The "Illumination Theatre" Build / As of January 2013 NOW BEGINNING VERSION 2.0 Please come on in! - Page 3

Just Business,

I just saw this post, thanks for the recommendations!! I will take a look into those products!

Hey guys,

I could use some advice on cooling my equipment closet.

Here is what it looks like and at the top of the door there is about two feet to the ceiling.



My equipment rack is just inside a standard coat closet. I have put weather strip around the entire door except for the bottom. There is about a one inch air gap between the bottom of the door and the tile floor. In the ceiling I have installed an 80 CFM Broan bathroom fan which vents into the adjacent laundry room. The fan is controlled by a line voltage attic thermostat mounted inside the closet at the top of the door frame.

I am keeping track of the temps with a digital temperature gauge. Ambient temp in the house is ~ 70F, without the fan on and with the door closed the temps in the closet range from ~ 72F - 90F+ depending on how long and what equipment is on. With the line thermostat set on ~85F the room will stay below 85F and slowly go down to as low as ~ 77F

I really dislike the Broan fan and attic thermostat as it is very loud and the thermostat is mechanical so when it reaches the set temp it kicks on and off in succession for a few minutes before it decides to stay off and makes a loud clicking sound as it does this.

Also the fan runs often as temp builds quickly and this is winter, it will be hotter in the summer and I would prefer not to have the fan constantly running.

So for right now I have experimented with leaving the fan off and having the closet door cracked open about an inch or two. In this situation the temps seem to hold steady around 75F-78F.

This leads me to think that maybe my passive cooling situation could be improved.

Any idea on this? I was thinking it might help if I shaved another inch off the bottom of the door to let more air in both for when the fan is off and when it is on, maybe it would allow more airflow to cool down and shut the fan off sooner. Would having an opening at the top of the closet into the hallway allow the heat at the top to escape and promote better passive cooling? If I did that would that negatively affect when the fan is on by drawing air from the top opening as opposed drawing cooler air from the bottom up past the equipment?

As far as the fan goes I am thinking I will change it out for a Panasonic whisper 110 CFM and a digital line voltage thermostat.

Or would something like this mounted at the top between the inside and out to the hallway be better maybe allowing for both passive and active ventilation? http://www.coolerguys.com/840556082231.html

Thanks for any help in advance!!!

Bump for help on the above post!

Thanks guys,

Yeah it definitely sounds like I need to allow more air in to circulate especially when the fan is running.

Being as I am going to replace the current bathroom fan that is in there, does any one have an opinion on using the panasonic whisper quiet bathroom fan vs that cooler guys system I linked to? I like the fact that the cooler guys system comes with a digital thermostat for less money than the panasonic. Also the cooler guys fans are each rated at about 45 CFM and there are three of them, so would that truly give me 135 CFM?

Ok guys I have satisfactorily resolved my equipment closet cooling problem.

I removed the Broan attic fan and line thermostat and patched the big hole left by it:





And replaced it with these:



http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...00_i01_details

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...00_i00_details

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...00_i03_details

The digital thermostat works great and so far seems to do a great job of keeping the closet at about no more than 5 degrees over the ambient of the house. It has a remote temperature probe that you can locate where you want and has the capacity to control up to 8 fans using splitters.

I think one advantage of this setup is that it allows for natural convective cooling to take place which causes the room to stay cooler and fans to come on less often.

These fans are virtually silent and can only be heard if your trying when in the laundry room where as the bathroom fan could be heard through out the neighboring rooms.

Some pics:

Inside the equipment closet up top:


Inside the laundry room where it is vented to:




The control module:




Here is the vent grill from Lowes, I believe it is a 6x10" The 140mm fans fit perfectly what luck!! I removed the louvers from the grill and bent the edges up a bit put the fans in place and then bent the edges back down and zip tied the fans in place just to be sure:







I used some 18/4 in wall speaker wire to extend the fan wires neatly to the controller in the rack.

