bardel
Prominent Member
Hi all.
I've recently moved to a new house, we've been here around 6 months now and absolutely love it.
In our last house I pretty much worked my way through the whole place refurbishing it including a lounge with 108" drop screen, projector and 7.1 (see footer for previous thread some 8+ years ago).
Since then we've had 2 children and they taken up a lot of our time and dedication as you'd expect and interrupted / derailed many an evening when a movie was going to be watched. All that on top of having to keep the volume levels lower (although I always argued they'd get used to it which they pretty much have).
One of the big selling points in the new place was the basement floor which has a spiral staircase and entrance hall with two rooms either side, one a store room and the other housing the media rack for the house automation and a desk. There were then a set of double doors opening into a large room which had a big comfy u shaped sofa, 50" plasma and JVC HD1 projector, Stewart Firehawk screen and a Lutron black out blind which dropped to block out the French doors and glass panels to the basement courtyard. In addition there is a small plant room housing much of the house heating systems / pipework (except the boiler).
We bought the sofa as part of the house and the sellers already confirmed the tv and projector etc were all staying along with the kit in the media rack. The house is 8 years old and all of the AV / home automation stuff is 8 years old too so I knew it would need updating and much of the cinema room bits needed attention to get them running again. Given my previous experience and enthusiasm for such a project that didn't bother me in the slightest.
So the plan was to move in, unpack, and then set about getting everything back to fully working order so that we could make use of it primarily and then get a feel for what changes and modernisation I'd want to apply over the course of 12-18 months.
Or so we thought.....
In the middle of June, South Essex saw one of the largest rainfalls in one night during a large storm. Subsequently, despite the fact the basement has 2 sump pumps for redundancy and the house has a generator that kicks in automatically in the event of grid power failure our basement flooded! [emoji20]
The rainfall wasn't in fact the issue, in fact the next morning there was no problem, but shortly before 8am I heard water running and ran down to the basement assuming that something in the plant room had burst or started pouring. There was about 1-2" of water at the bottom of the stairs. I opened the doors to the cinema room to see approx 3-4 feet of water up at the French doors which was now piling in through 2 air vents located on the same wall at low level (quite why they are there I don't know). In the space of 20 minutes, the basement was 2+ feet underwater. It seems our problem was that the local roads had flooded severely and as traffic was passing down the rural roads, this water was pushed into the ditches which overflowed and our sump pumps are connected to the ditch. After investigations with underground cameras, it turns out that there are no non-return valves fitted and we became the reservoir for the discharged road water. Pretty frustrating given that much money had clearly been spent on making a redundant system only to cut the corners on £100 of non return valves.
To add to this misery, having only been in the property approx 9 weeks much of our unpacked goods were stacked in the basement. In particular for this thread, all of my AV equipment.
So, the chance to get the feel of the place and take time to plan has been taken away from us and upgrade plans will have to be accelerated. We have know got over the pain of some of the irreplaceable items and learnt never to place such items in a basement or in any case at a higher level! There are as with most things some positives to take, in that there is an opportunity to re-model and replace all the AV gear with something more suited to the space we have.
Now this project is likely to drag for some time, primarily because the insurance company haven't been the quickest to deal with it (we're still waiting for the drying company to be engaged following the rip-out and it's been 4 months since the claim started)! But for now, there's lots of planning.
I'm also using a custom installer as I don't have the time that I used to (as per my previous diy thread) and will be utilising trades, either the insurers for their works plus some additional requirements.
There is already a design in mind that I've worked on with the AV installers and I've made a decision on the speakers already following demos of different setups. A bold move already but I think it's the right one and I wanted to pull the trigger to avoid a significant upcoming price increase.
The scope of works for the custom installers is significant and includes not only the cinema room including all facets of it (blinds, lighting, ceiling, screen, rack, AV equipment, seating, control) but also the replacement of the whole house automation system (some of which has been submerged), installation of CCTV, integrating the heating, control of the gates and security as well as cabling an existing room above the garage which has just been opened up with a dorma. We have zoned multi room audio and video as part of the current system, again much of the source equipment is damaged so this needs to be replaced throughout also. In addition we are looking to add a garden feature (gazebo) which I would like to add an AV zone to.
So all in there's a lot to do, some of these pieces may be phased (most likely the garden feature / zone) and the rest will come down to how much is funded by the insurance claim and what I can afford to add to it and when!
So that's my starter for 10 (or 20 since I've just written an essay), I'll follow up now with a few pictures of the basement room from the estate agent before it was flooded and a floor plan. I'll then start to waffle about current plans / progress. [emoji846].
Ps: I am writing this on my phone from a hotel room tonight as I've nothing else to do and I've been meaning to get stuck in with a new thread for a while.
