27L x 22W x 10H DIY Concrete Bunker w/eight 18" IB subs

Hi All.

I've started a few threads in the last 6 or so months regarding specific questions on my future home theater build. Excavation has begun and the base of the home is taking shape. Home is scheduled to complete towards end of May after which I will immediately start on finishing approximately 2000sqft of the basement. Most of my ideas/designs/materials for the HT are already thought out, but given the approximate start date, I still have plenty of time to change things if need be.

EDIT:
The screen will be retractable (10 or 12' wide) since a 60" TV will reside on the wall when the screen is not needed. The screen case will be secured to the Spancrete ceiling (3bay garage floor). This wall will be extremely heavily braced and the knee wall/baffle will be decoupled to a certain degree from the wall as well. I'm not too worried about vibrations at this point.

Here is where my design sits at the moment:




At the time of this post, backfill is complete and steel + Spancrete being set in place. Below are pics leading up to this :


Forms getting setup:



Future Home HT (under 3 car bay) from above :



Looking towards rear wall and entry to HT from outside :



Looking at rear wall of HT from outside:



Standing in HT at front left corner looking back at right rear corner & Entrance:



Standing in HT at front right corner looking back at left rear corner and entry:



Standing in single car bay looking towards HT:



Standing at front right corner of home looking diagonally towards rear:



Standing at front left corner of home looking diagonally towards rear:



Standing in front of home looking at side-load bay (HT below it) :



Looking down at walk-up entry to basement:





Here is the front elevation of the home:



Questions/comments appreciated!

Thanks,
Rob
Edited by rms8 - 12/17/12 at 7:29am

Thanks stock!

I should have mentioned this a while back I suppose :
The screen will be retractable (10 or 12' wide) since a 60" TV will reside on the wall when the screen is not needed. The screen case will be secured to the Spancrete ceiling (3bay garage floor). This wall will be extremely heavily braced and the knee wall/baffle will be decoupled to a certain degree from the wall as well. I'm not too worried about vibrations at this point.

I estimate roughly three months, maybe four. I did my current basement with equally (almost) large HT in just at 3 months. In the new home, I plan on letting someone else (aka, not me) do the drywall, so that will save a lot of time there.

The home has a 4 car garage, a 3-car side load and a single car (x-wide) front load. The entire area under the 3-car garage is the home theater and is all under SpanCrete. SpanCrete is the name of the product locally. There are other vendors in other areas and it goes by other names. The basement ceiling height is 10ft. In order to maintain the same 10ft ceiling under the garage they had to dig 2ft deeper in that area, so yes you are spot on, those walls are 12ft high! The "lost" 2ft are due to the spancrete thickness and that it sits lower than the other garage floor since they will still pour 4" of concrete over it.

As for pics in general....below is the 1st floor plan. You can see that there is no separate stone wall in front of the home. The same stone which is on the turret is on the 1st 3ft of the bottom of the home too. This extends to the wing walls and pillars which flank each side.

Thanks FOH.

Spancrete is supposed to be put in place this week. Can't wait!

Hi popalock.

[Just a note about pics| didn't realize earlier in this thread that AVS was hosting the pics now. So I was linking them before from photobucket. Now that AVS is hosting them, they initially aren't so large now.]

The 100amp panel is in addition to the 200amp panel located elsewhere (300amp total service). Access to the 100amp panel will be via a large hatch I will build into the rear wall of the equipment room.

The Spancrete was set 3 weeks ago. Pics below:










Edited by rms8 - 1/11/13 at 1:36pm

I'll ask Jeff what his plans are on the front edge. Thanks for the advice!

Although this rooms primary function is HT, it really is a multi-function room (as is my current HT). The screen will either be my current manual pull down 10' 16:9 or I'll move up to a 12' 16:9. Either way, it will be manual pull down and not AT. The screen hides up in a soffit and the money saved ($1000+) on using a manual can go towards something that can actually benefit. The only advantage of a electric screen is convenience, it has no bearing on picture quality over a manual screen.

The wall mounted flat screen is for Xbox or quick TV watching, or navigating the media server when listening to music or viewing slide shows or watching vids from YouTube or the ilk. Some things just don't require viewing on a 10' wide screen and some things look horrible when viewed that large. When playing Xbox, I typically pull up a comfy chair to play on the flat screen since the seating is a bit far back. Depending on how prices are when I complete the basement I may get a 70" (or larger??) screen and move the 60" somewhere else in the house. When my son and I play together on the Xbox, then I fire up the projector so we each have plenty of real-estate to look at ;-) . When Microsoft releases the new 720, we will get two and be able to play in separate rooms, at least that's the plan for now.
I came up with the eight 18" IB's on my own after lots of reading. I wanted plenty of head room. The 15's in the rear are simply to help with bass smoothing/freq response. They are not for more bass. I may even use two in each corner. There are some pretty twisted bass setups on this site and others and the total volume sweep they have far surpasses what I've put together. I'm not going for any sort of bass addiction, just want plenty of headroom. The FiCar IB318's probably have the BEST price-to-performance ratio out there. I could have gone with some of the top dog drivers (Re XXX, TC Sounds...), but those drivers are ridiculously expensive.

I'm sure the current temps this week and next will slow down progress. Can't complain though since this has been the mildest winter I can remember.

This was from earlier last week.....Once the deck is finished, things should start moving much quicker.