Yet another HT build - from start to finish...

UPDATED 11/12/2008

I know this is the upteenth thread regarding HT DIY builds but to me, being someone who enjoys sitting at home watching a movie or the ball game more than the bar scene, this is a long time coming.

I've reached a bit of a sticking point in weeding through all of the various ideas with regards to layouts, design, and of course implementation. I plan to have this completed by mid december, and I'm hoping there are a number of you who are willing to help me get things figured out.

Here are the details of where I am:

I have just finished framing a 15' 5" x 14' x 85" high (yes it's tight height-wise) room in my basement, with one small window and a standard, 32" door opening. I have not begun to add anything else yet, because I am stuck in how to build up my walls properly and what wiring/devices I really need to add.

Due to the size of my room, I plan to use a front projector, a perforated screen, with in wall speakers behind the screen. The subwoofer will reside in the room in one of the corners.

The equipment list I currently have laid out is as follows (UPDATED):

A/V experience:
Atlantic Technologies 6200e front speakers
Atlantic Technologies 6200ec center
Atlantic Technologies 4200SR surrounds (4 of them)
Velodyne spl-1200 subwoofer
Sony HW10 1080p Projector
Pioneer Elite VSX-94TXH receiver
Universal remote MSC-400 basestation
Universal remote MX-980 remote
Universal remote MX-3000 remote
Monster power HTFS1000 power conditioner
Monster power HTS 3500 power center
DYI AT screen

Lighting:
Grafik eye 3104 4-zone controller
Grafik eye 3106 6-zone controller
2 Grafik eye 5-scene wall stations
2 grafik eye 8-scene wall stations

I intended to place 7 3" recessed lights, but I have reduced the amount to 6 3", par20 50w recessed lights. I'm going to wire for 3 more recessed lights just in case I want to add them later.

There will still be 4 wall sconces on cherry wood columns.

HVAC:
I have a single 6" heat/cooling duct to push air in, and I am putting in a low cold air return and a high cold air return, both with baffles to change them over depending if I am pushing cold air or warm air into the room. The heating duct is in the ceiling and I used 6" flexible, insulated pipe.

I am tearing out the old cold air returns from the rooms above and replacing them with OC703-lined
Misc:

Floor:
This is yet another discussion... My floor is a concrete slab, with a french drain around the perimeter. My basement is 100% dry, and in no danger of flooding (its built in a sand bed on a hill). I originally intended to use the 2'x2' plywood subfloor that has the plastic bottom which allows air to circulate under the floor, and then use a normal carpet mat with the thick carpet. I've been reading a bunch on acoustic panels. Is there really THAT much of a difference that it's worth spending $2.50/ft for the stuff in addition to the other flooring costs?

Resources
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1043747


Historical notes left over from the past


Original Post:

I think one of the most challenging aspects of this build is my timeline. I have a baby on the way, due in January. With the holidays coming fast, I have a lot to do.

My father-in-law is a general contractor and has been helping me with the construction aspect of the room. There's a local joint called Hippo's - http://www.hipposonline.com/. That's the place that I have been doing my due diligence with regards to the design and electronic elements of the build. They have been very helpful, and I will more than likely purchase my speakers and projector through them.

What's really interesting is how all of this stemmed from the idea that my wife's current craft room is going to become the baby's room, and she wanted a room in the basement dedicated to her crafts and sewing. So I'm now building 3 rooms in the basement - a playroom, the HT, and the craft room.

It's been in discussion for a long time and we basically have the theme we want to follow through with, and the direction we want to go in with regards to the HT. Funny, the space is 15x14 and she wanted to seat 8 people in there. I laughed. Said no way.

Tonight, after much discussion, chalk, tape measures and some googling, she's got her 8 seats.

We are going to go with a 4-seat leather theater set, which can be found here:
http://www.4seating.com/theater_seating_Excaliber.htm. We plan to get the loveseat version. The seating is $1800 including shipping. This place seems to be reputable, and these seats seem to be ok, but not being able to sit in them makes it worrisome for me. If anyone has any experience with them, please let me know!

When the seats are extended, they are 58" deep, and we have found we can place them in the room so that when reclining, your head is roughly 11.5ft from the screen. Behind this, we are going to build a small cherry 'bar' which will have 4 bar stools at it.

The room will be dedicated to movie watching, game watching and playing video games, so this falls in nicely with the room size and what we are planning to use it for.

