An Aspen Woods Theater. - Page 2

Ok cool, I'm in the same situation, kitchen right above and then bedrooms above that. I was hoping to be able to watch a movie after my daughter in bed and not having to worry about vibrating her out of bed.

So you have 3 layers all together?
I am doing staggered stud walls with one layer of 3/4" OSB and one layer of 5/8" drywall with greenglue. The IB chamber will have a ceiling
with 2 or 3 layers. The ceiling will attach to the concrete wall at the back though. I know it's not a perfect scenario but I'd lose too much space if I did it similar to yours.

Just a small update.

The plumber was here earlier in the week and got the drain and gas line moved away from the beam so that I can add the channels. He also roughed in the plumbing for the rest of the basement and the bar at the back of the theater.



I also got my shipment from The Soundproofing Company: 4 tubs of green glue and speed loader, a case of Silent Seal, Whisper clips and DC04 clips.



This weekend I'm planning to finish some framing in the bathroom, maybe start the sofit around the HVAC at the back of the theater and place an order with Monoprice for most of my cabling.

I got another delivery in the week, this one from Monoprice. In-wall speakers, TV mount and wire for the family room as well as some networking supplies.

Today was day one of "Operation Pole Rrmoval". I had my dad helping all day, my neighbour helping in the morning and my brother helping in the afternoon.
We started by preparing the supports at both ends




Then we brought the channels from the garage to the basement and placed them where they needed to be. Three of us brought them round, they weighed about 350lbs each.



It was at this point that my neighbour left (he'd probably had enough of lifting things) and my brother arrived. With the afternoon crew, we started putting the channels up. We had a 1 ton chain hoist that we used to take most of the weight, however it didn't lift quite high enough. We got one end in first then had to physically lift the other end up.



First section up



After we got the first section up and secured to the point we were relativley sure it wouldn't fall on us it was time to get the second section up.



All of the support was added and the channels were bolted to the existing beams before we called it a night. Tomorrow will be removing the pole and hoping the kitchen doesn't end up where I was planning to build a theater.

Day 2 of the pole removal (which was last Sunday) went as well as day 1. Using an angle grinder I cut the pole at the bottom and it came out without a problem. I now have an un-interrupted space for the theater.



Not much has been happening in the theater the last week or so. I've been working on getting the rest of the basement ready so I can have someone come in and spray foam. They are scheduled for the 16th of December and I still have quite a bit left to do.

Thanks for the advice davedavel. The foam they are spraying is 2" thick. with the 1"space behind the studs this should leave 1 1/2" of stud for me to run wires if I'm not as quick as I hope to be.

I had an electrician in today. When the house was built, for whatever reason (I assume cheapness), they put a 100amp panel in. What's strange is that everything leading up to the panel is 200amp. Anyway, I had the electrician in to give me some advice on how best to prepare for the theater/basement and any other future upgrades I want to do. (ie. A/C, hottub etc). We figured that the 100amp panel just couldnt support all that so the decision was made to upgrade the panel to a 200 amp one and at the same time run a 60amp sub panel to the equipment room for the theater. I also had them install a whole house surge protector on the panel.

This is what I have now. New panel with surge protector


and sub panel

Over the past couple of weeks I have been doing everything I can to prepare for the basement to be spray foamed. Before I get to that there was a slight hick-up with the electrical. When the inspector came to have a look at the new panel he was concerned that there wasn't a big enough wire coming in to the house to support a 200 amp load. So the electrician and his service manager came back out to look at it again. After a couple of calls to the power company it was determined that not only is it only 100 amp inside the house, it's 100 amp from the transformer to the house. It was a little bit disappointing but there's nothing I can do about it - well there is - but I'm not paying between $30 000 and $50 000 for the utility company to come out and run new wire from the transformer. In the end the electrician put everything back to 100 amp by replacing the main breaker.

On to what I've been working on since. As I mentioned, I was preparing everything for spray foam. In the non-theatre side of the basement I got all of the electrical run, all the framing done and fixed some HVAC issues.

