Adam's HT Build. Bring on the Chaos! - Page 2

I got a PM, which made me want to elaborateon this idea for a bit. I really gained some new insites to accoustics from talking to Ted White last night. I finally got it through my head why making hole in the ceiling is such a problem. The sound escape the envelope. We use backerboxes for lights to prevent exactly that! But who uses backer boxes for their HVAC runs? Anyone?

Here's a bit of cut and paste on a PM reply I sent which goes through a more detailed explanation as to why I think this system is superior to ceiling vent systems.


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When I talked to Ted White last night, he explained that a major short coming in vent design is that when you cut a hole in the ceiling for the vent, the sound can then go straight into the room above. That's what we are tryint to prevent. He said in extreme cases people actually build VENT backer-boxes, meaning the hole length of flexpipe is in a backer-box. I thought about this and then figured I could essentially make a backer-box for my flexpipe, but run it vertically (ie in the colums) and that would allow me to get the vent into the floor. This is not a concept I have seen used before. The difference between my design and most others is easy to see from an accoustic standpoint. Place a HUGE speaker right under a typical ceiling vent. Since that vent represents a hole in the DD+GG, the sound will go right through the vent, through the top of the flexpipe and continue straight up into the room above. Now place a speaker over my floor vent. Sound goes in, hits the concrete and disperses and gets cought in the riser insulation. Very different situation. The hard part was figuring out how to get the vents down into the riser.

Here is the final layout. Really. No more changes. Really.



The red are supply. The blue is a return. There are 2 reds under the riser. One return under the riser. The red that go across the joist space are for upstairs and are totally outside the envelope.

I agree that the frnech doors are now the weakest point. However, WAF was high with those. I will have to spend $$$ (probably after the build is all over) to really soundproof those with appropiate door stops, stripping, etc. A single door would be better, but locking frech doors are an option that can work. There are actually airtight french doors made for hospital/laboratory settings, so its not the concept of the french door that is the issue, but rather, finding a set that fits well and is well made.

I figure I can always swap out to a different door in the future if need be, but moving the HVAC would be totally impossible later so I really spent the most time tryihng to get that right.

In addition, my biggest concern accoustically, is verticle sound bleed. I can not have ANY sound going up. If some sound gets out the back of the theater, that's not a huge problem. Upward sound bleed lets the sound up into my vaulted ceiling family room, so the sound echoes around, gets really loud, and crashes into my son's bedroom wall. Its not pretty.

Well, time to update my thready.

Construction has begun!

I went away for a week and my framer managed to get 90% of the framing done while I was out of town. We are now about 95% done. Just waiting on some extra DC clips as I was short a few in my estimate.

The HVAC guy was here yesterday and is coming back today (Saturday) to finish the job because it took him longer than he thought it would. You have to love a contractor that volenteers to come back on a Saturday because he told you the job would be done on Friday, and in spite of staying until 7:30 pm just could not get it done.

I will post pics as soon as the HVAC snakes are done being finished today.

One question my electrician had about this project...

1. When installing electrical outlets using double drywall are there special outlets to use? do you installing them along the studs the same as you would with single drywall or do you install them so that they stick out past the stud further?

One questions I have....

1. When installing the HAT track, I am going perpendicular to the joists. If I have to build a soffit running parallel to the joists, what's the best way to do this? I can envision cutting the HAT and making breaks in one line everywhere it needs to cross, but man that is that labor intensive...

Ted, I'm going with option #1 - Decoupling the soffit from the wall so I can screw drywall right to soffit.

Theater entrance.


Theater entrance close up. Double french doors (Masonite - Safe Sound - total width 60")


Front Left


Front Middle


Front Right

This is all the HVAC stuff for the theater. You can see both the supply trunk and the return. The supply duct dumps 2 supply runs into the floor, beneath the riser, which then snake their way under the riser to their respective vents. As you might have guessed, this is also the rack closet. My plan, which is rather ingenious if I don't say so myself, is to build a false ceiling in the closet whch will allow the bukhead described below to essentially continue though the closet space. I will then build a false wall around the supply lines to place them "outside the envelope". Its hard to explain, but in the end, every last piece of HVAC equipment will be sofit'ed outside of the envelope and the ONLY place where that envelope is pierced is through the bottom of the riser!!!!



Close up shot of the return. We are using the space in the wall as a return, so there will be a big grill between the studs on the front and drywall along the back of the studs to make a compartment for my return. Nice big grill makes for very low noise.


Close up of the supply take offs.


This is a shot of the supply line continuing on the corner of the room. This will have a sofit around it and will be "outside" the envelope. There are 2 more supplies that come off this turn, but both run in the joist space so the envelope is not compromised.


Wide angle shot of above.

My framer actually liked the DC04's. He's a well rounded guy that enjoys learning about new things and this was new for him. He's actually been acting as a general contractor for me (for free) and going over things each step of the way.

There is only one wall in the theater that shares an edge with another room and that wall is a true double wall. All the other walls in the basement are single stud.

Well, its Friday, my one day of the week to work on things. The day started with an early trip to Harbor Freight were I got a Sawzaw. Fun piece of equipment I must say. While out I picked up some additional lumber for some framing that my wife decided she wanted.

Lastly, I stopped to get 3 more pieces of HAT track (because I was three short).

They wheeled the stuff to my car and I immediately said, "What's this?"
They said, "Its 25ga HAT."
I said, "No its not. I got 25ga HAT last time and my stuff is WAY stiffer than this stuff!"
They proceed to check and assure me that this is the right stuff.
"Son of #%&*$!," I think to myself, "I bet those bastard sold me 20ga last time!"
I tell them I'll be needing 18 pieces now, instead of 3, since I now have to rip out the 20ga stuff I already put in.
I was more than a little ticked!

