Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Found an extra room.

Can you just make a platform for the sub that's connected to a platform for the seating?

Ok I had one very nasty experience in my last house where my home theater lived in my basement. After living in my houme for about 6 years I knew when it rained hard for several days there would be a leak spring up in the far corner of the house. It wasn't in the HT area, but directly behind it in the storage area. I was able to channel it harmlessly into a drain, so I didn't bother doing what the contracter said would have to be done, digging up the front yard down to the bottom of the basement wall to fix it from the outside. They said that was the only way to truely fix a leak, as patching it from the inside would only hold temporarily until the water found a different path to get inside. So for 6 years everything was hunky dory.

Then during a particually heavy storm our city sewer system became overloaded, and sewage flooded up through the floor drain and into the interior of my basement a foot deep. Our next door neighbor lady had lived in her house for 35 years, and she said that was the first time that had ever happened in that area. But it was enough to make me realize that you never know exactly what might happen. I was very angry when I found out that our 'full coverage' homeowners insurance did not include flood insurance... "but how can you call it 'FULL COVERAGE' if it doesn't cover everything"??? I protested. Guess that's why you have to read the fine print.

So anyway I tore out all the carpet in the basement, threw away the couch, coffee table and the Sony floor standing speakers I had at the time (no big loss) and started from scratch. I build a stage a foot and a half off of the floor that extended out about 3 feet from the false wall. That was where I put my new 65 inch rear projection TV, and my new Cerwin Vega towers speakers. But I too had very low ceilings in my basement, so I couldn't afford to put a subfloor throughout the entire bsement either. So under the rest of the HT area I laid this flooring that was only about a half inch thick. It looked like tile sort of, but the bottom was made up of several round nubs spaced out from eachother so that when you laid it down it would allow water to travel underneath them into a drain without soaking whatever flooring you put down (unless the water rose past a half inch). On top of that we had a pad and carpet laid and it was all very solid, felt as if it were sitting right on the concrete, but it had that water barrier built into it, and didn't take much of the ceiling height away at all.

The stage was just in case we had another major flood so the electronics wouldn't be in harms way. But that set-up worked just fine until I moved in with my fiancee here last year. Might be worth looking into if you have any moisture issues at all.

Micah-

So sorry that you had to go through all that nonsense with the flooding and your insurance company...I know how frustrating that can be! I've only seen my basement flood once, and it was during a crazy torrential downpour. We had just moved into our house and the previous owners must not have cleaned out the gutters for years...the gutters overflowed the the water poured in through the basement window wells. On top of that, the sump pump that drains our basement failed at the same time so we had 3-4" of water in the basement when we started to pump it out.

I'm curious if it was the same storm system that caused the flooding in my house and your house (I live just to your south-west in Bloomington)...this would have been the spring of 2004.

Micah. That sucks man. Sorry to hear you had to go through all that.

I just measured the ceiling height in this room and it is 93". I could easily put in a subfloor of 6" or so. My main reasons for wanting a subfloor are: Better sub performance, better insulation from the cold concrete floor.

My basement is ground level. Meaning it isn't actually under ground, it is a walk in basement. I've never had a water there but during the summer months is does get a little humid.

Wow, it was indeed right around 6 years ago, so it's very possible that we both got flooded out by the very same storm. I hope your insurance company was more forthright than mine.

Weird...I've lived in Indiana for all 30 years of my life and I have never seen it rain like that before! Ha!

Luckily we had nothing at all in the basement at that time (not even framed walls), so no damage done and no claims to file with insurance. It hurt my heart more than anything...here we move into our new home and the basement floods. I had no idea at the time if this was a once-in-a-lifetime deal or a common occurance that the previous owners didn't tell us about.

Anyway, I've totally hijacked this thread...enought about basement flooding (don't want to scare the Listener )

Amen. We weren't home while it was storming, but I remember telling my wife at the time on our way home, "I wonder if the drain was able to handle all of that"? As soon as we got home I opened the door to the basement, flipped the light switch, and saw one of our magazine baskets floating around in what looked like 10 feet of water! I felt like crying. It's funny how it can create such an optical illusion. I called my dad and told him I had four or five feet of water standing in my basement. But when it was all said and done and we'd gotten all of the water out we measured the water line on the wall and it was just under 12 inches. Still, a foot of water is a TON of liquid to have to clean up... expecially when it has turds floating around in it.

The three of us on the end of the street that all found out we didn't have flood insurance got together and tried to get the city to throw us at least SOMETHING since the public sewer had failed. But we each got a letter from the city attourney saying that the city wasn't liable because they had adequate sewage. It wasn't 7 or 8 months after that incident that the headlines in our local paper was, "Inspector Determines Richmond Will Have To Spend 40 Million To Bring Current Sewer System Up To Acceptable Standards". The article went on to explain how everytime they built a new housing complex or expanded a neighborhood they failed to do the necessary changes to the sewer lines to compensate for it. My neighbors and I weren't surprised by this at all, we saw first hand the evidence of the problem.

Oh well, life goes on.

Micah, my brother has had virtually the same situation happen to his house. For 15 years he never had a problem with his basement flooding until they built more homes to the south of him. As a result, it changed the lay of the land and caused water to back up into the northern section of the development and caused several basements to flood during a heavy storm last year. This wasn't turd water though, just ground water. They had to redo all the ditches on his street by burying drainage socks underground in an effort to fix the problem. He's also added a second sump on the other side of the basement, for insurance since then.

Sucks to be him. I hope he never has to fish turds out of his basement. Man was that ever a disgusting mess. Raw sewage is even worse in person than it sounds over the internet, trust me. I think if I ever found myself in that situation again I would rather burn my house down than clean up a foot of poop, pee, toilet paper and God knows what else. The smell was so horendous I thought I was going to have permanent brain damage afterwards.

The shocking thing was that the walls didn't hold the smell in at all. Like I said we trashed just about everything we had down there at the time. Carpet, furniture, tv cabinet, speakers, you name it. But the walls downstairs weren't drywalled, they were cedar planks, looked sort of like barn siding or something. I loved the rustic look of it, but I could have sworn I was going to have to tear it all out and replace it because I figured they would have smelled to high heaven after soaking in sewage for a day. But that wasn't the case thankfully. After ripping everything else out of there, cleaning the floors and everything else heavily, and laying new carpet down and bringing new furniture in and everything, you could never tell what it had been through.

I was pretty amazed!