The RowdyS13 build thread!

[Rowdy S13]

I cant believe it is finally happening!!!! After all these years I finally have a house, a space within that house (actually more than one), some funds, and an understanding wife

I started to write a bit of a back story, but then deleted it. Nobody wants the boring details of how I got here! Suffice to say that I recently bought a house, and the down stairs area was fairly well suited for a home theater type space. It is not without its challenges, but since this is NOT a dedicated theater it should be more than good enough. The only piece of equipment that will be making it into this setup is my Yamaha AVENTAGE RX-A2010 receiver which I got a couple of years ago now. I will probably use my Panasonic BR player temporarily, but will be replacing it with an OPPO sooner or later. Why don't we just do a basic gear list, that sounds easier

Main room (7.2 planned, wired for 7.2.4 with bi-amped fronts)
Receiver: Yamaha AVENTAGE RX-A2010
Blu-Ray player: OPPO BDP-103
Amp: Emotiva XPA-7
Projector: BenQ W1070
Screen: Visual Apex 106" tab tensioned motorized
Front tower: EMPTek R55Ti
Center: EMPTek R56Ci
Side surround: EMPTek R55Wi
Back surround: EMPTek R5Bi
Subs: SVS PB-2000 (X2)
I also built a new HTPC (click for HTPC thread) and have a Silicone Dust HD Home Run Extend-2

The family room is also going to get a 5.1 set up eventually. For now I will be using my old Integra DTR 5.4 to run it all along with my Panasonic Blu-Ray player, and Canton speakers. Eventually I will change out everything and go with in-wall fronts and in-ceiling surrounds, and a small sub. This will also be the "Zone 3" from the main system. I am going to do Zone 3 as a preamp out into some input (probably AUX) on the receiver in the family room.

Last up is the garage and back yard. This will act as Zone 2, and I will hook it up the same way as the family room. I am using my trusty old Kenwood receiver, and my my Infinity Pimus 150 bookshelfs for now. When I re-do the garage I will probably change the receiver and the go to in-ceiling speakers with a small sealed sub. I am going to just hook up a pair of outdoor speakers to the "B" pair for the back yard for the rare occasion I need some music out there.

I am also doing a wired network thought the house, and redoing all of the cable and antenna RG-6 cable while I am at it.

Lets get on to the pics, the reason everyone is here!!!

I started by ordering up 1,000ft of 12ga speaker wire, 1,000ft of CAT6, and 500ft of RG-6 to start out. I ended up getting another 500ft of RG-6 and 250ft of 12ga speaker wire. Here is a shot of the first order of wire and some connectors

After the wire came in I built my equipment rack, and got the closet ready to hold it.

Punched, formed, and welded the shelves at work (18ga brushed stainless)

I used 1/2" rod for the uprights. Everything except the casters is stainless steel

All finished!

Then came the gigabit switch, and patch panel in the rack style bracket. I have a shelf coming this week for the remaining spaces.

And then the pieces of the new HTPC. Too bad the case didn't fit the MB, and the one HD was dead on arrival. New parts should be here soon.

Then I got the 28" Samsung 720p LED, and made up a bracket to attach it to the rack. This will be used as a monitor for the HTPC as well as a display for the system for adjustments and watching TV in the office.

After that we started cutting holes to plan our routes, and see what we were dealing with. Lucky for us there were no real surprises. You will see the holes later, so no pics of holes in walls with no wires We also fixed the antenna wiring from the roof into the attic and removed a metric ton of RG59 cable that was literally all over the house (inside and out). Years of various suppliers running cable badly led to a massive amount of junk wiring. NO MORE!

After we planned out the runs, I got to rough cut everything!

This weekend we finally got to the good stuff, running wire!!! We had set up 3 separate pulls into the main room because of the amount of wire. We ended up splitting the room in half, so one run is

Front Left 1
Front Left 2
Sub Left
Center
Sub Right
Front Right 1
Front Right 2
Front Atmos Left
Front Atmos Right

The second run is
Network 1 (projector)
Network 2 (projector)
Network 3 (left side wall)
Side Surround Left
Side Surround Right
Rear Atmos Left
Rear Atmos Right
Rear Surround Left
Rear Surround Right

The third run (not in yet)
HDMI 1 (projector
HDMI 2 (left side wall)

ON TO THE PICS!