I also cut a little more off the bottom of the door for increased air flow:



All in all I am very happy and hope that this can help some others as this question seems to arise often!

Oh yeah bought the Rocketeer too!

Thanks man!

It was mostly all trial and error, just dive in and do it, just dont whatever you do install the projector until your done, my trim work has been on standby for almost a year now!

Ahhh my theatre room has been invaded by ants! I have never felt so violated by the little six legged pests!

Anybody have a Dalek they could loan me to solve the problem?

That is all.

Thanks for the compliment!

The equipment closet has been working very well, I built the flexi rack with convective cooling in mind so the spacing in between the components is quite large and it is open on all sides. The individual components never seem to have any concentration of heat around them.

Yeah I have never been fully satisfied with the back of the room. I always liked the way a shelf mounted projector looked as opposed to the ceiling mounts and specifically I wanted the chandelier in my room. I liked the look of the Ikea shelf but in practice it ends up being a place that random things get placed and the projector never looked quite right on it which I think also has to do with that it is so white and the 8700 has an offset lens which I centered on the screen so as not to use lens shift. However I just replaced it with a 5010 which I think looks a lot better, it is bigger has a matte finish and has the dark colored front, I will post pictures soon. Oh and I have long thought about putting it behind the wall, problem is then I would have a projector in the kitchen lol!

Hello fellow AVS'ers. I have some big updates going on for my build. I will be documenting them and hopefully re generate some interest in my build thread!

The changes are the following upgrades:

#1 My Epson 8700ub is now replaced with a 5010! The improvement in light output for my 16 foot throw is awesome! Also I finally feel like I have a Home Theatre projector, cosmetically the 5010 just looks so much better in the room than the 8700 did.


#2 Now that I have a 3D capable display I needed to upgrade from my Pioneer VSX21 which is only 1.3 hdmi. I was looking at the new Denon3313ci but man I have been itching to go 9.1 with front wides just to try it. Well I decided to call around and I lucked out finding a 4311ci at best buy for $950.00!!! Cant wait to get this beast hooked up and to start with go 9.1 and maybe go ahead and experiment with 11.1 as well!



#3 I am going to make some acoustic panel movie posters from spoonflower.

#4 Lastly my New Years resolution is to complete my crown molding and trim work along with placing my rope light.

I will try and keep the thread updated as I go!

Thanks Bullitt!


Funny you say that as I just reloaded my rack and am adding some cooling fans along the three AVR shelves. Other than that though the new cooling system has been keeping the temps in check quite well. The wood is Birch ply from Lowes, still bummed that my original idea of staining it didn't work out, it probably could have but I was out of patience for learning wood working/finishing skills.


Thanks David,

My goal was to make a decent looking room at minimal cost. I love the black and the couch has been great, sometimes I wish I had theatre seating but we watch a lot of TV in there too and it is very nice to just stretch out. Definitely build the room, if I didn't need to combine it with my office area I would have either kept the sectional and built a second row bar or I would have gone theatre seating with a second row on a riser, there is room for it.

Thanks for the compliments Robert!

Well I have had the 5010 and and 4311 installed and running for a while now and am very happy with the upgrades! Watched our first 3D movie over Christmas, The Polar Express in 3D. Was pretty funny as the scene were the train comes out of the tunnel and into the room my 5 year old daughter had got up to "touch" the falling snow and she pretty much jumped across the room when the train came out at her! So I liked the 3D better than I thought I would but the glasses do get uncomfortable after a whole movie. The 5010 is much brighter, quieter, with better out of the box colors than the 8700 and I am very happy with it.

I can not believe the difference in sound quality between the Pioneer VSX-21 and the Denon 4311! I believe it is mostly the Audyssey XT32 that makes the difference especially since it EQ's my F20 which the Pioneer doesn't. I have setup my C-100's that were my rears as Wides and replaced the rears with some C-50's I had. So far I am really liking the Wides and really want to try the heights to since the AVR has the capability. The Wides do make the front sound stage more immersive. Even though my room is not that wide I placed the Wides at the recommended angle, from what I have read Audyssey actually recommends Wides for narrow rooms as long as the placement angle is correct the time delays will adjust to create the proper effect. I don't know all the technical details but I do know I like the way it sounds.

