I am wanting to build a bat cave theater and i was considering using concrete but ive been told it would probably crack.Money is a factor any ideas

Foam?

http://www.fossilcrete.com/

I work for the Utah distributor. We install also. We did a theater this summer that had faux rock walls stamped with fossil crete, and painted like big thunder mountain railroad. Fossil crete is really cool stuff. The possibilities are endless. Here is our distribution site that has a few more pics of fossil crete, and excel.(excel is for floor stamping) The theater we did is hard to see in the pics. We shot a panorama of it, but its small sorry. http://hccdist.com/index.html

You will need to figure out how to tame the echo's and resonances of all that hard surface. Build a cave and it will sound like a cave.

That Fossilcrete looks like a great product but It wouldn't be my first choice to cover a lot of surface area in a theater space.

Here are a few shots of the theater. It was hard to get a good photo of it. But you get the idea.

That Fossilcrete looks like a great product but It wouldn't be my first choice to cover a lot of surface area in a theater space.


Indeed. I was originally going to stamp my entire theater Indiana Jones themed. Big block walls, cave like ceiling, etc. But the more I read on these forums about acoustics, the more I talked my self out of it as I wanted to stamp almost the entire room. Maybe in theater 2.0 with proper treatments to match the theme, or less stamping all together. But thats when it gets tough, deciding between aesthetics vs function. It sure would have looked awesome though.

did you use a textured roller or is the wall carved and what do you think it would cost in materials for a 22x20 room 9ft ceiling. Not covering the ceiling.

I bet there is a foam type product that emulates stone and has better acoustic quailities. Don't they use "foam" boulders in the movies? Or what about a wire frame structure stuffed with insulation and covered in fabric. Then airbrush to look like stone.

Just brainstorming.

foam want work because i have a great dane and a 5 year old that would poke at it Fiberglass is probably my best bet but i dont have any exp with fiberglass and i cant afford to pay someone to do it

Ill have to get back with you on cost. As the boss has all those numbers.
The walls were stamped with a rock textured stamp. Every square inch has to be hand stamped.

did you use a textured roller or is the wall carved and what do you think it would cost in materials for a 22x20 room 9ft ceiling. Not covering the ceiling.

Okay, how about FOAM, then cover it in drywall mud to finish it off? You could even whip it up, then spray it on.

Here's a site that describes another batcave setup:
http://archive.seacoastonline.com/news/03042007/nhnews-04sun-batcave.html

And a nice image:
http://hackedgadgets.com/wp-content/batcave.jpg