The "Bat Barn" begins!

[Shockabuku]

Hi @,

Well, I reckon it's about time to start my own build thread. Having moved house a lot over the past few years, which has required the mothballing of my home cinema kit, we finally moved into our latest (and permanent!) house a couple of months ago. Conveniently, it has a detached old barn right alongside. Of course, that had nothing to do with why I "really want that house, dear" .

The barn is a few hundred years old, and has suffered from a bit of "movement" due to overloading with agricultural equipment, but it is structurally sound & fine for domestic use. Crucially, the roof is good, and the thick walls mean it'll be easy to insulate.

Some exterior shots...





Internally, the barn has two floors, and the top floor will be our dedicated home cinema room. I'll also section off a small part of the room as office space from where I can work from home.

Internal floor dimensions are 31ft x 15ft. The highest point of the ceiling is about 14ft.







As you can see from the exterior pictures, we also have a lot of work taking place on the main house as well, so chaos rules at the moment 'round our place .

Here's a quick summary of my intentions:

Main Construction
My plan for the Bat Barn is, you've probably guessed, to make it a bat cave (or barn) with regards to ambient light and reflections. First, my builder will construct a false floor throughout the entire room, as the existing floor is very uneven. I'll run most of the cabling through this flooring. He will also be taking down all the existing plasterboard, re-doing the insulation (properly), and drylining & plastering it all. He'll also be adding an MDF shelf top along the entire dwarf wall around the room, and plastering it all. The oversized door will be removed, and a standard exterior door-frame & steel-cladded door installed. The exterior wood will be replaced & treated, and insulated & dry-lined stud walling built on the interior of that wall. Heating-wise, we'll be installing an oil-fired boiler downstairs in the barn, and running plumbing to some radiators in the home cinema. Although the barn already has it's own electrics, I'll probably need to have a dedicated feed from the mains into the house straight into the barn.

Stage & Screen Wall
I plan to build a stage at the front of the room, covering the main window (which will first be replaced with a modern double-glazed unit) and the entire front wall. The stage & screen wall will hide the front 3 speakers behind acoustically transparent cloth, and support my intended 10ft wide 2.35:1 fixed screen. All walls & ceiling will be painted black, and overlaid with acoustically transparent, non-reflective material throughout. Dark (black?) carpet, with the least reflectivity I can find, will be used on the floor throughout. Side surround speakers will be built into columns either side of the room, and rear surrounds (for 7.1) will most likely be mounted on the rear-most horizontal beam.

Seating
I'm planning two rows of seating, the front will consist of 3 x comfortable recliners (yet to find some at a reasonable price), and for the back row I'll use the four "proper" cinema seats I bought from Popeye on this forum a few weeks ago. The back row will be mounted on a raised platform.

Lighting
As the room will be so dark, lighting will be crucial. I've bought a Lutron 3104 Grafik Eye, which will give me scene control for my four intended groups of lights. More on this at a later date.

Acoustic Treatment
I already have some 2ft x 2ft acoustic panels, constructed of a wooden frame containing dense rockwool with an air gap behind. I may use these, or possibly build some larger panels from scratch. I'll also be looking at making some home-made bass traps.

The Kit
Rotel 1068/1075 pre/pro
Sonus Faber Concerto Home front LRC
M&K Surround 55 MkII tripole side surrounds
Rel Strata 5 sub
Carada 10ft wide 2.35:1 screen
Prismasonic FE-1500R anamorphic lens (with remote control-operated passthrough)
Sony VW60 Black Pearl
Toshiba EP35
PS3 (still to buy)
Keene IR Commander infra-red distribution system
Lutron 3104 Grafik-Eye lighting controller
Remote control TBD

Image-wise, I think my old Panasonic PT-AE100 (yes, 100!) projector might not quite cut the mustard , and I've now bought a Sony VW60, which should be just a slight step up in quality :-D. Also, I'm pretty sure my REL Strata 5 will struggle with the size of this room, so after a tip-off from a fellow forum member, I am now seriously considering some kind of homebrew IB (inifite baffle) sub design. I will be going HD in a big way with this system. In fact, I'm even thinking it's likely that SD will hardly get a look in. So, I've bought a Toshiba EP35 (a couple of weeks before Warner jumped ship!) and a PS3 will be somewhere in my future for blu-ray content. Oh, and I'm also still researching remotes.

That pretty much covers it for now. I'm expecting this one to take a few months, and I'm aiming for a grand opening in summer 2008. I'm really excited at what I'm hoping the end result will be, and needless to say, I'll keep this thread updated with my progress .

[Keith Hurst]

Oh you're going to have some fun wiht that, what a space to have available to you for home cinema use.

Can't wait to see this one develop.

KH

[Owen824]

oh the wonders i could do with a place like that. been looking for something like that to do a project with here in edinburgh. currently have 2 properties on the go at the moment so cannot possibly take on anymore but if something like that came up i would be all over it like flies on poop

cannot wait to see the finished product of this. you might even be able to charge admission fees.

[Shockabuku]

Cheers guys, I couldn't believe my luck when we found this place . I just hope I can do it justice, as I'm no diy genius, and unfortunately don't have bottomless pockets!

[ukprometheus]

one word "SWEET"

[chelsea.tone]

How lucky are you?????

Tony

[albriscoe]

Thats got the making of a wonderful HT I know we`re going to get loads of good pics so I won`t ask.

cheers and good luck with whats going to be an interesting project


Allan

[Ballistix999]

Yo "brother from another mother". Looking good, gonna come look soon, of course I'll be there to help with the electronics and acoustics installation, if you want me!

Cheers
T

[Shockabuku]

Originally Posted by Ballistix999

Yo "brother from another mother". Looking good, gonna come look soon, of course I'll be there to help with the electronics and acoustics installation, if you want me!

Cheers
T

lol, you betcha! You can help me build the stage & screen wall if you like too .

[SG-22]

This could be amazing........so dont mess it up

gd luck to you

[dbs2]

I'm glad this has finally started....... it is going to be one hell of a theatre..... how will you pull yourself away from it.......

Good luck with the mighty Challenge

I'll try to stop myself from 'Robin' any bat cave Ideas from you..... i know, i'll get my coat

[Shockabuku]

Originally Posted by dean1474

I'll try to stop myself from 'Robin' any bat cave Ideas from you..... i know, i'll get my coat

Oh that's bad

[Miniholic]

Hmm, this one looks promising.

I have to say, I'm not jealous one little bit... not at all.... Ok.

[Shockabuku]

As everyone likes gratuitous pictures, here's a few pics of some of the new kit I'm stockpiling in readiness for the build...

45 metres of Van Damme Blue speaker cable (still waiting for delivery of another 40 metres of VD Black bi-wire)...


The Prismasonic FE-1500R anamorphic lens. I bought this on the AVS powerbuy, but it still wasn't cheap! Will CIH 2.35:1 be worth it? I hope so!! On the second image, the flash has revealed the motor mechanism for moving the lens into passthrough mode via the remote control. Passthrough means I won't need to do any manual adjustments when going from 2.35:1 to 16:9 (or anywhere in between). Also, it gets 10/10 on the gadget-factor scale .





I also went with the Prismasonic universal projector mount. Looks like it offers enough flexibility to cover most projectors...

[inzaman]

Love the anamorphic lens, i really wish i had the throw for 2.35 CH - i would have one like a shot, despite the cost of the lenses

Looking forward to seeing how this progresses.