Saga of the "Old Vic" - Page 7

Yes, I've picked up the pace lately... somebody has to make up for your slowdown I'm patiently waiting for your updates. The truth is that I have a lot more time on my hands lately (you can read between the lines) so I'm putting it to good use.

Thanks. It's more of a woodwork shop these days. I use to play around with a lot metal project including classic car restoration but no hotrods. I presume you noticed the green CNC mill/lathe which is one of my favorite toys. It is fascinating to me to watch metal chips fly as it fabricates a part. There isn't much metalwork in theater construction although my outer door will be sliding ticket booth running on a linear motion rail with actuator so I expect to fire up the metalworking tools at least once.

Cheers.

Brad, you are hilarious. I nearly choked on my coffee this morning reading this!

Santa has asked that I return the elves next week though. Apparently he has other plans...

Thanks for checking out my build (I've been watching yours!). The outfeed table on the table saw has been well used the past couple of days, it makes it very easy to handle 4x8 sheets myself. However I discovered today that I need my wife's help to rip 4x10 sheets otherwise they topple off the end.

Definitely ping me if you are in the area again..

I've been staring at the big box of J&M duct board to way too long and frankly I was sick of moving it around the theater so I finally committed to putting it where it belongs.

Here are a few shots of the process:



The drywall lift is rapidly becoming my best friend:



I was a little concerns that I might be disrupting the airflow a little too much (despite building relatively large ducts) so I cut up some 6" tin pipe and installed some vanes at all the 90 degree bends.



It was a little tight fitting the final pieces together but it worked out in the end. Of course this picture doesn't capture all my swearing ;-) I also filled any remaining space in the soffit cavity with insulation.



Ted White did suggest that I drywall in this part of the soffit but frankly I'm burned out on drywall for a while so I'm encasing the HVAC with two layers of 1/2" MDF with Green Glue in between. Having the MDF to build against will be an advantage anyway. What do you think Ted?

My star ceiling parts arrived this week as expected and put a big smile on my face. I've been waiting for this part of the build for some time.



The illuminator was created for me by Fosi and will allow the installation of two shooting stars and a comet. One of the advantages of this disc system over the LED modules (IMHO) is that it has an analog feel to it.
Each fiber is installed into a separate hole in the illuminator and and light variation (for the twinkle effect) migrates over every fiber.



Anyway before running the fiber I need to get the panels made out of the ultralight MDF sheets. The plan is to create 5 separate panels at the full 10' width and suspend them from the ceiling to cover a 10'x20' area. Cutting the ceiling in two will be a beam/soffit that will carry the projector at a favourable throw distance and allow me to put some lighting directly above the bar.

Adjoining edges will have biscuits installed to ensure the faces are alligned and a compression system will be fitted at either end to ensure the seams are tight. The front couple of panels will house some acoustic treatment so I will need to cover all the panels in some AT fabric.

The panel mounting system I'm using is from Fosi and consists of interlocking extrusions -- one hung on the panel and the other directly on the ceiling.

First the extrusion is fitted to the ceiling:



Then short pieces of extrusion is fitted to the panel. To minimise the space behind the panel I'm bolting the extrusion directly rather than the suggested glued on block.
The location of the hook points is chosen so as to avoid conflict with the (accurate) starfield artwork.



To avoid metal on metal contact I glued a short length of split rubber pipe to the hooks (I discovered I needed this after a trial fitting):



And after a little persuasion I got my wife to help lift the panel into pace for a trial run:



When I talked to bpape about this construction he was a little concerned about a triple leaf effect.
I'm hoping that the 1.5" gap all around each panel and the fact that the larger front section will have holes for acoustic treatment will provide sufficient venting.

Thanks Ted. By "total insulation picture" I assume you are just referring to the HVAC? My theater is on a dedicated 3rd zone with fresh air ventilation, the house HVAC installation uses insulated flex ducts exclusively. The theater zone has uses about 30' of 10" flex duct that then transitions into 1" duct board (larger area than the flex duct). The duct board runs another 20-30' on both the supply and return sides with several turns, the first 15' is in the theater ceiling joist bays, the rest as shown in the recent picture. All the duct board is encased in MDF or drywall (with Green Glue of course!)

There were a few reasons for my approach: (i) to maximum the volume of air moved -- rectangular ducts can utilize more space than round ones, (ii) use some of the space outside the theater for HVAC muffling, (iii) have both a sealed (HVAC) and open (wiring) part of the soffit design, (iv) use of wood rather than drywall in places for structural reasons.

