Hi folks !

First of all, I would like to thank You for all of the useful infos provided by You on the pages of this wonderful site. To tell the truth, there is no any website in Hungary and there is nobody at all I could get info from :mad:, such as this forum and its professional dwellers :) !
So upto now I have read tons of pages and developed a plan for my basement room, but I still need some additional approvement and help on deciding which way should I go ! I am in Hungary and we use meters as units, so I am totally unfamiliar with feet and inches, so sorry for that !:)
So what I have got now is (see the attached pic):
A basement room with concrete floor and ceiling, 36 cm brick and 40 cm concrete walls, two door openings and one side wall with 2 windows and plumbing pipes.
The present inner dimensins are w:652cm*w:404cm*h:239-235cm
What I would like to achive is:
- IB sub
- as big screen as possible
- two rows of seats with riser if possible
- soffit and screen riser if possible
- separate equipment rack or room
- central heating radiator in the room
- hidden speakers
- corner bass traps

My plan:
Given the small height of the room, my aim is the 230 cm height if possible, if I can get that, then I would like to use an optimal ratio what gives me a inner room in the room with the following inner dimensions : l:536 cm*w:3.68cm*h:230cm. I would use 10*5cm struts and plates for framing, 10cm insulation between struts, double layer of drywall with caulk like GG (hopefully i will find something similar in Hungary :D ). That would give me about 3 cm airgap between walls if my maths correct. The big problem is ceiling and floor: I could use RSIC clips with double drywall with 5 cm insulation on ceiling perhaps. Both of them is made of concrete.
After the inner walls are built accordingly, I will have a separate room at the bottom of room with the following dimension : l:90 cm*w:404 cm*h:239 cm.
I would like to use this as a IB sub or a equipment room, first is prefered.
If it is a IB sub, its wall be the screen wall, if it is the equipment room with the projector in it, then the opposite wall will be the sceen wall. See the attached pics for the real and planned dimensions.

All plans, advise, correction and help on dimensions, materials and build methods would be greatly appreciated by a hungarian fellow who is totally newbie in HT biz. :)
Thanks in advance

Zoli

Welcome to the insanity. A few comments:
1) It is hard to do sound isolation with double doors, so think about making it a single door. It is not impossible, just harder
2) You will likely not find anything like green glue, but they may be willing to ship to you. They are easy to work with so you may want to try and contact them.
3) 2 ways to hide speakers: Put them behind the screen (acoustically transparent screen will be necessary) and within columns, or use in-wall/in-ceiling speakers. The latter makes sound isolation more difficult.

Good luck with your project.

Welcome Zoli

I hope we can help you with your build. How easy is it going to be for you to gather the materials needed for your build I have no idea of the building industry in Hungry. I'm sure you don't have a Lowe's or home depot on every damm corner like here in the states :eek: and how well does the shipping services do when shipping stuff from the US & Canada ?


What type of screen are you looking to go with 16:9 or CIH 2.35 ?

I used google to convert your room dimensions I got roughly 21' x 13' x 7'.5

Hi W00lly

As for the material, I am sure that most of them might be retrieved in Hungary as well, the problem is that they are named differently :mad:, so i must put in more work in finding the hungarian counterpart for the stuff You are speaking of !

What I really need to know right now is that either the plan I described in my first post is sound or not in the design aspect ! I mean the dimensions and the whole structure is good acoustically and the IB sub is possible with those parameters or not !
The other key item is the celing height ! Any suggestion for getting the highest possible height for the celing while applying some sort of sound proofing as weel ? What kind of structure shoul I use on ceilin and the floor in order to gain the highest value ?

Any and all advice is looked for !

Thanks , everybody

Zoli

Hi all !

Nobody has got any idea for the ceiling height for me :( ?

Zoli

Get as much ceiling height as you can. If you need to seriously isolate it, then consider sitting new joists on top of new walls completely decoupled from any existing structure. That's the best isolation and the least loss of ceiling height.

You're not close to any really bad overlap of dimensions so grab as much space as you can and don't worry about 'perfect' dimensions and ratios - there aren't any.

Bryan

I've started bulding my HT room 2 months ago - the concept is similar to yours (although mine is a smaller room): room within room, DD+GG.

I think I'm already past most of the pitfalls, so I think I can help both with the planning and availability of materials you may need (GG for instance).

