[ellisr63]

Ellis Family Retirement HT: Go big or go home

We have just started to convert our 2 car garage to a dedicated home theater. The garage was already dry walled, and we started by ripping out the drywall on the walls, and ceiling to see what we have to work with. The garage is 23" long, 19' wide with a 8' ceiling. We have a door on the backside of the garage that leads out to our pond, a water heater, and furnace are in the wall right next to the door, and these need to be taken into consideration for the dimensions of the theater.We will be extending the front of the garage out 4' to enclose our front channel speakers (3 La Scalas (heavily modified) , 2 Heresy HIPs and 1 of 2 Danley DTS-10 subs).. The goal is to hit 115db @ 10hz with a low power amp. I am trying to cut down our electricity bill as much as possible so a friend of mine is building me a 10 channel "D" class chip amp that will put out no more than 30wpc... Since all my speakers are 100 db or greater efficiency I figure this should be more than enough power to listen at reference levels.The walls will be built as a double 2x4 wall with fiberglass insulation, OSB, and 1 layer of sheet rock with green glue. The ceiling will be 1 layer OSB, and 1 layer of sheet rock. Making the room as quiet as possible is a must as it is right below our Master Bedroom and I like to watch movies late at night.We will be running 12 gauge Monoprice cable for 22 channels (even though we will only be running 9-11 channels for now... We would like to be able to be prepared for 11 channels of height down the road if the formats continue to expand the number of channels). We are using Monoprice Redmere cables for all HDMI. The equipment rack location will be on the same wall as the Heater and water heater in a cubby hole we cut out and will have a fan to keep everything cool.Are the room dimensions good for a HT or could they be reduced in some areas to get a better setup?Attached are some drawings up so this setup will make more sense. Any suggestions are welcome as I want to do this right the first time.Electronics:Yamaha CXA-5100, Yamaha MX-A5000, Yamaha P7000S (1 for subs). Speakers:3 JBL 2360A horns with EVDHA-1 drivers, 1/4 pie bass bins with EVM15L woofers, (4) JBL 8340a surround speakers, and (2) 8320 speakers Atmos) Projector is a Panasonic ae8000 with a Seymour AV 180 Scope AT screen (screen is 15' wide)... The screen will be transparently masked with black material to a smaller size.Parts list:USB electrical outlets for 6 power recliners, 5/8" drywall (1 layer)Green Glue 5 gallon bucketsClips for ceilingPutty padsSpecs:walls 24" on centerLayout...Side views...Top view...All the big horns are up front and the JBL 8340As are for the Side Surround and rear surround positions. I am thinking we might have to build out around the AC ducting and then do the double drywall , GG around it. I am also thinking a wide soffit around the whole viewing area of the room in which I could then put all my lighting and maybe put my speakers in also.I think if we needed to we could raise the rear platform up a few more inches but not by much as we are pushing 7' of clearance now without a soffit.Any suggestions? Is this easier to understand our problem?

 

[ellisr63]

So far we have the double walls up on 2 of the walls, the 2nd row seating platform built with one DTS-10 under it centered on the screen, with the other DTS-10 destined for placement behind the screen), 90% of the floor has been covered with OSB and stuffed all the cavities with fiberglass insulation, electrical wiring and speaker wires have been run.. All of the old ducting has been removed and new ducting has been purchased, along with 2 HA dampers. The cubby hole for the audio rack has been cut and partially completed. Here is a pic taken a few days ago...
http://s1065.photobucket.com/user/ellisr63/media/20140310_182512_zps1d6cbce0.jpg.html


The steps will be going across the full width of the stage. There will be an inner theater door just back a foot from the right hand wall (next to the stage), followed by an upward ramp to the second door which will be the exit from the theater, and entrance to the pond area.

 

[J_P_A]



Quote:
Originally Posted by ellisr63  /t/1520528/my-retirement-theater#post_24427725


…….

170" AT screen (screen is to be the size of the 2 car garage door opening... The screen will be transparently masked with black material to a smaller size.

I like the way you think, sir! Go big or don't bother. Is that dimension wide or diagonal? Are you planning to use an A-lens or manual zoom (or does the BenQ have memory zoom)? What are your seating distances?


Have you considered your HVAC needs in the room? How big is the supply and have you planned for a return in the room as well? Do you have a plan for making it quiet? Will it be on a separate zone?

 

[ellisr63]



Quote:
Originally Posted by J_P_A  /t/1520528/my-retirement-theater#post_24508221


I like the way you think, sir! Go big or don't bother. Is that dimension wide or diagonal? Are you planning to use an A-lens or manual zoom (or does the BenQ have memory zoom)? What are your seating distances?