At 11:00 the HVAC guy came and successfully re-reouted (and repaired) the gas line my framer shot a hole in. It needed to me moved anyway, so no biggie. I cut the check for $190. Ouch.

I spent the rest of the day ripping out old HAT and putting in the new stuff. I now see what you guys meant when you said that the 25ga was flexible. Compared to the 20ga it night and day. I found it odd that I had to work so hard to get the first batch into the clips. Now I know why.

So, all the HAT is back up. I'm still trying to figure out how to best make my soffit with the least amount of wasted clips. The L bend is what's throwing me a bit. I can't really visuallize the L shaped soffit, with the HVAC running through it and how it will all match up against the wall where there is no soffit. I'll get it eventually, but I think I need to just wait until the plumbing and electrical are done so I can actually hang the sofit and visualize it better.

Another question came up as I was reading today....about when you put in columns with sconces. In this post....

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7#post15773627

...it looks like he hung his sconce recepticle box directly from the drywall. Is this a good idea? He made the colums by using a 2x4 on each side and then just spanning the distance between them with dywall. If that's true, then the box for the sconce is just hanging from the drywall? It seems like that would give way aftare a while....

Well, another long weekend of working. Here are pics on my progress.

For the projector mount, I am not sure what projector I am getting and therefore am not sure on the distance. So, I made three mount boxes at roughly 15, 16 and 17.5 feet. I don't have them fully installed but here are some pictures so you can see what I am doing. I am planing to have power routed to each box with a low profile outlet.


You can see the three boxes with the 2"condiut running through them. Its like a train, with three different stops!







Here is the stage taking shape. You can see the nice curve and the 1 5/8" lip on each step. I have attached the front plates. The top of the stage will not be attached firmly until the very end of the project. Not sure if I am using sand or insulation yet.





I also got all the conduit except run except for one channel. I ran out after running 200' of 3/4".

Another long weekend of working in the basement and the theater....

Had to cut out drywall for the plumbers to be able to drop a vent (bathroom water vent) into the basement...



Got some new toys:



Here you can see the HVAC return. This wide area will have 2 big grills on it to minimize sound form airflow. Some sound will get into the duct since there is no dead box, but there is nothing between this area and the HVAC of consequence.



Here you can see my ingenious box for bringing wire from outside of the soundproof envelope to into the envelope. I am very happy with how this thing came out.....

Another view of the AV closet and the wire intake area...



Started running low voltrage stuff. I figured the HVAC strap was a good way to secure the wires.



Both L and R soffits in the theater are now done (as well as the soffits in the kitchen and the bedroom which I did not show here)

Here are some pics of the bedroom. Funny thing here, and I want some other opinions on this. I needed to make corner soffits to hide some copper tubing. The one on the left is a triangle, which is 18 inches across the back wall of the pic and 28" across the L wall. Long edge of the triangle is ~33".

Because of the existing soffit on the R side of the room, I made the other triangle to scale, to match the L, which meant that the triangle was actually smaller since some of the space of the triangle was being taking up by the pre-existing 6"x6" soffit. Well, mathamatically, my triangles were perfect, but you know what? My eye said it was very wrong. Its like an optical illusion. Therefore, I remade the "smaller" triangle to be the same size as the large one, and now it looks right. This is hard to explain.

This is a pic with the smaler triangle. You can see in the pic that the edge along the back wall in both cases is 18" long. However, on the R, 6 of those inches is filled by the existing soffit.



This next pic, it with both triangles the same size, which means that the one on the right is actually "bigger" an the left.



Which do you like better?????

Progress is taking place. I am about 1 week out from drywall. Keep in mind I am doing the whole basement, not just the theater. I am subbing out the drywall btw. Its well over 1200 sq feet and the dywall guys are charging me ~$3500. Money well spent in my opinion.

Here some some pics. I will post more pics of the theater itself when I get home. I took pictures of EVERY square inch of the basement before I began putting up insulation this weekend. I put R19 in the ceiling and R13 in the walls. I did this for the whole basement. I know doing the ceiling serves no purpose for heat/cooling, but it does help with sound, so I did it. I did 80% of the insulation this weekend.

I also now have all my wires run. I am running some last minute Cat6 cables so that I can distribute HDMI via balums if need be. Not sure if I will or not, but I want to run the wires now. I have 7.2 wired. I used Belden cable for the 2 subwoofer runs (the same kind used by Blue Jeans). Luckily, I had l spool I bought 7 years ago which was mostly unused. I used monoprice 14 gauge for the speaker wire. No run was more than 30 feet, and most were considerably less.

Here are some pics to keep you tied over.


This is the half wall and column that seperates the kitchen(ette) from the play area. This way we can make food but still watch the kids. I made the column and wall myself. Came out nice!



This is the 5.1 system we have outside the theater. I have a MAME computer console with a 40" 1080p LCD that will be wall mounted here.



This is a shot of the celing of the theater. Notice the super sweet backer boxes for the projector run. I will bu running a strip of 3/4 plywood between the 2 runs of HAT rack. I will then cut little wholes in the plywood to gain acess into the back box. I have one box at ~15 and one at abouy 18~. This keeps my options open for the future.

I LOVE it. I think its the LTC. Its the one that has the smaller of the 2 batteries. It lasts a few hours when heavy use, but more importantly, it charges in under 20 minutes. Its a dream drill.

Update: Still finishing insulation. I stuffed one soffit lastnight and got the bottom of the soffit in place (with the help of my trusty 8 year old). Will do the other soffit tonight or tomorrow.

Waiting on plumber to move a water line for me (wife says that the plumber need to do it).

Put up a plywood track under my projector boxes so that the projector can be mounted anywhere.

Trimmed out my window.

Almost ready for drywall!!!!

Video Link for basement pre-druywall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5zHqL8xeuQ