Before clean up

And after

Also, that one outlet is going to change to two, one at each sub. We have to see what the circuit is like, but will probably just pull a new one for them.

I will put some shielding/insulation between the wire and the ducts

The rear section is only run down the middle, so excuse the messy looking wires back there

And here is the closet side all together!

That is all for now! Not a lot to look at yet, but it is getting there. We should have the main room all pulled to final locations this weekend, and hopefully have all of the wire up to the attic as well. Then we need to distribute out to the rooms for Antenna, Cable, and Network.

I have to take a second and point out that I am doing all of this by really mostly watching my buddy Chris do it all He is a union electrician who is very patient with all of my demands. We have worked on a ton of various projects over the years, but this is the biggest one I can remember where I just try and stay out of the way. So far he is being a good sport, but we aint done yet! Then again he wants it done quick (as quick as my OCD will let us) so we can get back to working on his car (X275 turbo LS Trans AM). At least then I feel like I am contributing since the roles get reversed on the car since I can weld.

Anyway, sorry for such a long post I tend to ramble on a lot. Hope you guys like what we are doing! I am sure I will have a bunch of questions as it all comes together, so look out for those as well.



Thanks,
Sean

 

[Matt34]

Good luck, that's quite the undertaking! I have some old directv wiring here at my place I need to clean up as well. Would also like to do a proper media rack like you did for all my gear in the basement.

 

[Rowdy S13]

Thanks! Its a bigish project, but we are past the half way point depending on how you want to look at it I couldn't believe how bad all of the antenna/cable/dish wiring was in this place. I pulled out a lot when we first moved in. Such as the wire that came down from the attic in the garage, across the ceiling in the garage (held in place with duct tape of course) through the wall, though the front closet, through the wall (in the trim no less) then over to who knows where since they didn't have a TV anywhere in that room?! I had already dealt with stuff like that, but the amount of wire we removed was crazy! I should have taken a pic of it, and I regret that I didn't.

You can do a rack just like that using MDF for the shelves (and not stainless steel everything) for pretty cheap. I really wish I could have bought a real rack, but they are just way too expensive. I am very happy with how this one turned out though.

I am guessing that it didn't really come across in any of the pics, but the drywall in the main room is pretty bad. At leas it is to me with my small amount of OCD. The short version is that its really wavy. The details of that are that they glued it in place, and used very few screws (actually mostly nails in the ceiling). Because of that it is barely touching the joist in most places. I am now debating just pulling it all down, insulating everything, and putting up two layers of 5/8" drywall with green glue. I had planned on patching what was down there, then adding another layer of 5/8" over it with green glue when I do my garage. I guess the question is, is it worth all of the work to add insulation and have two layers of 5/8" drywall compared to 1/2" + 5/8"? Does anyone with some drywall experience think I can simply add in a bunch of screws to better secure it, and leave it? I know very little about drywall work, and even less about acoustics, so any help is appreciated.


Thanks,
Sean

 

[fuzz092888]

You can do a rack just like that using MDF for the shelves (and not stainless steel everything) for pretty cheap. I really wish I could have bought a real rack, but they are just way too expensive. I am very happy with how this one turned out though.

Personally I think that style of rack looks pretty good. I have a Salamander that is similar, except with wooden shelves. If you really wanted the "rack" style, they're easy to DIY with rack rails and then whatever you want to use for shelves/the enclosure. Based on the rack you built, you've clearly got the skills to do something like that if you ever wanted to, but I think that rack looks great.

 

[Rowdy S13]

Thanks! I like it, I just like standard rack stuff better. I was going to go DIY on a rack, but the best way would be to build it into a wall and I had no wall that would work for. I could have always welded the rails into a rack but oh well. Just gives me something to change later

All of my HDMI's came in yesterday so I should be good to go for finishing that room this weekend. I am debating running a USB extension up to the projector area for the keyboard receiver. If my case came in today I will probably play around with it and see how well it works out in the room with the computer in the rack. I would have ordered the extension already but shipping is almost the same price as the cable, and I don't need anything else from Monoprice right now.


