Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater HT pre-construction advise - where are you Obi Wan

I am a neophyte in the area of HT and this is my first post. I am looking for advise on a HT I am planning on having built in my basement starting in afew weeks.

I have been trawling on Axiom's forums for months now and am in awe at the amount of helpful info and knowledge of its members. I have to fight the impulse to get down on my knees like Wayne Campbell with outstretched arms bowing and repeating "I am not worthy!"

The HT I am thinking of building will be in a portion of my basement with dimensions 12ft wide, 31 ft long and 7.8 ft in height. Three of the four walls are exterior/foundation walls and the basement is completely unfinished (i.e. studs/joists exposed, concrete floor). There are three small windows so the HT will have almost complete light control.

I am thinking of putting a 100 inch fixed diagonal screen on one of the 12 ft walls, having the seating approx. 12 ft back from the screen (probably a reclining couch), building a 12 inch riser and having a second set of seats on the riser (probably a love seat and chair) about 16 to 17 ft from the screen.

The end of the room opposite the screen will be for a treadmill (WAF), equipment rack and shelves.

My main areas of concern on construction are:

-speaker wiring: the equipment rack will be at the end of the 31 ft room with the (soon to be purchase Epic 60/500 system) speakers/sub at the other end of the room. I want to run the speaker wiring in a conduit through the joists and the conduit would contain the wiring for L,C,R and sub. Will this be an issue running all the wiring for these components together? I have also read about ENT or 'Smurf' tubing (1.5 to 2 inches in diameter) for the conduit, but can't locate it at any local big box store or even electrical contractor suppliers. Does anyone have a suggestion to purchase this kind of conduit online?

-sound proofing: I really need to ensure that the HT will be sound proof for the longevity of my marriage. I am currently planning on using resilent channel and batting to try and contain the sound in the HT. Any suggestions on this would be greatly appreciated.

-hdmi cable: I have purchase the Pan AE1000U pj which displays in 1080p. Can anyone recommend an hdmi cable to run a 1080p signal approximately 30 feet (from av receiver to pj) without an extender?

Thanks in advance for the advise. This is a great forum.

for speaker wire, you really do not need to buy conduit.

I ran all my wires through the ceiling before I put up my drywall, just drill 3/4" holes through the joists and run your wires where you need them to go. Make sure you intersect all electrical (for lights etc) at a 90 degree angle if you HAVE To intersect. It is advised to stay at least 24" away from any parallel electrical run.

The only reason to use the conduit would be for video to your projector (in case in the future you want to add more video cables).

Even if you don't plan on a full 7.1 setup, wire for a 7.1 setup.

You can get most of your supplies at monoprice.com, including all your speaker binding wall plates, HDMI wall plates, and component video wall plates. Measure out how much wire you need for each run for each speaker, add them all together, and add about 15-20% extra. I got all my speaker wire thru bluejeanscable.com (Belden 5000UE (Gray jacket, 12 AWG). Comes to $0.38/ft for excellent in-wall rated 12g speaker wire (you will want to use all 12guage for your runs).

As I mentioned, monoprice.com is the best for all your video stuff and interconnects (wall plates, etc). They just got in the new HDMI 1.3a cables...however, if your new projector does not accept HDMI 1.3, it would be useless to use the new cables...just use their regular 22guage HDMI cables (they are stinkin' thick too), and they will pass 1080p thru them flawlessly. MAke sure all your stuff is in-wall rated.

For your riser, Go here Riser Height Calculator.

Thats all I got for now...thought I would throw my 2 cents in. Also, for soundproofing, nothing sound proofs better than mass, don't think a suspended ceiling will do anything, because it won't. Green Glue is an awsome way to go about soundproofing, between 2 layers of drywall, it will provide up to 60db of soundproofing (I think, check out their website for more solid stats and advise for soundproofing).

Edit: Forgot about your electrical runs:

1. at least 1 20a run to where your Amp and electrical gear will be.
2. I ran a dedicated 15a line for my sub.
3. I ran a dedicated 15a for my projector (this will increase bulb life because it doesn't get fluctuation in power).
4. I ran a dedicated 15a to all my lighting and other general purpose electrical outlets in the room.

