Is a 11ft wide HT room wide enough? (1 Viewer)

[SteveFred]

Hi everyone,

I will be starting my HT room in a few months as soon as my home is complete.

I will have 2000sq ft in the basement to work with 8ft ceilings.

My question is:

1)What is a good width for the HT room?

Reason is it is a walkout basement and on one side of the beams its 18" wide by 55ft long, but that is the side with the sliding door out and the windows and I want to put a bar and pool table room over on that side, plus I want the HT with no windows.

The other side of the basement is 15ft wide but goes down to 11 ft were my front porch is outside.

1)So my choices are 21ft long 11ft wide with no beam in the way

2)13.5ft wide and 20 ft long with the beam going acrossed the ceiling at about 14ft back(right where the projector will be)(beam is 8in thick, so its down to 7ft 3").

Choice #1 would be the best one, there is nothing in the way of the walls or ceiling, but is 11ft wide OK for a 119" widescreen, I am only putting in 2 front recliners and a couch on a riser.

I will be going with the Sharp 12000 and the Yamaha rx-z9 and a SVS sub(not sure on the speakers yet, plus by the time I order the equipment(Sept 2004) there might be a better choice of equipment.

Thanks

Steve

 

[SeanBurnley]

My theater in progress is 11.5 wide and I plan to go with a 80" widscreen (92"dia.) which allows for curtains and speakers. So on an 11 foot wall your screen would be almost 8.5 feet across (119" dia). That basically leaves you only 1.75 feet on either side for speakers and whatever. It will work, but I would opt for the 13.5 feet wide format. The drop of the beam you mentioned may be perfect for mounting the projector to.? I DO see two potential problems here however: (1)If the throw of your projector puts it behind that beam, then you probably couldn't do a ceiling mount. (2) Riser height for the couch may not allow any headroom depending on placement. Also, consider what space you lose if you do a double wall for sound considerations. Just my 2cents.

 

[SethH]

I think you could definitely do 11 ft wide. But you might want to read up on some information about room acoustics. Ideally speaking, one shouldn't use a room that is twice as long as it is wide. It can cause serious nulls and peaks within the room.

 

[Neil Joseph]

My room is 11' wide and my screen is 96" diagonally...



How large are your front speakers? Your 119" screen is 104" wide (8ft 8in) so you have 20" max on each side of the screen to work in your front speakers, not including space for the screen border.

BTW, it sounds like you have a very nice house w 2000 sqft in just the basement. Also, a nice selection of HT gear with the 12K projector and the Z9 receiver.

You can mount the 12K 16' from the front wall so your zoom range would allow you to accomodate between a 89" and a 122" 16x9 screen image. It is better to mount farther back and zoom in to compensate than to mount closer to the screen and zoom out. This helps reduce a hot spot in the middle of the screen yielding a more even light dispersement across the entire screen.

 

[Tom Kay]

Hi Steve;

Your second choice is pretty close to what I will have (when it's complete).

I have a room that is 24 feet long, by 14 wide (actually the rear half of the room is 16 feet wide, perfect to add a little wetbar in the rear corner). We hummed and hawed about 12 feet wide, or 14, because we have a support pole in the way, (it wouldn't be if we went with 12 feet width for the room - it would be buried in the wall).

I am really happy that we opted for a 14 foot wide room. First, it's less claustrophobic, second, my kids love to dance to the music at the end of any movie, and hey, we need ROOM for that.

I also have a heat duct and beam traveling across the room right where a FP would go. I see no problem with this, in fact, the duct jutting down into the headroom might help protect the projector, by making people not pop their heads up too quickly.

We still have that support pole in the way at the side of the room. So, we have decided to incorporate it into a storage rack for dvd's by building a small "closet" around it. It also creates a little corner nook for another chair which faces the screen.

With a room that's 20 or 24 feet long, you might have room for a rear play area, for cards, games etc. We do, with a 24 foot room length. This will be a multi purpose room, including the bar one day, and a gas fireplace, so that we can survive another big ice storm like we had in 1997 (no heat!). So, my feeling was make the room wider, let it breath a little and give people a bit more room to move around and not feel bunched in.

So, I like choice #2. Cheers, Tom Kay, Ottawa Canada.

 

[SteveFred]

HI everyone,

Thanks for all the input.

Yes I have been over to the new house about 10 times measuring and seeing which way would work the best.

I could do choice #2 and widen the room another 2ft and incorporate the support poles into the room and wrap it in drywall or cedar.

Yes I also have to remember if I am double drywalling I lose even more space(thanks for pointing that out).

I also could do Choice #2 and put the screen on the opposite wall. That would mean the room is 20ft long (and 13.5 to 15' wide)and the beam/duct work would be about 5ft from the screen and the height would be at 7' 3". I wonder if the throw would hit the beam at all, if the projector is at 15ft(est) and the beam is 10ft from the projector and 5 ft from the screen, I think that might work.

I guess what I will have to do is in Sept, buy my projector first and quick mount it a bunch of different ways and see where it looks best and then design the room around that.

Yes the Sharp 12000 looks very nice and the price is coming down, but I want to see the new JVC D-ILA HD2K, that is coming out in July, that will be true HD at 1920x1080.

As for my speakers, I havent figured out what I want yet. I have a 57" Sony HDTV(3 years old) with a Yamaha DSP-3090A1 (8 years old, but still working flawlessly) reciever, Yamaha sub(1991), Polk audio mains, Yamaha center and a 300+1 Sony DVD player, but that is all going to stay upstair in the great room.

I wanted to do 9ft ceiling in the basement, but the wallet would not allow it.

Steve

 

[Tom Kay]

Hi Again Steve

Just to let you know, my basement ceiling is 7 feet, and the heat duct hangs down from that. So at that point, it's around 6'4" or so. I have a movie-nut friend, and he's 6'6" so he'll have to get used to ducking. He's used to it anyway, by now.

With your heat duct, you're still well above anyone's height. And given the dimensions you stated, I really suspect that your projector image won't hit the beam at all, or if it does, it should be any easy fix by lowering the projector or screen a tad.

I kind of thought that the low ceiling would make it "tight" but the room feels big, and I know it's related to the total area, especially the width of 14 feet.

So, have fun with the decision. Tom.

 

[SteveFred]

Hi Tom,

I went there today to put insulation between the inner wall of the house. I remeasured the basement again.

Another quick note, at the house we have had 4" of rain in the last 3 days and not a drop of water in the basement, even with no power yet to the sump, so I shouldn't have any water problems at all.

I am going to go with Choice #2 and widen the room 2 ft. That will make it 18ft long and just about 15ft wide.

You right at 7'3"(about 7 feet even after the framing), the project throw should just miss the beam and like you said I could also lower the projector a few inches.

I will post a ton of pics on my webpage as soon as I get started. I have a ton of the home construction on there now.

Steve