Sean

 

[Rowdy S13]

It is FINALLY update time!!! YAY!!!!!!!!! As you could imagine, with the holidays its been pretty busy so work was a bit slow. But progress was made regardless, and I finally was able to get some pics to post up and show you what we have been up to.

So since the last update we have gotten (almost) all of the wire run to the main areas. That is to say we have the upstairs wire pulled into the attic, and temporarily terminated an antenna cable so I can hook up my HD HomeRun in the basement. The TV's in the bedrooms are hung, but we have not bothered to run the wiring to them, or move the outlets yet. This may be we we do this coming weekend, or if not then, very soon.

Now I think I will take the lazy way out, and move to mostly pics

Here you can see my wife sealing me into the basement before I rip down the ceiling. There were a few reasons to pull down the entire ceiling, mostly that it was installed like crap. They had glued and nailed it mostly so it was VERY wavy. The can lights were also "installed" poorly to put it nicely. Also we needed quite a bit of the ceiling removed to do the planned electrical work. SO I decided to just take it all down.

I sealed off the other rooms, and the return vent, though the that last one was pointless since it used the drywall to make the channel.

And ALL GONE! I didn't get any pictures after I pulled it down until days later after we did a bunch more work AND cleaned everything. Still, I think you get the point.

Here you can see the box for the power to the projector, and two of the 3 boxes for pendants over the bar. We also segmented the lighting, so the cans are 3 zones, and the pendants are separate from the cans. More on all of that later on once I get some of the lighting gear.

Here is the last pendant box

The main trunk of wire coming into the room. It is still missing a USB extension, but again you get the point.

New box going from a single switch to 4 for the lighting. They are all temped together so that switch turns it all on for now.

New cable from outside. No more cable wrapping around the house for no reason. Goes straight to the main equipment close from the junction box on the side of the house.

Not very exciting, but added a switch for the closet light (but have not changed out the light yet)

Here you can see where we added two new dedicated 20A circuits. We aslo changed out the sump pump outlet to the proper simplex outlet.

Here you can see the second outlet that we added higher up for the network gear.

A better shot of the two main trunks of cable coming into the closet (and the trunk that goes to the left that goes up to the attic). The bundle on the left is all of the speaker cable for the main room, and the one on the right is most of the network cables. The piece of drywall is temporary spacing.

Here are most of the I/O connections for other areas of the house (except the subs of course)

Last up is a shot of the front wall showing the two new outlets for the subs which are on a dedicated 20A circuit.

We still have a bit more wiring to run, mainly the stuff in the office. We also still need to add an outlet for the screen in the front of the room. I think this upcoming weekend we will take it easy and trim out all of the TV's That means adding an outlet, bringing in/terminating the Antenna, Cable, and two CAT 6 network connections at each location. We need to do that in 3 spots, and more or less the same in a fourth spot in the family room which has the addition of the RCA connections for the Zone input.

Speaking of the family room, I am being pressured into changing my plans from a receiver in the room with in wall/in ceiling 5.1 to going with a sound bar. Obviously this would not be the room to watch movies in, but it is where we do most of our daily TV watching. What does everyone think?

OK, that is all I have for now. Let me know what you all think of the progress so far! Stay tuned for more updates soon



Sean

 

[andyblackcat]

Looks good. I like seeing plasterboard cut out with holes in with hook eyes in the joists for the cables that's a good idea, noted.

 

[Rowdy S13]

Thank you! They are called bridal rings, and are fairly inexpensive. Not a bad way to support the cable and keep it relatively neat while still able to change things if need be. They are not the best things to pull through if everything was covered, but much better than having nothing there at all. I would have loved to do large plastic conduit, especially to the projector, but the cost and work was not reasonable for this project. If I had an unfinished basement and was building out a room, that would be my preferred method of course, but in a finished area this is second best


Sean

 

[Troy McGregor]

lots of work, keep it up.

 

[Rowdy S13]

Not a whole lot to update really but I did order up some of the Ineston stuff last week. I didn't get everything for the main theater room yet though. I figured since we are a little ways away from using it I would be better off getting more of a mix of devices for the rest of the house. I order up the following

1 Hub
1 Dimmer wall outlet
1 On-Off switch
2 Dimmer Switch

So that will get me control for the front room lamp, outside lights, and half of the needed switches for the basement so I can play around with some programming.

