Can't believe this hasn't been asked before, but I can't seem to find anything so…
I've currently got a very light, very thin 32" TV mounted on the bedroom wall. It's perfect – except for the fact that I'd love to make it a bit more minimalist and put the cables through the wall it's mounted on, into the fitted-cupboard in the room behind it.
In my mind, the best way of handling this is to drill a hole straight through the wall into the cupboard, reinforce it with a bit of metal piping or something, then block both ends with some sort of plastic/sponge filler.
However, I'm worried about fire safety – I've heard that if you start to play around with holes between walls, it can seriously degrade the compartmentalization of the rooms and fire can spread more easily.
Am I insane? Too cautious? Or are there serious considerations when mucking about with the integrity of 'rooms'.
Best Answer
To the best of my knowledge, the only fire retardation requirements that exist for a residence apply to slowing the spread of fire between connected units - say in a duplex or row home.
In the case of your personal dwelling, there is almost no way to restrict the spread of fire within a residence without making it extremely inconvenient to navigate in your own home.
Now if you installed fire proof doors between every room, with airtight seals (ie: like your exterior doors), and fire retardant barriers like cinder block and fire-resistant foam between the walls, then your concern over putting a hole in your wall would be relatively worth considering, but I suspect that like most homes, these other barriers do not exist on the inside of your home, and so you're worrying over something that, in the grand scale of overall fire safety, won't amount to much.