Hey everyone. Just thought I'd delve into the knowledgebase here to see what I could find out about something I'm thinking about doing. Some background: My wife and I help a local animal rescue group and serve also as a foster family. That means at any given time, we may have an extra dog or cat (or 2 or 3) living in our house amongst our family "herd". That means lots and lots of dust.

Currently, I have a big screen tv flanked with two equipment cabinets in our living room. One is just for stuff and the other houses the HT equipment. (Outlaw 1050, dvd player, vcr (that never gets used) and two Dish Network receivers.) I am CONSTANTLY fighting to keep this stuff clean and losing more ground daily. (As Tim Allen says, "I hate dustin', so I just duct tape the small stuff down and bring my leaf blower in...oh, Oh, OH!!") All of the wires come out the back so it's wide open at the rear and has a glass door on the front. Also since the DSS receivers get pretty hot, I have a clip on fan on the back of the cabinet constantly blowing air across them, so the glass door is usually left cracked open. Needless to say, this setup is a dust magnet.

ANYWAY, there's a closet nearby that I had been toying with the idea of housing the equipment and my number one concern is heat buildup. I could probably run a duct into the closet from below for cooling, but that makes me think that I'll just be adding dust again. (Although much less.) I can use an IR extender for my Pronto remote, so I'm not really worried about that part.

What do you guys do with your equipment if you're hiding it? Oh yeah, and of course, I don't want to have to spend a lot of dough on the solution.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Todd