I also completely reorganized my rack to accommodate the 4311, re purposed the VSX-21 to run the living room and re purposed the VSX-01 that was for the living room to run the Master bedroom as well as a new HTPC shared between the living room and bedroom.

So here are some pictures of all the new stuff!

Here is the Epson 5010, I really like the way it looks compared to the 8700 it just looks more refined for a home environment and I like the lens centered in the housing. I always thought the 8700 looked more like an office/business projecter when shelf mounted (not so much when hanging from a ceiling.)







Here is a view of the room with the Wides on stands:



And here is the Denon in the rack as well as a shot of the whole rack (Those wires on the ground are temporary to the wides until I run permanent ones:






So From top to bottom the rack now holds:

Overkill water cooled HTPC (Theatre Room)/Digital Photo/File Storage Rig

PFSense Hardware Firewall/Router / Netgear WNDR3700 as Wireless AP

PS3, Wii, Cooling fan temp control / Behind those are Digiport Server, Itach, PS3 ir-bluetooth

DirecTV, Living/Bedroom HTPC

Pioneer VSX-01 TXH (Bedroom)

Pioneer VSX-21 TXH (Livingroom / Zone 2 outdoor patio)

Denon 4311ci (Theatre room)

Emotiva UPA-7 (Theatre room)


So the next thing I am looking at doing besides somehow finding the motivation to put up the crown molding which I keep putting off is I am really interested in building some of the SEOS Waveguide speakers for my LCR's. My wife is totally on board with it, the problem I am having though is how to incorporate them. The left and right will fit on either side of the screen but the center is an issue. I had thought about building out a false wall and going AT but after discussing it at length my wife and I both feel that it will make the room feel too small and place our seating to close to the screen (cant move the seating back any farther.) The back side of the screen wall is the garage and I contemplated maybe being able to build out some sort of nooks for the speakers to sit in but the studs are all in the wrong place and being a load bearing wall I am concerned about the effort that would be required to properly modify the wall to build out the nooks as well as how sound quality may be affected by that. The other option is the speakers are 26" tall so I could raise the screen 2" and the center would fit under it, I just don't know how that will affect the sound quality, seated ear height is ~36" so I am thinking it might not be to bad as it should be a huge step up from my current horizontal center channel which is at about 20" and angled up a bit. Any thoughts or ideas on this are appreciated and I should probably ask these questions in the SEOS thread as well.

Edited by cheezit73 - 1/22/13 at 9:28pm

PHASE ONE

 

SECOND ROW BAR

 

COMPLETED 02/02/13

 

 

 

 

Started 01-22-13: Picked up all the lumber from Lowes, construction begins tomorrow!

 

01-23-13: Framing has begun!

 

 

 

01-28-13: More progress!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

01-29-13:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lost track of progress dates but here are the rest of the construction shots:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by cheezit73 - 2/4/13 at 12:32pm

PHASE TWO

 

PROJECTOR SHELF

 

 

02/08/13: Design phase has begun!

Edited by cheezit73 - 2/8/13 at 4:09pm

PHASE THREE

 

SEOS TEMPEST'S

 

 

 

 

02/08/2013: Parts ordered oh yeah!!!!

 

03/15/2013: Finished!

 

 

Edited by cheezit73 - 5/8/13 at 10:24pm

PHASE FOUR

 

FALSE WALL AND AT SCREEN

Edited by cheezit73 - 1/22/13 at 9:12pm

PHASE FIVE

 

ENTRANCE DOOR

PHASE SIX

 

FINAL TRIM WORK

Edited by cheezit73 - 1/22/13 at 9:14pm