I live near Budapest, just PM me if you want to get in touch.

Get as much ceiling height as you can. If you need to seriously isolate it, then consider sitting new joists on top of new walls completely decoupled from any existing structure. That's the best isolation and the least loss of ceiling height.

You're not close to any really bad overlap of dimensions so grab as much space as you can and don't worry about 'perfect' dimensions and ratios - there aren't any.

Bryan

Thanks Bryan

As matter of fact, I have a 30-40 cm thick of cement floor above the HT room, so I do not think that a very thick insulation is mandatory, but I would like to get as much height as possible. I found a duct hanging rubber clip similar to RSIC in Hungary so I will go for it. It is 6 cm high + DD is around 3 cm, Most probably I will glue 5 cm of isolation sheets to the cement ceiling between the clips, so hopefully there will be an airgap of 1 cm between the DD and the sheets. I think that is the thinnest layer I can get. If somebody knows a better opinion, please share it with me ! ;)
Whats about the IB sub ? The dimensions are good for it ? What do You think ? Thanks a lot !

Bravoman !

I sent a PM to You ! Thanks

Zoli

Thanks Bryan

As matter of fact, I have a 30-40 cm thick of cement floor above the HT room, so I do not think that a very thick insulation is mandatory, but I would like to get as much height as possible. I found a duct hanging rubber clip similar to RSIC in Hungary so I will go for it. It is 6 cm high + DD is around 3 cm, Most probably I will glue 5 cm of isolation sheets to the cement ceiling between the clips, so hopefully there will be an airgap of 1 cm between the DD and the sheets. I think that is the thinnest layer I can get. If somebody knows a better opinion, please share it with me ! ;)
Whats about the IB sub ? The dimensions are good for it ? What do You think ? Thanks a lot !

Bravoman !

I sent a PM to You ! Thanks

Zoli

If you are willing to lose 9 cms of height, you might as well consider adding joists on top of your new walls, as bpape suggested. While this would take ~14 cms (with DD), I think total isolation is well worth the extra 5 cms. Also, it would give you 10 cms of space between the joists, perfect for stuffing insulation in.

Just another thought, instead of 10 cm thick wooden joists, you could also use some sturdy steel beam of 5 cm thickness. With this you would get the best of both worlds: same height loss as with the clips and total isolation.

The tradeoff is higher price and more problematic fastening of drywall (drilling).

Hi

Hi

I will try to setup both of them before I start the actual work for checking the actual outlook . Thanks for the idea ! BTW did You get my PM ?

Zoli

Cement is a surprisingly good sound transmission medium.

Also, when doing the calculations for the size of lumber you'd need, remember that this is a dead load - not a live one like a floor above. All it has to do is hold the drywall up - not furniture, another story of house, people walking on it, etc. The span tables will tell you what you need for a given span and dead load.

Bryan

Cement is a surprisingly good sound transmission medium. .

I live in the US, but have property in Serbia. I know most house constructions are cement, not framing/drywall. New commerical buildings in Serbia now use metal studs/insulation drywall. I know we had some interior changes done in our house on the Adriatic and that they used steel studs/drywall.

The materials will definantely be more difficult to find in Hungary, but I am sure they exist in an equivalent.

The most difficult part will be the Green Glue, RSIC clips, though as you said, I am sure there are commercial equivalents.

It may be worthwhile talking to companies that do commerical insulation to at least analyze/determine their approach for soundproofing commerical constructions in Hungary. If you do get some theory on that, please share it here to compare with "our" best practices.

Equipment is the least of your worries, and as far as acoustical treatments you sure will be able to find rigid fiberglass equivalents and acoustically transparent materials to build your own.
Thanks!

Hi all

As for the structure of the recently built houses in Hungary, situation has changed dramatically in the last decade. More and more american style building with steel and wood struts arise on the daily basis, my brother is carpenter and does it for living. Thus the general materials for this kind of buildings do exist in Hungary. But building a HT room is unique thing right now, and methods and materials for it are still priviliges of some chosen firms who sell it for stellar prices !:( So the few ones who command a little bit of english volunteer on excellent forums like this and try to collect as much of useful info as possible. Getting any valuable info about this stuff in my country is very hard and expensive ! So keep up giving us lot of info ! :D

Zoli