Have you considered your HVAC needs in the room? How big is the supply and have you planned for a return in the room as well? Do you have a plan for making it quiet? Will it be on a separate zone?

The actual screen size will be even bigger... The material will be 8' tall x 18' wide. I will most likely use the BenQ until I find a better suited projector to fully utilize 14' ot the screen width (2' on each side are allocated for La Scala bass bins for the width channels). Our first row is about 13' from the screen and the back row is about 20'. As far as our HVAC needs... We are converting to a new HVAC setup which will be a upflow 97% efficiency unit. The ducting that was in the room for the master bedroom (above the theater) is getting new fiberglass flex ducting and we are running a new duct line for the HT too. The new setup will be a multizone setup with normally closed dampers. The HT will have tone 8" duct feeding 2 registers.Our Zone controller is a AprilAire and will control whatever we can access. I am currently looking at some "Zwave" registers wireless zone control for for the rooms that we cannot access for wiring. Our supply is a 24" duct that is being relocated to another area of the house... Hence the switch from a down draft to a updraft setup. The ducting for the Master bedroom is 90% contained in a soffit (which will have fiberglass insulation it it too) that is outside of the double wall construction of the HT. I say 90% because the short hallway will have the ducting inside the HT envelope but will have an access panel in the ceiling for accessing the zone dampers. The hallway will have door seals and the ceiling above the soffit will be completed just like the HT room itself. If we have any problems with the noise getting in or out through the HVAC we will consider doing a muffler. The HVAC that we are going with should exhibit almost no noise even though we are taking the extra steps to avoid noise. Our friend said the HVAC will be almost dead silent and that you won't be able to hear it unless you are standing right next to it. Anamorphic lense is something I def want to go with but it will most likely be a while down the road.


PS... I am reading your thread and I like what I see.

 

[J_P_A]

It sounds like you have this well thought out. That's the best way to start! I didn't see mention of an HVAC return. Are you planning to connect a return into the central air?


Have you tested out your seating distances to see if they will be comfortable for you? Based on the popular seating charts for 2.35, 13' would be considered too close and 20' is getting close to too far. Personally, I like to sit closer than the chart recommends at around 1x width (or closer for some movies), but everybody is different. Just want to make sure you've considered it.

 

[ellisr63]



Quote:
Originally Posted by J_P_A  /t/1520528/my-retirement-theater#post_24510100


It sounds like you have this well thought out. That's the best way to start! I didn't see mention of an HVAC return. Are you planning to connect a return into the central air?


Have you tested out your seating distances to see if they will be comfortable for you? Based on the popular seating charts for 2.35, 13' would be considered too close and 20' is getting close to too far. Personally, I like to sit closer than the chart recommends at around 1x width (or closer for some movies), but everybody is different. Just want to make sure you've considered it.

I am a little confused on HVACs... We have the 24" intake for the whole HVAC, and 2 2" vents for the furnace (I think one is cold air intake and the other is a vent). Our MB only has 2 registers in the room and they both push hot or cold air depending on what the room is demanding. Wouldn't the HT just require the 2 vents also?


As fr as the seating... The 2nd row is on a platform which is 6' deep for seating... It leaves about 2' behind the listeners for rear speakers and diffusers. When a person gets up from the seat they will have enough room to step forward enough to start stepping down the 2 steps and then exit right or left right behind the front row seats.



I currently sit 10' away from a 134" 16x9 diagonal screen and it isn't big enough for me... I figure since the whole wall will be a screen I can dial in whatever size I am happy with and mask off the rest of the wall with black AT material.

 

[J_P_A]

I may be misunderstanding the HVAC layout of your space, but it sounds like you have not planned for a return. If you are going to soundproof the room, then it will need to be sealed up very tightly. In that case, you need to provide both the cool air supply as well as a path for the air to exit the room.


It's fairly common these days for the HVAC to use the gap under the bedroom door as the return path to a main register located centrally in the house. However, for a soundproofed room, you won't have that gap under the door. It will be sealed up tightly. So you need to make sure you provide a sound isolated path for the stale room air to get back to the HVAC.


I like the masking down approach to sizing a screen, though I don't have any personal experience with it yet, that's the approach I'm planning to go as well.

 

[ellisr63]



Quote:
Originally Posted by J_P_A  /t/1520528/my-retirement-theater#post_24511294


I may be misunderstanding the HVAC layout of your space, but it sounds like you have not planned for a return. If you are going to soundproof the room, then it will need to be sealed up very tightly. In that case, you need to provide both the cool air supply as well as a path for the air to exit the room.


It's fairly common these days for the HVAC to use the gap under the bedroom door as the return path to a main register located centrally in the house. However, for a soundproofed room, you won't have that gap under the door. It will be sealed up tightly. So you need to make sure you provide a sound isolated path for the stale room air to get back to the HVAC.


