The Fly-In Construction has finally started!

Well, after 4 years, many hours of reading these forums, and finally having the place to do it, I'm starting my construction.

I want to thank all the people on these forums for their advice and knowledge, it has helped me thus far and hope it will continue.

The HT room will be in the basement and as many of you I will be finishing off the entire basement at one time. I have 1200 square feet to finish, including the HT room, a full bathroom, a workout room/bedroom, a good large bar and a game room, as well as plenty of storage. My goal is to have it all done by summer 2006, but it depends on time and lots o money!

The HT room is roughly 17x12x8. The equipment closet will be outside the HT room. I would like and the plan is to have a 7.1 system. The concession area will have some cabinets, and a counter popcorn machine as well as DVD storage.

I am still deciding on all of the equipment but this is what I would like and am planning on:
A 80-90 inch Stewart or Draper screen
Two rows of 3 seating (Berkline 88), the second on an 8 inch riser
Would love a Marantz projector but will probably go for a Runco or something even easier on the wallet like an Infocus.
Was thinking of the System 20 THX Ultra speakers by Atlantic Technology

The room construction is similar I am sure to many of the HT on this forum. I will be insulating the walls and ceiling and double drywall (5/8 + 1/2). The Iiving room is above the HT so there really is not a big issue with sound. I have thought about using Green Glue, etc but an not sure if the added expense is worth it yet. I was also thinking of using linacoustic, batting and GOM some of the walls and the soffit. I would like to put in a few columns on the walls to put the surround speakers in but am not sure if I will have the room.

At this point, I am finished framing all of the walls, bar and soffits. I still have a wall to do in the HT as well as the soffit. Then it will be onto the plumbing, HVAC and electrical rough-in. The rough-in plumbing for the bathroom was done by the builder.

I will post pictures as they become available.

I called the theater "The Fly-In" because the theme of the basement will be a WW1/WW2 on motiff in honor of my families military history. In fact the door to the theater will be a mock-up of a piece of nose art from a B-25 Mitchell.

Thanks for any feedback or advice...

Drew

Thought I would include the layout I submitted to get a building permit.


Here is a snapshot of where the theater will be located:


There are a few more pictures of the basement before the house was finished on the web site.

Drew

myfipie,
Thanks for the response I had thought about those issue well in advance of planning. The walls you see are before the home construction was done. The builder put in an HR-11 wrap around the concrete. I have framed in front of that insulation and am definitely going to be putting in at least two bass traps. I will wait on the reflection point panels until I figure out speaker/seating placement. Thanks for the input.

Drew

BadAstronaut,
Thanks for pointing out my typo Yes I do have a detail theater plan. I will be posting it this week.

Drew

Well my permit was approved today....$303.72 dollars later I am legit. Fortunately for me my neighbor is an inspector so I actually got a head start and had already started framing. I will post some pics and some of my ideas for comment soon.

Drew

I had actually thought of building my own (not sure of the quality though.) There was a series of 5 episodes on DIY that I Tivo'd and they had plans on building bass traps using round concrete tubes filled with sand. Any ideas on if that is a good idea or not? If not I guess I will go with something from realtraps....

Drew

Good to know thanks. I had not done any research on bass traps yet, but looks like I may just go with myfipie's suggestion and purchase them.

Drew

I updated my web site today and thought I would share some of my progress up till now. I still need to take more pictures but here are the ones I have:

My first wall!


The game room is finished! NOT....


You can see the back wall of the HT in this picture along with the darn xmas tree which is always in the way


Here is where I am upto today. Almost all the framing is done. Just a few more small things to do



There are more on the web site but thought these would get the idea across to everyone.

Drew

Thought would share my idea for the HT entrance with everyone. As I have stated the theme is WW1/WW2 and my family's military history. So the aptly named theater is called "The Fly-In". Well I thought it would be cool to have a hidden door as the entrance. I would like the entire wall to look like the fuselage of a B-25 Mitchell bomber, all done up with some vintage nose art.

The door will push into the HT with the hinges on the left. I plan on building my own door (unless there are better ideas). The idea is to rivet sheet metal together to fill the entire wall and door, paint the sheet metal and then add the nose art. The door will be hidden by extra sheet metal strips to cover the openings.

Drew

Here is the HT doorway that I want to make hidden by the method in the previous post


Drew

I have finally gotten around to taking more pictures so without further ado here they are:


This is the future bathroom and the water softener room as well as the HT equipment room.


Here is the entrance to the HT with the bar on the left.


Now you can see what I did with that darn tree!


Here is the backwall to the HT. The window will disappear one construction is done.


Here is the HT front wall with some of my tools.