I should be getting the insulation and other materials for the ceiling somewhat soon. Once I get all of that wrapped up I can start working on the drywall. There is a good chance I will just have it done, and if I do I will roll it in with the garage. As I have mentioned before, cars is my #1 hobby so the garage is getting insulated and all new drywall. There is a little up out there now, but its all beat up so I am just taking it all down so I can insulate properly.

Other than that the TV in the master bedroom is 100% done now. Just haven't had any time to finish the others yet. The wiring for the office is partially run now as well, which is the last wiring that is being pulled. I still have a lot to do, and then of course by all of the gear, but I should be able to close everything up and paint soon. That should make the wife happy



Sean

 

[Rowdy S13]

It is finally time for an update! It's not as much of an update as I would like, but that's how it goes sometimes. As it stands right now 99% of the wiring is pulled where it needs to go. There is still some networking and an HDMI cable that need to be finished in the office, but it is already pulled out to the main room. We still need to do the wiring at the TV's, and add 1 more outlet for the screen in the main room. Hopefully my buddy can get over by my place to knock that stuff out soon. Should only be a days worth of work to get it all finished up. Then I can spend a day or two terminating and checking everything.

Anyway, enough about whats left lets see what is done....DRYWALL!!!

First piece in!

Front wall all done. Still need to do the low voltage rings for all of the speaker and sub connections

Not very exciting, but here is where we pulled the new cable connection into the house.

Now we can do a bit of before and after

Switch box at the bottom of the stairs

Access hole outside of the main equipment closet

Ceiling area in main closet

Here is the panel before I installed it

And done!

The back wall of the closet. I cut out more than was needed to replace damaged drywall

And last up, the right side wall of the closet

I had a couple other small patches, but I figured this is enough boring stuff for one post. I know drywall work is not very exciting, MESSY, but not very exciting. I am glad to have it at least this much done now. I am probably going to outsource the ceiling, and all of the mudding. I am going to call around and see what that would cost, and make a decision from there.

I should be getting some of the materials to finish up ceiling this weekend as well. Nothing too exciting there, just some flex duct and insulation. As I said I am mostly waiting on my buddy to come finish up that last bit of electrical work so I can close everything up.


Thats all for now, thanks for following along!

Sean

 

[Rowdy S13]

Well its been a while, so I may as well update Unfortunately not a whole lot has happened, but I am almost to the point where it will start going quick again. I got my buddy to come over last weekend to knock out some of the electrical, but nothing in the main room. We did however come up with the game plan for the last couple of things.

As you can see, three of the walls (rear, left, and front) all have a bit of a ledge where there is a concrete wall below grade. I decided to get rid of that ledge on the back wall since it was only about 3" wide anyway. Also that will allow me to route the wiring to rear speakers much better as the existing wall was directly under the joist. I also decided to add a sub connection in the left rear corner of the wall so I can have the two subs in opposite corners. Since we already added the two outlets on their own circuit for the subs on the front wall, we will just carry that over to a new outlet in the back corner. That does mean opening up the wall to run the piping and also the sub coax cable.

Lets get to the pics

First up, I decided to layout the proposed dimensions for the bar. The wife thought it would be way to big, but when I taped it out she liked it. We also put some boxes on the outer corner for a few weeks to get an idea of having to walk around it, and there was no issues.

Next up was the demo (again)! I really hope this is the end of tearing stuff down!

Back wall all opened up

And the side wall

I ended up removing that piece of drywall between the column and the bar. I still need to cut out a little bit more for the bar and the rear wall. I was always going to run some wiring to the bar, so some of this mess was always planned. Now we need to decide what we want to do with that ledge on the remaining two walls. We are thinking of some kind of stone or tile, either of which will mean pulling off the drywall

I should start building the rear wall and the bar next weekend. I did not have time to go get wood this weekend since I have to travel for work. I need to pull the wire for the rear sub, and we still need to run the outlet for the screen and then everything can get closed up!!!

While we are here though, I actually have a question for all of you guys. I am planning on running the EMPTek speakers, including the R55Wi on wall surround speakers on the sidewalls. Here is a picture of the back of those speakers.