One of the challenges is the door location. The door is located on the front wall of the room, which backs up to the stair well. I'm building it as a 2x6 wall, and I'm hoping I can apply enough acoustical treatments and construction elements to keep the sound in the room and out of the stair well. The door is located at the bottom of the stairs, and after much discussion with my wife, we have decided to offset the center of the viewing area. Originally, we were going to place a 96" screen on this wall and center the screen on the wall because it fits with the door there. We ended up going with a 110" screen, but in order to fit that size screen we have to offset the screen center by 15 1/2" from the center of the room. This basically caused us to offset all of the seating by the same amount, and produces an aisle down the side of the room the door resides on...


So I have a few goals to accomplish this week:
1. Read the book I just bought regarding the construction of a HT room
2. determine what proper acoustical materials and method is going to be used to build the walls, floor and ceiling
3. determine the height and location of the stage I'm going to build in the front of the room (centered on the screen, not the room)
4. draw up the room layout, including lighting.
5. continue learning about accoustical treatments and make sure I have the budget for them.
6. complete the lighting plan, including how many zones.

Holy mackrel. As I continue to read in here, I'm seeing that people with a 15' deep room have two rows of seating!??

So, if I'm reading all of this correctly, I'm seeing that people are putting their front row less than 9' in front of a 110" screen? Isn't that going to be way too close to the screen?

hrmmmpppphh

The B&W speakers I am considering have enclosures that I will be using, to box in the speakers, so they will be more isolated than the traditional in-walls that do not have any backing.

You are correct with regards to #2 and #5. #2 should be sound isolation where as #5 is acoustical treatments.

My goals for the room are as follows:
- To have a pretty isolated sound room so I can enjoy my music, videos and video gaming without fear of disrupting the rest of the house.
- The room's decor and acoustics are aimed at being a dedicated theater, with appropriate elements conducive to video gaming and watching my sports (baseball, auto-racing).
- I normally listen to these things at elevated volume levels, so it is important to keep the sound as isolated as possible, without making it recording studio quality.
- To have the room comfortable.


So, I am currently working on 4 primaries right now:
1. overall room design (seating placement, stage, screen location, lighting locations)
2. speaker placement in the walls.
3. determining lighting control for the HT and the two adjacent rooms (well, play room and stair well)
4. Determining the best, most cost-effective way to provide adaquate sound isolation with construction.

I'll break these out below:

1. overall Room design
My number one issue with the room is the size of the room and the location of the entry way. The entry way is on the front wall. Because of this, we either had to go with a smaller screen size and center the screen and viewing area on the room, or go with a larger screen and offset the center of the viewing/listening area. After looking at seating dimensions, the want to eventually add powered curtains on both sides of the screen, and the need to try and include a second row of seating to attain the 8 seat mark, we decided to offset the viewing area.

The room is 14' wide. In doing this, we offset the screen center by 15 1/2 inches, and that gives us clearance to place a 110" screen on the wall, along with enough space on either side to put the powered curtains and frame in the screen. This also allows us to build a small stage centered on the screen for an additional theatrical element.

We want to put some comfy seating in the room, and almost all the seating options we have looked at are roughly 120-128" wide. This is where the next contention area comes in. I am tall, 6' 5", and my family is tall, so we have to have additional space between the rows in order to be comfortable. Because of this, after looking at the depth of an average reclining HT seat, the front row's viewing distance from the screen will end up being just short of 9' from the screen. This has me concerned that it will be much too close to the screen and will make for an unpleasant viewing experience.

So our current solution is to purchase a single row of 4 HT seats - 2 single with a love seat in the middle. Then purchase one of those convertible ottomans (they turn into a seat when you open them up) which can be placed on the side of the main seating area for a 5th seat. Then, behind the main seating area, we would build a bar (made from Cherry as all the columns and molding will be from some native cherry trees that fell in my yard a couple of years ago), and then place stools as seating at the bar. Although this isn't ideal for movie viewing, it does work well for gaming parties, and sports parties, and supply us with 9-10 seats we could put butts in. In addition, this option will cost us roughly half of what it would cost to put in a full two rows of seating. However, I'm waiting for measurements from oman because his room is almost the same depth as mine, and he has a much bigger screen (120 curved, I believe).

