How can I hide power cords for an entertainment system behind drywall?

Question

Location: AZ, US

I'd like to mount my TV along with various game systems to a wall and hide all or most of the wiring and power bricks. As I have clear and easy access to the other side of the wall (which is the dining room), I had thought of electrical access covers on the back side to easily access and run the wiring hidden in the wall.

Problem is that I know I'm not allowed to run a 120v cord through a wall (I did find that there's a "loophole" with lower voltages eg: after a power brick). I very much care about not burning my house down, so is there anything you guys can suggest for this? My only thought is to try to determine what makes something "inside a wall" and work around that.

For example, can I (theoretically) drywall around the studs on the back side (so it'd look like the image when viewed from above) and run the cables straight through the drywall on one side out the drywall on the other (think of it like two layers of drywall rather than drywall with space between) and make or utilize a box of some sort to contain them?

So go from this:

To this:

Note: I have no problem running actual wiring myself - I'm just looking to make this solution as clean and easy to maintain as possible.

Answer 1

If you want to hide all the wires, PSUs and accessories from view in both the TV location and the dining room behind, and assuming the dining room wall is finished, you will have to build a cabinet to enclose it all.

The cabinet can be in the TV room, or in the dining room, or inside the wall, but not literally inside the wall. If you want to use the wall space you'll have to build a cubby with a door. Very similar to a bathroom medicine chest that is inset into the wall and has a door. You can buy ones built just for this purpose, or make your own. The commercial ones are often used in condos and apartments to enclose the TV/phone/internet equipment. The key is that the PSUs and HV wires you have in there are not inside a permanently enclosed wall space, they are in a cabinet with a door that can easily be opened.

If you choose to place the gear in a cabinet in the dining room, your only issue is passing the 120V power cables through the wall. Do that by building a "porthole". You can use large grommets (like they put on top of conference and office desks) or frame out a small square hole.

Another option if you're going to have game equipment and such hanging on the wall next to the TV is to build some clever storage for the wires and PSUs into the shelving system. Make it look like part of the shelving design, and nobody will notice.

Answer 2

Problem is that I know I'm not allowed to run a 120v cord through a wall

Correct. All you do is install a bog-standard receptacle directly behind the TV so it is hidden by the TV, and you use standard in-wall wiring methods to connect that.

Now, as a bonus feature, you can also install an inlet (looks like a aingle outlet, but with prongs sticking out) and feed the TV outlet from the inlet instead of from a regular circuit. That will let you use any random 3-prong extension cord to go from the inlet to wherever you want to plug the TV into - e.g. a surge suppressing power strip, or maybe one of those smart strips that turns on the accessories only when you turn on the TV (to cut down on "vampire load").

(I did find that there's a loophole with lower voltages eg: after a power brick).

That's not a loophole. Low voltage is not dangerous in the way line voltage is. After all, ethernet is a kind of low voltage - being a few volts at milli-amps. Thus it's fine to have the low-voltage side of "wall wart" or lump-in-cord supplies just "run up the open wall".

I would not relocate the drywall against the inner wall. The attachments there will be fairly intricate, giving the fire lots of little edges and corners to get under. So I would just go ahead and re-panel normally after your work is done.

Now they do make "kits" which consist of 2 junction boxes with a 2" flex conduit between them. That is good when the wall has insulation packed into it or foamed in. However if you don't have insulation there, you can just leave the wall cavity open and install two "wish boxes" (orange not-boxes that just has the box frame, "you wish it had a back"). And then fish the low voltage wires down the open cavity. Little harder to fish, but less binding when adding a cable. May create drafts. They make coverups to help with that.

For that matter you could just install two wish boxes and add a little framing with 2x2's and some drywall to give it a contained passage between the boxes.

Answer 3

What I would do is get some white plumbing (schedule 40/80) PVC pipe and make a passthrough hole from the finished side to the unfinished side of the wall. On the unfinished side you can hire an electrician to install proper electrical supply outlets and plug your stuff in there.

That way, there will be no visible outlets on the finished wall side and you can directly route the power wires for your TV, game systems, etc, through the wall holes. As long as you mount TV, game system, etc in front of the pipe holes, the holes won't be visible.

Edit: If I understand you correctly, it sounds like you want to make all the plugs invisible on BOTH sides of the wall, is that correct?

Well then you have two choices. The first is to flush mount an approved electrical box on the open side and run the conduit/pipe to it, and have an electrician install outlets inside the approved box. There are pretty straightforward such boxes, they're usually something like this:

The other option is to run the conduit pipe that I mentioned vertically in the wall up to the attic or down to the basement depending on what floor you're on. Then at that location you can have an electrician add in the required outlets.

Answer 4

If you can run new cables in there, you might want to consider a recessed plug. These are fairly easy to find, and while they're more expensive than a normal plug, they sit well-back from the wall. They don't do well with most power bricks, unfortunately.

Another option would be one with quickport snap-in slots. With this one, you could add an HDMI quickport for as many devices at the plat will allow, and run the HDMI through the wall to the bottom.