I like the masking down approach to sizing a screen, though I don't have any personal experience with it yet, that's the approach I'm planning to go as well.

Where would the return go to? Would it tap into the return for the house (the 24" intake)? Could I have the return go to my indoor pond area which is not heated or cooled, and install a muffler inline?

 

[J_P_A]

Ideally, yes. It would connect back into the house return. However, in lieu of that you need a vent that will connect your room to another conditioned space that is open to the HVAC return. My home HVAC system sounds similar to yours in that I only have two centrally located returns, and each room is connected via the openings under the doors. To remedy this issue in my theater, I built a dead vent that pulls hot air out and dumps it into my basement where the HVAC draws that air up through the stairway.


Dumping the hot air from your theater into a non-conditioned space is a very poor option as in most cases it will force your system to hard harder than necessary and be less efficient.


edit: forgive me if this is already clear, but as an example, asking your HVAC to cool a soundproofed room with no return is like blowing up a balloon inside a coke bottle. Once the ballon fills up the bottle, there's no where for the air to go, so you can't force anymore air into it. Even when your room got warm and the HVAC turned on, it would not be able to force much air into the sealed space.

 

[ellisr63]

So I could... Build a dead vent and vent it to the room next door which is the same room with the 24" cold air intake, correct?

 

[J_P_A]

That is correct. If you use a large enough duct, a fan in the dead vent may not be necessary. You just want to make sure you maintain adequate flow into the room to keep it cool, and you want to keep the face velocity at the supply and return below 250fpm.


Also, as a word of advice based on my experience with room returns, try to keep it as simple as possible. The more complicated the design, the more likely you will have problems.

 

[ellisr63]

I picked up another matching power recliner for the front row which brings the front row to 3. We are thinking of making the front row curved and then also looking for a modular couch for the second row that would also be curved.


We are still trying to work out the HVAC cold air intake... We are thinking of getting some 8" flex to run in a soffit behind the screen and dump it into the main part of the house where the cold air intake is for the rest of the house. What we are thinking is to zig zag about 50' of the flex pipe in the soffit. Does that sound like it will work to reduce the noise?

 

[ellisr63]



Quote:
Originally Posted by J_P_A  /t/1520528/my-retirement-theater#post_24510100


It sounds like you have this well thought out. That's the best way to start! I didn't see mention of an HVAC return. Are you planning to connect a return into the central air?


Have you tested out your seating distances to see if they will be comfortable for you? Based on the popular seating charts for 2.35, 13' would be considered too close and 20' is getting close to too far. Personally, I like to sit closer than the chart recommends at around 1x width (or closer for some movies), but everybody is different. Just want to make sure you've considered it.

We went to see Robocop the other night and we sat in the front 1/3 of the theater (which is closer than I normally do and I was happy with the picture (I actually still wanted the picture bigger.

I punched in my room calculations into the Theater Calculator v4.0 ...

Screen width 168"

Distance to front row 13'

Distance to 2nd row 19'


I came up with this...


1st row 56.6 degrees
Specs suggested

Shortest Recommended Viewing Distance based on Field-of-View being too wide: This distance is based on the peripheral vision field-of-view of the human eye. The average field-of-view width for the human eye is 140 degrees. The rule is that if the viewer sits any closer than this distance to the screen and looks at one side of the screen, they will not be able to see the other side of the screen with their peripheral vision. This equates to a 70-degree field-of-view when the person is looking at the center of the screen.



2nd row 40.4 degrees
Specs suggested

SMPTE minimum should be at least 30 degrees at the maximum distance while THX spec is 26 degrees or more


So I think I will be ok... We will see.

Luckily I am making the whole wall a AT screen and the screen size can be as small as I want it to be or as big as the wall.

 

[J_P_A]



Quote:
Originally Posted by ellisr63  /t/1520528/my-retirement-theater#post_24514442


I picked up another matching power recliner for the front row which brings the front row to 3. We are thinking of making the front row curved and then also looking for a modular couch for the second row that would also be curved.


We are still trying to work out the HVAC cold air intake... We are thinking of getting some 8" flex to run in a soffit behind the screen and dump it into the main part of the house where the cold air intake is for the rest of the house. What we are thinking is to zig zag about 50' of the flex pipe in the soffit. Does that sound like it will work to reduce the noise?

Sound isolated ducting is a balancing act. You need the runs long enough to allow the sound to be absorbed by the insulation, but that length also increases the restriction to flow. Keep in mind that you generally want the supplies located high in the front and the returns also located high, but in the rear of the room. General wisdom (credit to DE) is that people don't like a cold draft on the back of their neck, but generally won't notice the cold air blowing on their face.


