Ceiling Height Issues (1 Viewer)

[Sal]

Greetings all!
In the middle of a build, and I've come across a snag. I realized that my duct work will force me to have a 7'3" to 7'4" ceiling height. The ducts run along the left wall from the screen side to the back wall. It intrudes about 4-5 feet into the 14ft wide theater. Should I just live with the lower ceiling (causing the raised section in the rear to duck their heads when standing on the platform) or do something about it?
If you would like to see a pic, please email me.
TJ

 

[Jay Mitchosky]

I ran into a similar situation with my new theater. The ductwork doesn't come out that far so it was easily incorporated into a bulkhead which I was planning for anyway. With yours 4-5' is really deep. Given that you have to match the width of the bulkhead around the room for symmetry that would leave (at best) a 6' in the middle which might be a little tight. Sketch it out to scale and see how it looks. What is the length of the theater? You would need the same or approximate bulkheads at the ends as well. If you can work with the rather deep bulkheads then you can do that, add some crown moulding and create an indirect lighting tray. This way you spare the ceiling height in the middle. You don't want to feel crowded which is what you'll get if it's a 7'3" ceiling all the way through. The other consideration if you want to pursue the bulkheads is how wide you plan on making the riser. If it goes under the bulkheads at each side than you still face the same problem with people having to duck.

 

[Sal]

Thanks for the info Jay. What I'm thinking is to do a 4' bulk/soffit around the ducts, with one of equal size on the opposite side. I'm going to run them the entire length of the theater (21 feet) and have columns along them with sconce lights on the columns. In the middle I'm going to do a drop ceiling, with a fiber optic star scene. The drop area will be about 8' in height. The 4' bulkhead on each side would leave about 6-7' in the middle for the "tray" starfield. Cool or lame?
TJ

 

[richard_v]

I had the same situation. Take a look at my pix of how I built around it. My duct work extended about 2' on one side, so I continued it around the entire room, creating 45 angles at the corners. The soffit acted as a convenient cable tray.

I'm now at the sanding stage. I'll update my site soon.

http://home.insightbb.com/~rnvance/w...e-skip-15.html

Good Luck!

 

[Jay Mitchosky]

Sal

Sounds very cool. Hope you're looking forward to filling all the pin holes with light!