
be able to use this gap to route wires behind the mantel, or will it
get too hot ??
I assume there will be lots of heatproof gubbins behind the fire to
stop the plasterboard getting messed up...

I suspect it doesn't get that hot down there, but.....

However, are these mains electrical cables, or speaker or what? You
should not run mains cables behind the skirting board unprotected.

Why? do you hang pictures there?

--
Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

In message , The3rd
Earl Of Derby writes
chris French wrote:
However, are these mains electrical cables, or speaker or what? You
should not run mains cables behind the skirting board unprotected.

Why? do you hang pictures there?


No, but my mice do....

It's against the regs. Which specify running vertically or horizontally
from a fitting, or within 150mm of the corners or the ceiling - unless
50mm deep or protected by metal conduit etc.
--
Chris French

A few years back I had a "false" fireplace fitted in our house for a
coal-effect gas fire. When the fitter built the false chimneybreast I
got him to embed a length of conduit at floor level behind the whole
lot. This was very useful for speaker cables.

Matt Beard wrote:
A few years back I had a "false" fireplace fitted in our house for a
coal-effect gas fire. When the fitter built the false chimneybreast I
got him to embed a length of conduit at floor level behind the whole
lot. This was very useful for speaker cables.


Good tip. The gap is a fairly decent size - instead of posting the
cables through (cat5, phone and speaker) I think I will buy some conduit
or plastic pipe and post it through.

chris French wrote:
In message , The3rd
Earl Of Derby writes

chris French wrote:

However, are these mains electrical cables, or speaker or what? You
should not run mains cables behind the skirting board unprotected.


Why? do you hang pictures there?


No, but my mice do....

It's against the regs. Which specify running vertically or horizontally
from a fitting, or within 150mm of the corners or the ceiling - unless
50mm deep or protected by metal conduit etc.

Just cat5, phone and speaker cable.