I've recently moved to a new house, we've been here around 6 months now and absolutely love it.
In our last house I pretty much worked my way through the whole place refurbishing it including a lounge with 108" drop screen, projector and 7.1 (see footer for previous thread some 8+ years ago).
Since then we've had 2 children and they taken up a lot of our time and dedication as you'd expect and interrupted / derailed many an evening when a movie was going to be watched. All that on top of having to keep the volume levels lower (although I always argued they'd get used to it which they pretty much have).
One of the big selling points in the new place was the basement floor which has a spiral staircase and entrance hall with two rooms either side, one a store room and the other housing the media rack for the house automation and a desk. There were then a set of double doors opening into a large room which had a big comfy u shaped sofa, 50" plasma and JVC HD1 projector, Stewart Firehawk screen and a Lutron black out blind which dropped to block out the French doors and glass panels to the basement courtyard. In addition there is a small plant room housing much of the house heating systems / pipework (except the boiler).
We bought the sofa as part of the house and the sellers already confirmed the tv and projector etc were all staying along with the kit in the media rack. The house is 8 years old and all of the AV / home automation stuff is 8 years old too so I knew it would need updating and much of the cinema room bits needed attention to get them running again. Given my previous experience and enthusiasm for such a project that didn't bother me in the slightest.
So the plan was to move in, unpack, and then set about getting everything back to fully working order so that we could make use of it primarily and then get a feel for what changes and modernisation I'd want to apply over the course of 12-18 months.
Or so we thought.....
In the middle of June, South Essex saw one of the largest rainfalls in one night during a large storm. Subsequently, despite the fact the basement has 2 sump pumps for redundancy and the house has a generator that kicks in automatically in the event of grid power failure our basement flooded! [emoji20]
The rainfall wasn't in fact the issue, in fact the next morning there was no problem, but shortly before 8am I heard water running and ran down to the basement assuming that something in the plant room had burst or started pouring. There was about 1-2" of water at the bottom of the stairs. I opened the doors to the cinema room to see approx 3-4 feet of water up at the French doors which was now piling in through 2 air vents located on the same wall at low level (quite why they are there I don't know). In the space of 20 minutes, the basement was 2+ feet underwater. It seems our problem was that the local roads had flooded severely and as traffic was passing down the rural roads, this water was pushed into the ditches which overflowed and our sump pumps are connected to the ditch. After investigations with underground cameras, it turns out that there are no non-return valves fitted and we became the reservoir for the discharged road water. Pretty frustrating given that much money had clearly been spent on making a redundant system only to cut the corners on £100 of non return valves.
To add to this misery, having only been in the property approx 9 weeks much of our unpacked goods were stacked in the basement. In particular for this thread, all of my AV equipment.
So, the chance to get the feel of the place and take time to plan has been taken away from us and upgrade plans will have to be accelerated. We have know got over the pain of some of the irreplaceable items and learnt never to place such items in a basement or in any case at a higher level! There are as with most things some positives to take, in that there is an opportunity to re-model and replace all the AV gear with something more suited to the space we have.
Now this project is likely to drag for some time, primarily because the insurance company haven't been the quickest to deal with it (we're still waiting for the drying company to be engaged following the rip-out and it's been 4 months since the claim started)! But for now, there's lots of planning.
I'm also using a custom installer as I don't have the time that I used to (as per my previous diy thread) and will be utilising trades, either the insurers for their works plus some additional requirements.
There is already a design in mind that I've worked on with the AV installers and I've made a decision on the speakers already following demos of different setups. A bold move already but I think it's the right one and I wanted to pull the trigger to avoid a significant upcoming price increase.
The scope of works for the custom installers is significant and includes not only the cinema room including all facets of it (blinds, lighting, ceiling, screen, rack, AV equipment, seating, control) but also the replacement of the whole house automation system (some of which has been submerged), installation of CCTV, integrating the heating, control of the gates and security as well as cabling an existing room above the garage which has just been opened up with a dorma. We have zoned multi room audio and video as part of the current system, again much of the source equipment is damaged so this needs to be replaced throughout also. In addition we are looking to add a garden feature (gazebo) which I would like to add an AV zone to.
So all in there's a lot to do, some of these pieces may be phased (most likely the garden feature / zone) and the rest will come down to how much is funded by the insurance claim and what I can afford to add to it and when!
So that's my starter for 10 (or 20 since I've just written an essay), I'll follow up now with a few pictures of the basement room from the estate agent before it was flooded and a floor plan. I'll then start to waffle about current plans / progress. [emoji846].
Ps: I am writing this on my phone from a hotel room tonight as I've nothing else to do and I've been meaning to get stuck in with a new thread for a while.
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