Then lighting would consist of 4 zones:
- 3 recessed lights across the front of the room, centered on screen.
- 3 recessed lights across the rear of the room (over the bar area), centered on screen.
- 4 sconces on the columns
- walkway lights along the wall where the aisle is.

I think this accomplishes what we want, but I do love the idea of having two full rows of luxury seating, but I think it might compromise the viewing experience too much for the few times when we would actually be using all of the seating for viewing a movie...

2. Speaker placement
This one is fairly straight forward, knowing that we are now going to offset the screen in the room. I was planning to just take the room dimensions and layout to hippos and have them calculate it for me. From this, I should be able to get a basic idea of first reflection points and from that I can determine where my cherry columns can go...


3. Lighting/room automation control
This is one area that I'm still trying to get a grasp on, because I am thinking I will break out the lighting control into the two adjacent areas - namely the stair well and the playroom area, both just outside the theater door. Including in this is the want to automate a black out shade on the window in the HT, and controlling the curtains (to be installed at a later date) for the screen. I'm thinking that it'll turn out to be 7-8 zones total for the lighting, with 4 zones in the HT, 2 zones in the playroom and the stairway being a zone... However, trying to determine what I need to control what elements is still a confusing task all together. Eventually I'll add themostat control as well as baffle control (hvac stuff) but those are really long term things that I'm just going to make sure I lay the wire down for them.


4. Sound Isolation Construction
This is my current area of contention, and really warrants another thread, including pictures of my room...

I need to get some work done today so number 4 is going to have to be posted later with the pictures I took.

Of course, I'm also working on the decor part with my wife (she's doing the decorating, carpet color determination, etc).

http://www.bowers-wilkins.com/display.aspx?infid=3496

here's a link to the in-walls that B&W makes. I listed the model numbers above, but look at the LCR7's the CWM650's and the CS6's. They all have isolation boxes (at additional cost, of course) available, which I will be purchasing to decrease construction time and ensure the boxes are of proper size for the speakers.

Oh god. My wife is gonna be hording the computer all night with that link. lol

Ok,

So I purchased a few products today for lighting control for the entire basement, including the HT. It's a little overkill, but I can add on to it easy enough. Here's what I got:

1 Grafix Eye 3106 - 6 zone lighting control
1 Grafix Eye 3104 - 4 zone lighting control
1 2B-SL 2 button on/off switch
2 LB 6 5-scene lighting control switches.

I will need to paint them to make them match my decor (they are ivory) but that's ok. For the price I paid for them you can't beat it.

So, I think I'll put the 3104 in the HT room and the 3106 near the equipment rack in the craft room. At the top of the stairs I'll put one of the LB6's, and at the bottom of the stairs will be another LB6. I have 2 other outlet locations that I'll have to get switches for, but I think I can just get 2B-SL's for both of those. The 3104 in the HT room will alleviate the need for an IR control in there.

Of course, I'll have to figure out what to wire how, but that's the easy part. For the moment I can just run Cat-5e to all the locations and make sure I can connect them all together, and then I can sit down and figure out exactly how to program them up and tie it into the rest of the design.

Now, I need to figure out what I need to power and control the curtains and the shade. I know I can just run a cat-5 cable and power to each location and have it pre-wired for future advancements, but I would still like to try and figure out what actual components I'd need to buy.

Well, I have 1600ft of cat 5 laying around so I don't have to buy any more wire. It should be ok, I just won't run them along the same paths, and it should hold up just fine. That's what I understand. Why should I be using the pelv wire instead? That's basically the same stuff that crestron and the other controlling systems use to send signals back and forth to each other, and I thought had similar spec to the cat 5e.


Thanks. I'll take a look. Will kinda suck if I gotta spend another $100 on wiring. I'm already a little over budget and I don't have the gang boxes yet, lol.

That's what I plan to do is just use the standard layout. what I don't have are the specific measurements for locations, meaning exactly where they need to go in my room.

*sigh* Ya, that figures... Now I got all this cat 5 laying around that I won't use nearly as much now...

Anyone need any? I hope to lord this doesn't cost me another $150...

Sheesh. the lutron stuff is $200+ for 500ft... The belden stuff is $280 for 500ft...

That's not gonna work.....

I could always modify the sheathing that's in the box to provide additional shielding...

Ok, so now on to the isolation construction... This is the tough one, and one where a lot of money could be spent on many things that are not seen, but are heard (or not heard).