Here is the equipment side of the HT.

I am still framing the HT so I have a few more days to finish. I still need to finish the entrance wall (offset the studs), build the soffits, etc.

One question I do have is I thought about using RISC clips for the ceiling and was wondering if anyone has experience using them? Are they worth the extra effort/cost/headroom? Do they really make a difference? I am definitely going to double drywall. I even thought about using GG but may just forgo that as I don't feel I have an extra $800 - $900 dollars for that expense. Are there any other alternatives I am missing (other than drop ceiling which I do not want to do)?

Drew

BadAstronaut:
Here are some of my plans for the HT. I borrowed some ideas from bud (chinadog) and his thread http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...67#post5760667 . Here are the plans so far:






Let me know what you think. I could always use some feedback.

Drew

Thought I would throw this in. I decided on my screen size from a distance calculator I found here . I know my HT is 17' long x 12' wide x 8' high. I next had to determine where I want the primary seating....I knew I want two rows of seating. So I decided that I would but two seats up front and 4 in the back. My primary seating would be approximately 10 feet from the screen.

So using the calculations of a 10 foot viewing distance with a 16:9 screen at 92 inch diagonal, I figured that the maximum THX viewing distance is 14.5 feet (my back row) and the recommended THX viewing distance is 10.3 feet - perfect. To achieve the perfect THX viewing angle of 36 degrees I would need a screen of 89.5" diagonal - perfect. I say THX because I would really like to using the THX specs and equipment. Although these dimensions also fit in with other standards.

I next used the riser height calculator here and calculated the riser height. A 92" diagonal screen is generally 53" x 88". I have 8' ceilings so 8' - 4'4" = ~3' 6" This gives me 3'6" of area above or below the screen. Assuming I put the screen as high up as possible I will have ~43" of space below the screen. Given my berkline 88 seats up front and my 10' of viewing distance my minimum riser height is 7".

However I am also constrained by code not to have less then 6'8" of headroom, and since I want a soffit I cannot make my riser taller than 8" and my soffit no taller than 10". It all works out, i just hope it will not be to cramped.

Next I looked a a few calculators for the throw distance of various projectors to make sure they would work for my layout. But I will save that for later. All this math gives me a headache

This may be stupid but I figured it would be a good idea to keep a running total of what I have spent to finish the basement. This may or may not be benificial to those who are just starting the planning stages of their basements, etc. So this post will continue to be updated as I buy new stuff. All prices include CO sales tax and delivery charges:

Construction:
Framing (Home Depot):
2x4x20 x12 = $98.34
2x4x8 x351 = $1086.90
Insulation = $291.16
SUBTOTAL: $1476.40

Electrical (Lowes/Home Depot)
Romex(14/2, 14/3, 12/2 12/3)
200 ft of 14/2
200 ft of 12/2
100 ft of 12/3 and 14/3 (free!!)
Various wall boxes
100 Amp breaker box 12 slots
1 60 Amp Main double pole breaker
4 20 Amp single pole breakers
4 15 Amp single pole breakers
24 6 inch can lights
4 4 inch eyeball cans
Bath fan/light
misc
SUBTOTAL: $839.08

HVAC (Home Depot)
25' of 6" Flex duct (1 so far need 3 more)
Strap ties
Return/supply tie-in's
misc
SUBTOTAL: $73.87

Plumbing (Lowes)
36x36 shower stall
SUBTOTAL: $101.18

Equipment:
$0

Furniture:
$0

Misc (TOOLS!!!, nails, etc):
Porter Cable Framing Nailer
Nails for nailer
clamps
long Level
Remington powder actuated faster
powder loads
SUBTOTAL: $446.21


GRAND TOTAL (So Far 1/1/06): $2936.74

Having a finished basement with HT: PRICELESS*

* could not resist that...

I was actually planning on building my own door 2x4 or 2x6 with full insulation and drywall with 4 heavy duty hinges or a pivot hinge. Obviously this is still in the design phase. The two door is always an option. How did you do it? just screw one door onto the other? How did you handle the hardware?.

Drew

After doing a bit more research and reading the posts on this thread I have decided (I think) to make my soffits into soffit bass traps.

Instead of covering the soffit with drywall I would leave the soffit open to fill with as much fiberglass insulation as possible and put cotton batting on the underside as well as top side then cover with GOM fabric.

Would this work? Does anyone have any experience with this type of bass trap? I looked at some of the offerings from Realtraps and they looked great but I really would like to try the DIY method as I am trying to keep the budget somewhat sane. I could also use 703 rigid insulation, but was hoping people with more experience could point me in the right direction.

Drew