The duct needs to be in a sound isolated box. You can either put that box inside your room (i.e. a soffit muffler) or outside the room (i.e. a dead vent or joist muffler). In either case, the idea to trap the sound inside that box (and prevent external sound from entering) so that any sound traveling down the duct will bounce around inside and be absorbed by the insulation.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ellisr63  /t/1520528/my-retirement-theater#post_24516986


We went to see Robocop the other night and we sat in the front 1/3 of the theater (which is closer than I normally do and I was happy with the picture (I actually still wanted the picture bigger.

I punched in my room calculations into the Theater Calculator v4.0 ...

Screen width 168"

Distance to front row 13'

Distance to 2nd row 19'


I came up with this...


1st row 56.6 degrees
Specs suggested

Shortest Recommended Viewing Distance based on Field-of-View being too wide: This distance is based on the peripheral vision field-of-view of the human eye. The average field-of-view width for the human eye is 140 degrees. The rule is that if the viewer sits any closer than this distance to the screen and looks at one side of the screen, they will not be able to see the other side of the screen with their peripheral vision. This equates to a 70-degree field-of-view when the person is looking at the center of the screen.



2nd row 40.4 degrees
Specs suggested

SMPTE minimum should be at least 30 degrees at the maximum distance while THX spec is 26 degrees or more


So I think I will be ok... We will see.

Luckily I am making the whole wall a AT screen and the screen size can be as small as I want it to be or as big as the wall.

1.2 x screen width is (one of) the recommendations which would put the prime seats at 16.8'. It still boils down to personal preference, though. Some people like 1.1xW (15.4' to seats), some people like 1xW (14' to seats), and some people like to be further away. As long as you feel comfortable then you're golden. I only mentioned it to make sure you'd considered you seating position with respect to screen size. You just want to make sure that at least one row is where you like it rather than neither row being where you want it.

http://s546.photobucket.com/user/j_p_a/media/Plains Theater/allscope.gif.html

 

[wse]


The problem could be if you get a water heater leak, I had this happen it flooded the garage

 

[ellisr63]



Quote:
Originally Posted by wse  /t/1520528/my-retirement-theater#post_24524661


The problem could be if you get a water heater leak, I had this happen it flooded the garage

We are going to be putting a drain right under the water heater... I hope that that takes care of any potential problem. We have a french drain right on the other side of the garage wall that is for a potential overflow of our 7400 gallon pond... I think it should take care of it, of course the pipes would have to be changed if it ever did leak as I don't think the french drain can handle the heat from a water heater. The other option is to just have the drain go to the area under the house... Our house is on pier blocks.


I was looking at the tankless water heaters and it looked like a great option till I was told that it would run around $4k before I was done with it.

 

[wse]



Quote:
Originally Posted by ellisr63  /t/1520528/my-retirement-theater#post_24524793


We are going to be putting a drain right under the water heater... I hope that that takes care of any potential problem. We have a french drain right on the other side of the garage wall that is for a potential overflow of our 7400 gallon pond... I think it should take care of it, of course the pipes would have to be changed if it ever did leak as I don't think the french drain can handle the heat from a water heater. The other option is to just have the drain go to the area under the house... Our house is on pier blocks.


I was looking at the tankless water heaters and it looked like a great option till I was told that it would run around $4k before I was done with it.

Maybe the thing to do is to upgrade your hot water heater before building your theater! It last ten year usually, ours broke at 12 years, and made a mess

 

[ellisr63]



Quote:
Originally Posted by wse  /t/1520528/my-retirement-theater#post_24525856


Maybe the thing to do is to upgrade your hot water heater before building your theater! It last ten year usually, ours broke at 12 years, and made a mess

Good idea... I will have to check and see how old ours is. I think it might be about 5 years old.

 

[ellisr63]

Today we picked up the rest of the speakers, hooked up some exterior lights, and completed the exterior door (mostly done) for the HT...
http://s1065.photobucket.com/user/ellisr63/media/OurHTdoor_zps5d85f0c4.jpg.html


Our door started life as a solid core door and now has 2x6 (reclaimed from our old deck) added to the outside of the door. We went with the rustic look as our Pond area is rustic also. I picked up a 1950s era door pull and we adapted that to the door. We will be using one pull for the exterior door and one for the interior door (for when you exit the HT. The door pull is Lucite and aluminum... It came in a old aluminum finish and I painted it flat black to blend with the door a bit nicer.

 

[ellisr63]

This weekend we got 1/2 of the ceiling clips and hat channels up. We hope to get the rest of the clips and hat channel up next weekend and then the following weekend get the first layer of sheetrock up on the ceiling.