My question is, do I need a hole in the wall for the speaker wire to have some room? I cant see how there is enough room for connectors and be flat against the wall any other way. If that is the case it poses a bit of a problem for me since my right side wall is actually a return for my HVAC. I may have to build out a box of some kind, or make some kind of bracket. Lets see how you guys have dealt with this, and/or any suggestions.


That's all for now, thanks as always for following along with the slowest, most boring build EVER!

Sean

 

[fuzz092888]

With banana plugs or other interconnects you might not have enough room,but if you just tin the bare ends of the speaker wire, you'd probably be alright without having to cut a hole.

 

[Rowdy S13]

The time for progress is upon us! I will just go right for the pictures.

I decided to start by building the base for the bar which meant I needed to cut out the floor

We are going to replace the flooring down here, but for now no need to rip it all out.

Next up came the walls!

You can see here that I actually built a 2x3 wall on the left side as well. The top is 3/4" plywood which is just part of the base for now.

Next up came building out the back wall. This turned out to be more work than I had planned. I started by adding in some 2x6 pieces between the joist above where the new wall would be. I decided to use joist hangers on the back side rather than running screws through on an angle. I put 6 up, all nice like and then built the wall.

Then when I went to install my beautiful new wall I realized that not only does it hit the bottoms of the joist hangers but even if it didn't the hangers were directly above the header which means I couldn't actually use the new stringers to attach the top of the wall. So out came all of the nice work I did with the stringers and the hangers. It's not that big of a deal, I will just tie the new wall to the old wall. It was getting pretty late though, so that will have to wait for later in the week.

While I was working on that, my buddy was busy running some wire around. We got the outlet installed and wire pulled for the screen, set the box and some of the piping for the new outlet in the back corner for the sub, started running pipe for the outlet in the bar. He also ran some of the low voltage wiring down the outside wall. We also tried to run the networking and HDMI to my office but had some trouble. More on that when we come up with a solution.

Thats all for now. Screen and projector will be here this week so I can check if I need to any blocking for mounting before closing up the ceiling. I am super excited to have some actual progress going on. Thanks for following along!


Sean

 

[Rowdy S13]

My projector came in yesterday!!! I just missed the Fed Ex man, so it was either wait a day or drive over there and pick it up....

I actually wasn't even going to open it yet. The wife came home and said she was surprised I hadn't opened it, so I said "OK, Ill check it out". After a precariously resting it on a shaky stack of tool cases, I decided to put it on something a bit more stable. Once I did, I hooked up the long HDMI from the closet (may as well test it while I am playing right) and hooked it up to the server since that is the only source I have in there. I fired up some Interstellar in HD onto my green painted wall

The image is a bit larger than what my screen will be, but the projector is also placed back from where it will be mounted. I think (hope) that the math came out correct. The screen should be here Friday but I am not sure I will be able to hang it to test any further this weekend. Anyway, I was excited about the projector, so there it is


Thanks,
Sean

 

[Rowdy S13]

I had a couple quick questions for you guys. The first one I know is debatable, but I would like to hear some reasons why I should go one way or the other. For the rear surrounds (on back wall) should I go with bookshelf (R5Bi) or Bi-pole on wall (R55Wi)? I am doing the on wall Bi-pole for the side speakers, but just not sure which would be better on the back wall.

Next up, would there be any negative side effect of adding a piece of wood behind the speakers under the drywall? I am thinking while I have everything open I can add in some 2x6 cross pieces between the nearest studs so I have a nice solid area to put screws for mounting. I cant really see it being a problem, but I thought I should ask.

That is all I got for now, thanks in advance for any help!


Sean

 

[Rowdy S13]

After looking into this a bit more, I think it is recommended to use direct firing speakers as surround backs. I am sure that it probably wont make a ton of difference, so I still may go with the Bi-pole speakers. I know that my wife would prefer the looks of the Bi-Poles on the back wall since they sit nice and flat.

Speaking of them sitting nice and flat, I think I came up with a good solution to my "problem". Instead of trying to describe it, I will just post up some pictures when I do it. I will also be adding some blocking behind the speakers for sure. I am going to be doing the same for the screen and projector soon as well. I have only a couple more things to do in the ceiling before I can insulate it and start putting up drywall! Slowly but surely I am working my way there. I cant wait to fire it all up soon!