Me too! The only things that are going to slow me down on this is the design of the first reflection treatment and getting some fabric ordered over the Christmas period. I have quite a few fabric samples now, but when all is said and done I think I may just go with the safe bet of GOM FR701 -- although I don't like the weave it will make threading the fibers easier.

You mean the wxh dimensions? 14x9 external, 12x7 internal.

Ah, not enough coffee obviously. Three layers.

Flying.. well being jobless has its advantages

The star ceiling is five panels as you describe all connected to a single illuminator hidden in my media closet ceiling. Because the room is long I'm separating the star field with a soffit/beam across the room over the rear bar. This just happens to be a favorable throw distance for the projectors I'm looking at. The soffits are going to be combination hardwood and fabric. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so something like this...


Now, as for a clean shop -- you should see it today! I can hardly breath in there

The elves have been caught drunk on several occasions now and have been sent to rehab -- something about the season... They are back on work release and promise and update in a couple of days ;-)

Well I'm finally out of rehab after the holiday season festivities and have been hard at work on the Theater (and been late for dinner several times ... ). Actually that reminds me that over dinner the other day my wife asked why I didn't hire some contractors to help speed up the work. I pointed out that I always finished everything I've started and I want the satisfaction of building this 100% by myself. On hearing this my 8 year old daughter asked "are contractors the people that mess up your house for money". I thought that was hilarious -- she must have heard me talking about my dissatisfaction in the past. In fact I think I'm going to use that quote in my signature...

Back to the build and at the risk of boring everyone, here goes:

I completed the soffit framing, which took a little more time that it could have because of my desire for double light trays and a partitioning beam running over the bar area. The beam will carry the projector and be used as a vent and wiring conduit. I fabricated it on the floor and hoisted it into place with my drywall lift (the label on the lift says DO NOT USE FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN DRYWALL ... yeah right).



After the beam was installed the border for the lower (outer) tray was installed. The actual light trays will be fabricated from hardwood and then installed onto this framing, so you have to imagine the trays at this point.



After that it was time to start some wiring and cut the first hole through my drywall shell. After all the soundproofing effort and sealing every hole this was surprising hard to commit to



It was at this point that I realized I had overlooked how I was going to run cables to the screen wall. Luckily I hadn't closed the bottom of the HVAC enclosure up front so was able to run a couple of electrical conduits through before I finished the encasing of the HVAC system up front and cut some outline holes for my linear diffuser supply vents.



I also ran a conduit through the ceiling beam to the right hand wall:



And put the romex feed to the floor in a conduit. Note that this is the only place the line voltage and low voltage circuits get close to one another. Since I have essentially two soffit boxes I'm using the outer one for low voltage and the inner one for line voltage. The inner one will also be where the soffit recessed lighting will be.

The wiring is beginning to pile up in the equipment closet:



So here is the current view towards the front. For those that are paying close attention you will notice that the theater is wired for 11.1. I do have spare speakers for either wide or heights but don't plan on installing them initially, but I thought, hey this is 2010 so I might was well be ready for the future especially if these extra channels catch on and are explicitly encoded in the media. Incidentally, a few years back I had a modest theater setup using a Yamaha receiver. After a couple of years I decided to tweak the setup and added the Yamaha wide speakers... I don't know if it was just my room acoustics (or bad initial LCR setup) but instantly the sound stage got much larger and I could hear depth I had not heard before. Anyway, whilst the jury is out about these new channels, I'm at least going to be ready to give them a fair audition.

I did install a second layer on the stage with green glue sandwich, so that is complete other than the trim work -- I am planning a hardwood edge to the stage and step and so have routed the decking flush with the edge.



I also installed some shelves for the LCR speakers (Klipsch KL-650's)



And the current view looking towards the back of the room.



You can see the stack of star ceiling panels which I've made but am waiting for delivery of some GOM FR701 fabric to cover them to hide the embedded OC703 panels at the first reflection points. More on this in a subsequent post.

So what's next...

bpape has completed my acoustical design and I'm now waiting on the first shipment of materials to put it into action. The plan is to treat the front wall, add corner base traps and then to install base traps into all the open soffits. Later I'll get to the side walls and a rather interesting diffusion treatment on the side and rear walls...
I also have to complete the star ceiling and get that hung.

One final task I'm planning is to document the progress and results of the acoustic treatment. I don't think I've seen this done before but one reason to wire up the front speakers and sub woofers is to create waterfall plots as work progresses so hopefully the effect of each treatment can be measured. We'll see, I might have liftoff (I mean sound from 4 subwoofers) by next week..

Guys, thanks for the kind words. It certainly helps on the motivation front to know people are watching.

gitSehT, I'll keep theater building in mind as job plan B!

Lisalynn, judging by your avatar you might be interested in the next phase of the ceiling.