The issue I'm having is that I don't want to spend $2000 on isolating the room, because then I wouldn't have much left to make the room acoustically viable, and then it'd be no good to sit and watch a movie...

So, let's break it down into various steps:

General Wall Construction and layout:
Here's the basics to begin with:
- Currently, the floor is a concrete slab.
- All walls are 16" off with wood studs.
- Standard floor joists in the ceiling.
- The Front wall abuts the stair well and is 2x6 construction. The front wall also has the entry way in it.
- The rear wall is 2x4 construction, but sits 9" from the wall due to septic lines running through there. There is also a window that is basically double the size of a 'normal' basement window.
- The door and the window are both offset to the same side of the Room, towards the front of the house and exterior wall
- The right wall (looking at the front wall while in the room) is 2x4 construction, 9" off the cement wall due to septic.
- The left wall resides under the main support beam of the house, and is 2x6 construction. This wall abuts the future craft room.


Now issues to address:

Wall insulation - I expected to go with normal, faced R-13 in all the voids, and then get the 2" foam insulation to put in every other stud void (as per a DIY channel show I have watched in the past). I then have some left over non-faced insulation (R13) that I was going to use to put in the ceiling and all the other voids I have around the walls due to the extra space I have... However, I'm reading more and more that I should go with unfaced stuff.. I'm not really sure what I should do here, but I know that buying the true acoustical stuff is out of the question because it's not in my budget. Suggestions? Do I just go with the faced pink stuff, the unfaced pink stuff, use the foam solution, or something else all together??

HVAC - I plan to tap into the main house system, and was originally going to tap the return that currently resides in the ceiling (about in the midpoint of the room). I then planned to run a low return in the wall that abuts the craft room to handle cold air return in the winter months. My main heating duct was going to be a normal 6" duct running the width of the room, with a basic 6" diffuser in the ceiling, also located in the room. I have a feeling this method is going to royally screw me no matter what I do with the rest of the room, so I need to rework how I'm going to do it. I know one option is to run the soft duct work. I think that's really the only solution I'm willing to ante up the money for.. I'm hoping it'll work.

Estimated cost: I'm not sure. I don't think Lowe's sells this stuff, so I'm going to estimate $100-150

DryWall - I don't really see much 5/8" around here, but I plan to hunt down 5/8" dry wall and put two sheets on every wall and ceiling. I'm also going to put two sheets on the backside of the craftroom wall, and the backside of the front wall (in the stairwell). To improve isolation, I was going to at least use 1x3" wood furring strips to help, and at most I am looking at getting the Isomax Isolation clips and using 22gauge, 7/8" hat channel. However, the estimated cost of this is $675, definitely not cheap. Then there is the whole issue of Green Glue. It'll cost me about $800 to do green glue in the HT room alone... It is REALLY worth the cost to do this? I'll also sit the drywall on a 1" foam insulation and use acoustical sealant to seal it up.

Floor - My original plan is do put down that new flooring that has a plastic under coating which has air channels in it to allow air flow. I would do this after I sheet rock the walls so I can float the floor inside the room to help prevent flanking. I would put a 1/2" foam border around the entire flor so it doesn't touch the walls. Then I would build my stage and rear riser (got the rear riser compliments of Oman! thanks!) and fill those voids with either sand or insulation and cover them with normal plywood. I'd then do a standard carpet pad and a medium-grade carpet. I don't think it's worth spending any more money on the floor for special acoustical pads due to the complex nature of my walls and all of the probably flanking I have to deal with.

Corners/Recessed lighting/Junction Boxes - I figured I'm going to need to buy some acoustical sealant for all the corners, and I've been looking at this putty to use around the backs of the junction boxes. and around any holes that I need to deal with... I currently have 3" edged recessed lights, and I really didn't think about sealing those up until now, but I figure that putty would work well. I see the sealant is basically $80 for a case of 12 tubes, but the putty stuff gets real expensive, and is about $120 for 3 3ft tubes of it...

So, now figuring out the true costs of the isolation materials. These are estimates. Here we go:

Sealant: 2 cases - $160
Green Glue: enough to do 645ft - $750
Putty for recessed lighting/junction boxes: 3 tubes - $120
Isomax clips/furring channel: enough to cover the 645ft - $500
3/4" ownens corning foam insulation sheets: enough to cover every other stud - $100
R-13 unfaced pink insulation: enough for the room - $75
Estimated 6" soft HVAC ducting: enough for the one room - $100

So this would end up being a grand total of: $1805 + shipping (for the acoustical stuff)

That's a pretty daym huge number, more than twice what I had figured, and shipping for that stuff isn't going to be cheap. Now the question begs - What's the best compromise of using these things?

