Downeaster Yachts.com - Topic: Mounting a TV in the salon

Scott Carle on Mounting a TV in the salon

Sun, 29 Dec 2013 23:02:25 -0500

Yes we still like it. I'm not sure that a backing board is necessary. Maybe just some stainless or bronze washers depending on what your bolts are made of. I through bolted ours with 5/16 inch bolts if I remember right. I should have taken pictures of the other side of the bulkhead to show the bolts on that side. If the arm was strong enough I wouldn't bother dismounting it underway. I have since put eyes on the bulkhead on either side with short bungee's with hooks on the end of them that stretch and attached to the back of the unit where it attaches to the tv. This holds it tight up against the bulkhead under tension from the bungees. I suppose if we were really banging around putting a piece of foam between the tv and the bulkhead would be a good idea. The reason I mounted it like that was so that it was attached and I wouldn't have to dismount it every time we went sailing. where it was before we did have to do that and it was a major irritation.

oh and it would swing out of the way of the table when needed on the arm. Our arm is a double articulated one with a hinge at the bulkhead, between two arms and then at the plate that bolts to the tv. There is also an adjustment that allows the tv to be tilted forward about 20 degrees.

diverchick71 on Mounting a TV in the salon

Sun, 29 Dec 2013 20:36:35 -0500

Are you still happy with this set up? We are looking at something similar for ours. Our TV is bigger, but with the mount it looks pretty simple to pull the TV out to get the table down, then swivel back against the wall. (Which we've had down to eat once and play cards once. Otherwise I like the extra space.). I'm thinking a large back board on the head side of the bulkhead for support and through bolts to secure the mount in the cabin. Replacing the big mirror that is in the head currently with a couple of smaller ones and something decorative to cover the bolts. I'm thinking this will work at dock until we sail away. Underway, I think we will pull it down and stow it. Some of the forums use foam and bungees to secure it underway. It would be bulky to stow but it's not like we'd be using the v-berth for much while underway except storage. Thoughts?

Scott Carle on Mounting a TV in the salon

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:20:00 -0400

We finally mounted the LCD on the boat using a VESA wall arm mount. Prior to that it was sitting on the cabinate top in the starboard forward part of the salon on a mount that fit behind the fiddle boards there. It was allways in the way there and if you went sailing you needed to take it down and set it up in the vberth so it was safe from falling over.

As you can see it takes up a fair ammount of the countertop as well as blocking the shelves.

Here is a close of up the mount the original owners built to put a tv on. At least I assume it was a tv they mounted on it. Underneath the top of the mount are some boards screwed on that fit behind the fiddle to hold it in place.

I wanted to get the LCD tv that came with the boat moved from this location so I took a swing arm VESA wall mount that I had sitting in my office and we bolted it to the bulkhead in the forward port side of the salon.

I mounted it so that we could swing it to either side at full extension on the arm and adjust the angle of viewing so the TV could point just about anywhere in the salon.

Here is a close up of the mount. We used two stainless carraige bolts to mount it. In the head you can just see the heads of the round heads carraige bolts and it looks very nice. From the picture below you can see that the stainless bolts were a little long.. I still have to take a hacksaw and trim the bolts off or just get some shorter bolts to replace these.

So far it works great. The only thing you have to make sure of is that you lock it down with a bunji cord so that the TV doesn't swing when sailing or in a wake. My next project for this is to run some cable conduit and neaten up the power and cable cords.

We use this as a tv and as a computer monitor. Though I have to say that as a computer monitor the quality is lacking. This is not a HD unit with the higher resolutins.

Total cost for this project was about 28 dollars. I got the Vesa mount at a flea market for 25 dollars and I think the bolts and nuts were just a little over 2 dollars..
Total time about 2 hours to dig up the parts and buy some bolts 🙁 and about 30 minutes deciding exactly where to drill and then drilling and mounting it.