Air circulation in front overhead electronic cabinets

[AFChap]

Some time ago there was a bit of discussion on another list about options for improving ventilation/circulation in the front overhead cabinets where the VCR, etc are housed. The concern was that these cabinets get quite warm, especially in warm weather, and with the glass doors there is no air circulation into the cabinets. I have thought for many months about replacing the glass in the cabinet doors with a wire mesh of some kind, but had not found anything I thought would work well and also be fairly easy to work with. Yesterday I found the perfect material in a Camping World cook-out/grill area. They had some light aluminum "disposable grill liners" in two sizes, and the larger one was big enough to cut one glass replacement from. It is a light weight aluminum mesh, diamond pattern, and cost was $1.99 each. I bought four and headed back to the RV park.

The glass inserts come of out of the doors with removal of two screws, then pushing the glass out. The glass has plastic edges slipped on each side, and mine were secured with some silicone on each side in addition to the screw bracket top and bottom. I cut the aluminum mesh with a pair of heavy scissors (not the co-pilot's sewing scissors, but some old ones from my tool box ...wire cutters would work too) oversize just enough to double the edges over as wide of the plastic edges, and after test fitting each one, I spray painted them gloss black. They work great, look great, and should improve air circulation in the cabinets a good bit ...adding a hole in the top rear of each cabinet would help even more! Total cost for all four doors was $11.91 for the "grill liners" and a can of spray paint. Oh, and I wrapped the original glass inserts in today's Ft Worth newspaper and stored them under the sofa alongside the pull-out drawer where there is some idle space for small objects.

[AFChap]

Some time ago there was a bit of discussion on another list about options for improving ventilation/circulation in the front overhead cabinets where the VCR, etc are housed. The concern was that these cabinets get quite warm, especially in warm weather, and with the glass doors there is no air circulation into the cabinets. I have thought for many months about replacing the glass in the cabinet doors with a wire mesh of some kind, but had not found anything I thought would work well and also be fairly easy to work with. Yesterday I found the perfect material in a Camping World cook-out/grill area. They had some light aluminum "disposable grill liners" in two sizes, and the larger one was big enough to cut one glass replacement from. It is a light weight aluminum mesh, diamond pattern, and cost was $1.99 each. I bought four and headed back to the RV park.

The glass inserts come of out of the doors with removal of two screws, then pushing the glass out. The glass has plastic edges slipped on each side, and mine were secured with some silicone on each side in addition to the screw bracket top and bottom. I cut the aluminum mesh with a pair of heavy scissors (not the co-pilot's sewing scissors, but some old ones from my tool box ...wire cutters would work too) oversize just enough to double the edges over as wide of the plastic edges, and after test fitting each one, I spray painted them gloss black. They work great, look great, and should improve air circulation in the cabinets a good bit ...adding a hole in the top rear of each cabinet would help even more! Total cost for all four doors was $11.91 for the "grill liners" and a can of spray paint. Oh, and I wrapped the original glass inserts in today's Ft Worth newspaper and stored them under the sofa alongside the pull-out drawer where there is some idle space for small objects.

[Kazoo Tom]

Sounds like a wonderful and economic fix to the circulation problem. I have also hear of some people using a small fan (the type made for computers) mounted in the cabinet to move the air. My unit has solid wood doors and I usually just leave them open, seems to provide plenty of circulation for us.

[The Shadow]

Ours didn't seem to get too hot but when we added a DVR (cable connection) it pushed it over the edge and got very hot. We found that just leaving the door to the compartment open solved the problem.