In the theatre I got the cubbies built and installed for three of the surround speakers.


I also did a bit of work in the IB chamber by putting up the ceiling and running a 6" border of MDF around the wall where the foam was being applied. Eventually there will be a double layer of MDF with green glue up.




The sprayfoam was done yesterday. I figure I have about 1 days worth of work to do on the non-theatre side and 3 days worth in the theatre to be ready for inspection and dry-wall.

After the foam was sprayed I started to work on the IB sub chamber.

I started by stuffing as much insulation as I could between the ceiling of the chamber and the floor above. I was able to get 3 R12 batts in.



Next was the ceiling and the wall that butts up to the rest of the basement. For this I used 2 layers of 3/4 MDF with Green Glue between the layers.



All of the joints and corners of the MDF were sealed with acoustical sealant as was the joint between the MDF and spray foam.



Next up was to stuff the inside of the chamber with insulation. To attach to the ceiling I decided to use chicken wire. The chicken wire was attached to the spray foam using coarse threaded screws and then stretched over a batt of insulation. I then used longer screws partially drilled into the MDF to support the other side of the batt.



The batts on the walls were secured using screws into the MDF walls and spray foam. So far everything is staying where it's supposed to. If things start to fall down I will string twine between the screws to give the batts more support. This is what I had when I was finished.

Next up was framing soffits around the new beam, and rear HVAC.

I used IB-3 clips to secure the wood to the ceiling and framed with a combination of 2x4's and 2x3's



My plan was just to do the two soffits however because of the way the Vacuflo pipe was run I had to frame a short piece of soffit between the two larger ones. It's not a huge deal but I would have preferred to frame this after drywall.



The light has been removed and I still can't get an answer as to what that red wire is. I'm pretty sure that it's for the doorbell - or the thermostat.

Most of the other cable was run and I'm having my rough inspection done tomorrow.

I passed my inspections on Wednesday with only a few deficiencies to fix up before final inspection and work continues toward closing the walls up.

I've been reading through some other build threads on here and need to start thinking about how to control everything in the theatre. These were my thoughts so far:

Lighting: Everything controlled through a six zone GrafikEye
Zone 1: Pot lights
Zone 2: Sconces
Zone 3: Star Ceiling
Zone 4: Step Lights
Zone 5: Rope Light
Zone 6: Possible second colour of rope light

To control the equipment I was going to install an IR repeater at the front of the theatre and run it to the equipment room.

Can anyone give me any insight as to if this is a decent plan?
What about the Lutron 232 I have been reading about, what does it do and what cables do I have to run to the GrafikEye?
How do the RGB rope lights work? could I still control them with the GrafikEye?

Another set of questions. How does everyone deal with a game system in their theatres (XBox or PS3)? Run cables to the front of the theatre or riser and plug the system in there, or keep the console in the equipment room? If the console is in the equipment room how can you use controllers and other peripherals such as Kinect?

Thanks for all the help

Thanks TMcG,

Work was split about 50/50 over the last weekend between the theater and the rest of the basement.

The plan was to get the bathroom drywalled so that in the next 3 weeks, if I was short of things to do whilst my helpers were away I could start tiling. I started by installing the Schluter shower base and curb.



Then DensArmor plus from Georgia Pacific, which is a fiberglass backed gypsum board, was installed throughout the bathroom.



I was then going to install the rest of the Schluter waterproofing system for the shower. However, I ran into a problem with a water line that I assumed was shut off - it wasn't and I, along with a good portion of the bathroom ended up wet. So as I waited for everything to dry out I moved on to other areas. Along with wiring up some of the light circuits We started putting insulation in the walls and ceiling of the theater.



I'm using Roxul safe and sound. 2 layers in the ceiling and one on the walls. I used the pink stuff that came out of the walls before the spray foam in the ceiling and interior walls on the other side. I also started putting up the whisper clips.

Lol, thanks. I always think that if I'm going to do something I have to do it the absolute best I can.