I probably went overboard for a little 14x16 room with 4 dedicated runs, but better to be safe than sorry.

Welcome. I'm new to this too, and can say there's some great help to be found here.

For a few specific things, for sound isolation I also read about "Green Glue" (http://www.greengluecompany.com/) and they sounded quite interesting, and a few people on avforums seemed to have good experiences with it. Might be another way.

For the HDMI cable, the way I did it was to run a conduit to where the projector was so that I could change out the cable if necessary... The cheap Monoprice 35 foot cable seemed to pass at 1080p (http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/hdmi-cable-battlemodo?view=full) but it's one of those things where you might just have to test it with your own equipment. And then if the cheap one doesn't work then a more expensive Blue Jeans or something cable could be put in after the fact.

My small input, and post pics when you can!

As Robb said, conduit is not necessary.

If sound-proofing is such an issue for you, consider building a "room within a room". Aside from that, use 5/8" drywall instead of a half inch and try to get the largest sheets possible to minimize joints. Screw and glue the drywall wherever possible. Use weatherstripping on all doors to prevent them from rattling. Staggered studs also help a lot to provide further isolation. I also used Roxul Safe n' Sound in the ceiling joists with a 2" airspace to act as a baffle. And the less vents for noise to travel the better. I eliminated all vents and decided to heat the A/V room with a direct vent fireplace.

No time to read all this……..but I did catch the “no need to run conduit” part.

Run the dam conduit for chrissake, and you guys should stop telling people not to because you’re tight asses. Ever try to fish new wire in a finished wall because some idiot ran a screw through a conductor or a stud shifted and cut a wire??? Do it once and you’ll run conduit for the rest of your days.

Go get yourself a few rolls of non-metallic-flexible conduit from home depot. It’s that plastic blue stuff more commonly referred to as “smurf tube”. It cuts with a utility knife, bends easy by hand, utilizes snap in adaptors and J-boxes and you secure it with two hole conduit straps. You can run it in a room with a 7.1 system with extra subwoofer stub out locations in one day…..and I mean ANYONE can do it. The stuff’s idiot proof…..and best of all it’s CHEAP.

When you go to pull wire in this stuff, use a shop vacuum and suck a wadded up ball of tape attached to some string. You can’t push a fish tape through it and the shop vac trick works slick. Buy a jug of liquid hand soft and lube up the speaker wire, tie the string to it and pull away. Terminate the ends of the wires into banana jack receptacles at both ends. Stub the J-box location out to where you can run short cables from your audio processor to the boxes. You’ll have a nice finished product with the latitude to pull new stuff if you ever need it.

Thank you everyone for the imput.

Hutzal - I will let you and mdrew duke it out over the conduit issue , but when I went to monoprice.com looking for 12g in wall speaker wire, a 300ft spool is $143 which is closer to $00.48/ft, not $00.38/ft. Am I looking at the right stuff? On soundproofing, did you used GG? I am shying away from GG due to the cost (twice as much drywall and GG) vs. resilent channel. Thanks for the reminder about the electrical runs.

Photon - (see my comments to Hutzal) Did you use GG? I will check out that site on the hdmi cable. I hope to post some pics when I get alittle more comfortable posting.

Mojo - the 'room within a room' concept is probably not in my ht construction budget. I will get the 5/8" drywall, large sheets and the Roxul Safe 'n Sound.

mdrew - I know you said you didn't read the entire post, but I am having trouble getting the ent/smurf tube at retailers in my area. Any suggestions for getting this online?

thanks again.

corelone,

As I stated in my post (which looks kinda confusing I guess), I got all my video cables thru monoprice.com, and my in-wall speaker wire from Bluejeanscable.com. The Belden greyjacket 12guage in-wall rated speaker wire.

I did not use GG, it was not in my budget. Honestly, even with reference level movies, the drywalled ceiling and walls stop alot of sound, about 30 STC worth. My wife can sleep 2 floors above the theatre and not hear anything...ocasionally if I am REALLY pumping it while gaming (>80db) some of the stuff in our on-suite bathroom rattles a bit 2 floors up...stinkin' EP500