How wise is it to build a dedicated HT on the second floor of a house?

Ricardo C · 07-31-2003, 10:55 PM

Can it be sufficiently soundproofed as to avoid torturing the rest of the household?

I'm looking at building a house sometime in the next 12-18 months. The house plan is just perfect, and has a bonus room on the second floor that I'd love to use for my HT (since the house plan is so nicely balanced, I really don't wanna mess with it by building an addition later. Plus, using the existing room would be a huge money saver). Is this a good idea? Has anyone around here set up their HT room in an upper floor/loft/etc.?

Jeff Engel · 08-01-2003, 02:05 AM

Mine is on the second floor with an opening to the stairs only blocked with velvet curtains. The whole house gets to hear what the theater is playing and the garage(which is directly under the subs) sounds like it is about to fall apart during the intense scenes.

Anything can be sufficiently soundproofed as long as you have the money and the effort.

Ricardo C · 08-01-2003, 06:02 AM

Thanks for the reply, Jeff

COOL theater, btw!

Did Dennis Erskine design it, by any chance?

william-scooter · 08-01-2003, 12:14 PM

I am midway through construction of a new house with a dedicated HT on second floor. It is a completely enclosed room and we insulated all walls including interiors with the blown exterior wall insulation. the subfloor (about 1.5 ft) has also been insulated with blown exterior. As we are probably 60 days from move in it will be awhile before I see if the 9 In-wall Triads at fun level permeate every foot of the house. If so all I can say is tough. I will try to make a note to let you know how it goes.

DavidVT · 08-01-2003, 03:25 PM

Ricardo,

I also did my dedicated HT on the second floor. It was originally designed as an open game room. I added the two rear walls and walled off the double window for the screen. Sounds like your setup will be something like mine. If you need any further assistance just give me a holler. I need to update the pics since I have added my other sub (SVS) QSC amp and a few other things

Click here !!!

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Darren{Moo} · 08-01-2003, 04:35 PM

I recently finished construction of my home with a dedicated HT room on the second floor. I used staggered stud construction with insulated walls all around and also placed insulation underneath all the floor of the HT room. I also used a solid core door with weatherstripping and about 1/16" clearance over the carpet. All this was done in an attempt to make the room as isolated from the rest of the house as possible. I have been happy with the result for everything but the subs. I can crank it up and really the only thing that is very noticeable is the low frequency vibration, but those vibrations rattle the entire home. I think the only way to properly isolate those frequencies would be to build a false floor for the entire room and fill the space between that and the subfloor with sand or some other non-resonant material. One plus, if you go to all this trouble, when I go in my room and close the door it is dead silent, there is no sound from the outside world coming in.

william-scooter · 08-01-2003, 05:09 PM

Also my cinema guys have placed my two in wall 12" triad subs in the ceiling off the second floor. That should help with some of the "shock and awe" downstairs. I am curious how it will effect the feel....and sound in the room....

Jeff Engel · 08-01-2003, 06:37 PM

Thanks Ricardo, no Dennis did not design my theater. I did all the work myself. Of course I used alot of other peoples pictures as inspiration for my own so his influence might have been in there somewhere. I like to think of it as my interpretation of many others ideas

gregstaten · 08-01-2003, 06:52 PM

Ricardo: mine is also on the second floor. The sound isolation is a non-issue (assuming you properly isolate the room). The only challenge was that we had to reinforce the floor joists under the stage so they'd hold the play sand we filled it with. (The sand is designed to completely deaden the stage and it does a fantastic job.) The sand weighed nearly three thousand pounds, btw.

After consulting with an engineer and doing the reinforcement, the room went up.

-greg

Ricardo C · 08-01-2003, 07:04 PM

Guys, thanks so much for all the info

And may I say y'all have some killer theaters

Jeff, the fact that you did it all yourself makes it even more impressive, it definitely looks incredibly polished and professional. Wanna build mine?

AVspec · 08-01-2003, 07:48 PM

I have mine on my 3rd floor and have no problems. You can hear the SVS sub's during the very loud scenes but other then that it is not bad. My house is over 100 years old so the floors are real thick and the ceiling on the second floor is over 10' high so that helps.