Sean

 

[TheWarrior]

I had a couple quick questions for you guys. The first one I know is debatable, but I would like to hear some reasons why I should go one way or the other. For the rear surrounds (on back wall) should I go with bookshelf (R5Bi) or Bi-pole on wall (R55Wi)? I am doing the on wall Bi-pole for the side speakers, but just not sure which would be better on the back wall.

Next up, would there be any negative side effect of adding a piece of wood behind the speakers under the drywall? I am thinking while I have everything open I can add in some 2x6 cross pieces between the nearest studs so I have a nice solid area to put screws for mounting. I cant really see it being a problem, but I thought I should ask.

That is all I got for now, thanks in advance for any help!


Sean

Looking good!

If you're already using a pair of bi-poles on the side surrounds, definitely use bookshelf speakers for the rear! Thats a lot of sound being thrown around otherwise!

Not sure what purpose this piece of wood 'behind the speakers under the drywall' will do, but because its located there it definitely won't affect the speakers. Unless I am missing something...

 

[Rowdy S13]

Got it, and thanks for the reply. Everything behind the speakers (it will be different for some) will make a lot more sense with pictures. SO as I start doing all of that I will be sure to get good pics that show what I am doing and why.'

Sean

 

[Rowdy S13]

UPDATE TIME!!! I am finally starting to feel like I am getting close to closing everything off. Still quite a lot of work left to do, but made some good progress this weekend. On to the pics!

Well I stared out by figuring out that my original plan for the screen location wasn't going to work out. It was a situation where I had drawn up the best case scenario, and the discovered a problem. No big deal, just needed to come forward into the room a little bit. I put up 2x6" pieces between the joist on both sides. I have them spaced so the mounts will hit center which means I have plenty of movement all around if anything ever changes. In this pic you can also see that I started wrapping the duct work with some insulation, and also got the wires (5 CAT6, and HDMI) for the office run down the front wall. Last up you can see the new outlet box for the screen.

Better shot of the wiring snaking around everything

After that was done I put up some supports for the rear speakers and ran the wire through.

Surround back right

Surround back left

Next up I tackled the right side surround speaker location. As you know, this is the one that has been causing me some concern as it is going into the air return for my HVAC. Started by knocking a hole in the wall so I could see what I was working with.

I knew I wanted to do a 2x4 across two studs to have plenty of area to mount the speakers, so I stared with that. Then I basically just boxed it out with 2x3's. I built all of this outside of the wall so I could attach everything nice and secure. Then I put some silicone caulk on the back side and attached a piece of drywall so that it was sealed off from the duct. You can see I brought the speaker wire in from a different joist bay since I had already sealed up the one right above the speaker. Where the speaker wire comes into the return duct, and also into the box I built are sealed with silicone. I ran out, but I still need to run a bead on that right edge between the drywall and the stud. I will also run a bead on the face when I put up the drywall. I am sure it is WAY overkill, but now I have space for the terminals to go into the wall without compromising my return air.

After that, I went right to the same location on the left side wall. For some reason I expected this one to be easy! Turns out (as would make sense) that there is a big header over the window. Since I wanted the speaker to sit flat with no wire showing I decided to build out a box. Essentially its the same thing as the other side, juts not hidden completely hidden behind the drywall.

While I was over there I ran the HDMI and the CAT6 for the bar as well.

Then I added some blocking for the projector to mount to. Again, since I am not 100% sure where it is going to mount (and for some future coverage) I went with two 2x6's side by side at the center of the room.

Once that was done I was somehow able to get the wife to come down and help with the clean up! It was pretty bad, but with both of us working on it together it went pretty quick. Here are a couple shots after that was done.

I also grabbed a shot of the start of the power going into the bar.

And the new outlet box for the rear sub location

OK, that is all for now! Still a lot of work ahead, but getting VERY close to being able to put drywall back up!!! I think the plan is to finish the electrical, insulate, drywall. Once that is done I will hang the screen and projector. Then its bar top, the wood on the ledge, and flooring. I am also hoping to order up some equipment this week, not sure if I am getting subs first or a bunch of smaller things yet. It all needs to get ordered, but just not sure which I should do first. Thanks for following along as always!


Sean