Hello to everyone,

I'm just getting into the wonderful world of projectors, and had an opportunity to take one for a test drive.

Aside from the wonderful visuals, I noticed all of the heat coming out of the projector. This is an issue as my multi-media room is small-ish (14 x 10).

Do you have any suggestions for managing the heat? Has anyone built a custom exhaust system?

This is what I did.

Read about it here.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=800306


http://inlinethumb36.webshots.com/35/2995525310068493142S600x600Q85.jpg (http://entertainment.webshots.com/photo/2995525310068493142jXJHzS)

Thank you for sharing your idea.

Since my media room is upstairs, I simply went in the attic and added an A/C duct, connecting to an A/C vent above my projector. I have my projector in a closet at the other end of the room, projecting from behind the wall. All components are in the closet. I cut an inch off the bottom of the door (interior doors have provisions to be trimmed down) so that the air flow can vent from the top of the closet to the bottom. The projector, Xbox 360, HD DVR and receiver (oh and Wii) all stay nice and cool! It cost me less than $100 to purchase everything I needed from Home Depot and didn't take more than an hour to do it.

Just make sure you take your projector down or make sure it's well covered before cutting the drywall above! :)

Here's a few quick shots:

http://www.golilm.com/images/AdamsScreen.jpg

And here's the closet with the door open so you can see inside. One of the members on this board hooked me up with the site to buy the non-reflective glass for the frame.

http://www.golilm.com/images/AdamsProjector.JPG

I personally prefer this over hanging the projector from the ceiling. The only advantage I could see to an overhead hanging projector would be it not getting in the way with stand up games, like the Wii. The advantage to this setup, however, is that I don't require any keystone correction so no resampling the image. I am using the AX100 Panasonic projector.

Adam

Love that setup, with the framed glass. Very cool and very classy!

my room is 14x16x10 and the projector is 9 foot up the back wall, I don't hear mine in low lamp mode, nor have a problem with heat on my HD1000u, I played with it at hand reach level for a week or two before ceiling mounting and noticed it stayed alot cooler than any projector I had delt with in the past, which were mostly business projectors..they get hot, and the manf. knows that, and I'm fairly certain took that into account, if you got some air flow around it I dont see it being a problem, people have thousands of hours on many projectors. only thing I can say about the guy who posted with the Fan, if you don't have a lot of room for circulation thats a great idea. if you have a ceiling fan in the room and your ambient temp isn't like 80 degrees, I'd say your fine.

Bulbs are designed to run hot, personaly I think that fan hanging next to the projector looks horrible.

In a ceiling application, a bubble of hot air forms across the top of the ceiling from the hot exhaust air. It gets trapped there because it can't rise any more. If you lower the pj below the ceiling, 9-18 inches, it won't re-injest the hot exhaust air, and you should not have a problem overheating the pj. This is the standard advice.

Great idea. Thanks for sharing. The optical glass is http://www.edmundoptics.com/onlinecatalog/displayproduct.cfm?productID=2402

Bulbs are designed to run hot, personaly I think that fan hanging next to the projector looks horrible.

Fortunately most of the time I look at the screen and not the projector or the fan…… :D

The above advice about the greater the drop height the less you have to worry about the trapped heat against the ceiling is very good and constructive. Many home theaters are now going into basement rooms and the lower cost of projectors people without the luxury of 8 foot high basements are still considering projectors and snug to ceiling mounting is becoming more of a issue. That’s why I posted the “constructive” post showing what people faced with such challenges could consider as a possible fix.

Its true what the quoted poster points out that light bulbs of all types are designed to take extreme temps. Unfortunately all the rest of the electronics in the projector are severely strained by excessive heat. Likewise studies have shown bulb life can be doubled by lowering the input air as little as 10deg F or the delta T input to output.

In my case the fan adds noise and is not used at all times. If we are watching a 6 hour UFC event with a room full of guys who cares and the fan is on, quite movies with a low ambient room temp there is no need for the fan when run in eco mode.

Actually I find a projector hanging from the ceiling looks “horrible” all by itself. And I commend the gentleman who built the classy projector room and shoots thru the glass frame. Very stealth and well done.

Everyone in this hobby has a far different set of values as to what there level of design appearance versus function is and I respect the posters right to have an opinion.

In a basement-ceiling application, the amount of drop can be relaxed, especially if the basement ceiling is already a dropped ceiling. I have used a 5 inch drop without a problem in my basement, but that is measured below the dropped ceiling, which is 12 inches below the first floor. The total drop below the first floor is 17 inches. I say this because the dropped ceiling is "leaky", and the hot exhaust air can escape into the space between the dropped ceiling and the floor above. Basements also tend to be cooler than the house above.

Anyone reading this don’t get me wrong and think I’m advocating an aux fan for all projectors mounted in every setting. These projectors are all designed around cooling specs that maintain a proper or at least adequate amount of cooling. The addition of the fan I show above and as I pointed out in the thread I did about it was it is somewhat of an experiment on my part. The trouble with equipment is its designed around a average environment and a average duty cycle. If you are using one in a high temp setting or at high altitude or both this might help. Sports bars where they play for long times with Smokey air and high ceilings this might help. In my case I figured it cant hurt and I enjoy studying the temp drops and seeing if it will prolong bulb life. The answer to that in my case is still unknown.