The biggest cost factor is the Green Glue and the Isomax isolation clips. But they also seem to be the backbone of acoustical isolation... I guess I can commit to going one of them, but I'm not sure if both will make it worth the cost...

I guess I could take some of the money out of my equipment budget... Sheesh that's a hugely looking number...

My wife is gonna look at the small theater thread, then I'll post pictures up of what my basement looks like, and then you'll get an idea of what I'm up against.

Thanks for the comments. I REALLY appreciate you guys stepping up and getting involved with a rookie who you don't even know.

Oman, I'm gonna owe you a beer at least after this, and since i'm only a couple of hours from you, we'll have to arrange something...

Scruffy, I don't whether to hit ya or hug ya. lol. how true. How true.

Ok, do you know of any places that have reasonable costs involved with purchasing this stuff?

I found mine through an installer in Florida who just removed all the equipment from a high end home he was working on. I found the contact through a store I trust on ebay... So what I did was kind of an anomoly. I got all of that for $500...

Ok, just finished talking with a rep from http://www.soundisolationstore.com/. He was VERY helpful, and spend about 45 minutes with me going over room construction, the various types of sound isolation products, and we calculated how much and what I would need..

So here's a revised cost estimate for my sound isolation construction (going the whole 9 yards, that is):

2 cases of Green Glue: $160/case - $320 - from 4 cases/$640
2 cases of silentSeal: $80/case - $160
123 isomax clips: $4.95/clip - $396 changed
123 isolation clips: $2/clip - $246
435 linear feet of hat channel: $.45/ft. - $195
100ft reslient wall channel (for the connection between the wall and floor): $60/50ft - $120
4 tubes of fire putty: $30/tube - $120
15 packages of R19 unfaced pink isulation $22/48sq ft - $330
17 packages of R13 pink insulation: $10/40sq ft. - $162 changed
13 sheets of 3/4" owens corning foam insulation: $12/sheet - $161 changed
Estimated HVAC materials: $100 changed from $150
37 sheets of 4x8x5/8" Sheet Rock: $7/sheet - $265
1 roll of tape: $3.50/roll - $3.50
1 bucket of joint compound: $11/bucket - $11

Sub Total - $2263
Shipping: $75 (roughly)
Tax: $75

Grand Total: $2413.50 modified to - $1910 (roughly) saved $503

That would be everything but the floor... (just for the theater)

Now the Floor:
1 sheet of owens corning 3/4" foam insulation - $12
210sq ft. of Drycore basement subflooring: $1.50/sq. ft - $315
wood for stage and riser: estimated $20
5 sheets 4x8x5/8" underlay plywood for riser and stage: $18/sheet - $90
carpet for 210 sq. ft of floor: $4/sq ft. including pad - $840
Carpet Installation cost: $200

Sub total: $1477
Tax: $103

Grand Floor Total: $1580

Wiring:
250ft roll of 14/3 copper - $65
250ft roll of 12/2 (had)
35ft monster HDMI cable - $114
Speaker/Network Wire - $420
500ft of class 2: $.48/ft - $214 (if I get it)
10 - single gang electrical boxes: $3/each - $30
1 4 - gang electric box: $10 (I think)

Wiring total: $853

So, grand total to construct the walls and such (not including electronics) for the theater room, and two adjecent walls is: $4846

Here's the interesting part. If I were to not do anything in attempting to acoustically isolate the room, my total cost actually becomes $3140, a difference of $1706! That is a substantial savings, which would pay for the rest of the rooms that I need to sheet rock, and insulate. This is where the tough decision is... Right here... To isolate or not to isolate... That is the $1700 question.

So, what are the benefits to isolating the room verses not?

My, it adds up in a hurry, doesn't it? Now to figure out the rest of my insulation/dry wall needs for the other rooms. I should note the wiring listed above is enough for all of the rooms plus some other rooms further up the house. It does not include face plates and electrical outlets, so you can expect to see an additional $100 in those materials (remember 3 rooms, and a couple of gang boxes up stairs).