My original plan was to do a cement board in the shower and blue board throughout the rest of the bathroom. I stopped in at Lowes and learned about the DensArmor. After googling a bit I decided that since I was doing the complete shower waterproofing thing the DensArmor throughout was the way to go.

Oh, by the way, I was able to find a local company that carries the 4 conductor cable ( Lutron Yellow).

Ted,

If you happen to be reading. I was reading one of you posts about clips and ceiling weight and had a question. As you can see, I am in the process of installing whisper clips. My plan is to do one layer of 3/4 plywood or OSB (as an asside, which is better?), GG and 5/8 drywall. I will also have soffits to house pot lights and rope lighting. The soffits will be partially supported by columns and the soffits that are already framed.

At the moment I have clips every 16" and about 40" because of the joist spacing. Is this enough to hold everything?


Thanks

Thanks for the reply Ted, I'll just answer in here instead of the PM.

I went over the install sheet provided by John and the only thing I could see for the ceiling was 16"x48" with the clips staggered. Then again, maybe I didn't look closely enough .

For whatever reason, my floor joists were put in with strange spacing. Half the room has them at 20" oc and the other half at 16" oc. I'm really glad I'm installing the channel as installing drywall over that would be a nightmare.

The soffits at the side are about 12' long and will be supported by one column. Along the front wall I will have 2 columns but they will be near the walls so the span of the soffit would be close to 13'. Oh, I also want to do a star ceiling which would add a little bit of weight.

If you think I will be ok with 24"x40" or 48" where it can be I will change the few clips I have up.

Ok, I'll take a look thanks.
Would adding a star ceiling change which pattern I use?

I had a football (soccer) game last night and ended up rolling over on my ankle so decided to stay home and rest it today. On the bright side it gave me some time to update my theater plan with changes that were made during construction and hang out with my daughter. Here's the new plan:



There aren't many changes, the soffits reflect what was built as do the speaker locations. I have also added a more complete lighting plan and changed the screen to a curved version.

I had quite a struggle with the projector location. When I started looking at them I was getting huge differences between throw distances for 16:9 and 2.40:1. Eventually I figured that the throw distances given for 2.40:1 were as if you were just moving the projector back and not using the zoom function. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I am 80% sure I will be going with a JVC-x30 so decided just to design based on that. I ahve a throw distance of 15' which seems to be good for a few different projectors and if I cant get the 2.40:1 by zooming I will get a lens.

The different colours represent the zones I'm thinking of doing. The R is for the pot lights and the S is for the sconces.


I never thought about breaking off the star ceiling by itself. Here is what I'm now thinking for zones.

Zone 1 - Green- Perimeter - 12 50W 3" halogen lights
Zone 2 - Yellow - Stage - 5 50W 3" halogen lights
Zone 3 - Red - Sconces - 8 75-100w Sconces
Zone 4 - Cyan - Bar - 1 50W 3" halogen lights
Zone 5 - Rope Lighting - RGB LED lighting - 1 run for each section of ceiling
Zone 6 - Step Lighting - 2 step lights
Separate switch for Star Ceiling.

I haven't quite decided which zone the sconces at the bar will go on but I'm leaning toward leaving them where they are.


Are there any other advantages to the QS system? I am thinking of using a Harmony remote to control everything. From what I understand I would then need something to blast IR everywhere. Which brings me to another point. Originally I was going to have the Grafik Eye main panel just as you walked in the door. I'm now thinking of moving the main control panel to the equipment room and putting one of the grafik eye key pads at the door location.


I've done some more reading into this since I posted the queston. The XBox remotes are all RF wireless so that isn't a problem. The problem is more if I want to incorporate a Kinect. The Kinect connects to the XBox through USB. Either way I try to incorporate it (stage or through the riser behind the front row) I will have a USB run of over 20'. I was reading somewhere that there was a thread on one of the XBox forums dealing with this. I just havent had time to track the thread down and read it. I have a Wii and they are controlled by IR. I may leave that for the plasma.