[Reham]

This is my first post, as i recently have decided to turn my basement into a dedicated HT. I am looking at a 12' by 25' room, which you should give me good room to work with.


My problem is due to my lack of foresight while constructing my new house, the available space has ductwork and beams running right thru the ceiling area. To box around the ducts and beam would cause a 1'4" drop on my ceiling at that space, leaving me around a 6' 8 ceiling height. It works out that its 8' from one of the room and 10' from the opposite end, so you can tell the damn thing is 7' long. Rerouting of pipes and ducts would be more expensive than i can justify.


Besides the obvious cosmetic problem, while i face any accoustic or visual problems? My plan was along the lines of 2 rows of 3 theater seats, with an 8" riser for the second tier.


I want to add that the information on this site is quite amazing, with a VERY knowledgable community. Any info provided to help with my problem would be greatly appreciated.

 

[BroncoSport]

Man thats going to be a low ceiling. Dont forget the projector (assuming a digital one) will eat up another 6" or so dropping the ceiling (at that point) even further.


Some things you should look at is possibly changing the orientation of the theater or dropping the floor. If there are no support poles in the theater "space", you might be able to have the floor dropped several feet. Others here have done it but unless you are able of doing it most of it yourself, this option could get costly.


My HT is 12.5 x 21.5. I have 9' concrete walls in the basement, but a HVAC trunk running down the length. I am currently boxing around it to encase it into a sofit. The bottom of the sofit will be 12" lower than the center of the room and I will wrap the whole room with a matching sofit. The point of this info is that with my situation, I am going to have a 114" diag screen and because of its placement (12-15" lower than the current ceiling) my riser will have to be 14" tall. I wish I had another 1-2 feet.



An 8 " riser might not do much for you unless you stagger the seats. Use the riser calculator on the sticky thread to determine the recommended riser.


Sorry, not a lot of help... Maybe a few things to think about.


Scott

 

[Stew4msu]

Assuming your projector will be on the back wall (or behind the beams, at any rate), the PJ would be about 6' high. If it's on the back wall, it will only be 5'4" high (with 8" riser). This means that the top of your image can be no higher than that. So, if your image is about 6' high, and it's about 2' off the ground (that's the lowest I'd recommend ), your image height will be about 4'. With a 16:9 image, a height of 4' would give you a width of about 85" and a diagonal of about 98". So, a 98" screen is definately your maximum.

Now, lets assume your seating will be at 12' from the screen and 18' from the screen (1.5X screen width would place your first row at about 10.5', so we'll give a bit of a buffer). According to the riser calculator at the top of the forum, your riser would need to be a minimum of 15" high in order for the people in the rear row to have a clear shot of the whole screen. If you put the two rows closer together, you can get down to a riser minimum of 13" or so, but nowhere near 8".

Also keep in mind that in order for this scenario to work you will need to find a projector that can send a 98" screen size from your desired location. I would think that due to the height the projector will need to be, that position would either be right behind the rear seats (19') or against the back wall (25'), or anywhere in between.

If you settle on a projector that can accomplish this, you'll have still have to sacrifice something. You can't build a riser that's 15" high, so you'll probably have to stick with your original 8". Doing this will mean that the people in the rear will have the lower portion of the screen blocked if someone is sitting right in front of them. YOu could try staggering the seating to minimize this. The other option is to make the screen smaller, thereby raising the bottom edge off of the floor a bit more and making it easier for the second row to see. I would use the first option and just make the first row the "prime seats" and if people in the back have to miss a few subtitles, well sometimes that's life.


I would also paint the entire ceiling black, so that the ducts and boxes around them all blend in with the ceiling and aren't as noticeable (especially during a movie).


To recap:


1. Find a PJ that can throw a 98" image from between 19' - 25' (the panny 700 can do it from right at 19.5')

2. Build an 8" riser for seating at about the 18' mark

3. Mount PJ on back wall or put it on a ceiling mount or shelf mount somewhere behind the second row at a height of about 6'.

4. Put first row of seats somewhere between 10.5' - 12'

5. Purchase or build a 98" screen

6. Tell anyone over 5' tall that sits in the rear row not to stand up straight during the movie.


Of course, most of these measurements are approximations and I encourage you to double check them and do your own calculations.




Stew

 

[bpape]

In the grand scheme of things when designing and building a home theater, paying to have those ducts moved is a small expense.


You're talking about 2 rows of seating, a front PJ, etc. so it's not like your budget is $500 total. If it were me, I'd move the duct and hang on till next year for the 2nd row of seating. In the long run, you'll be happier.