Erwin's House & Homecinema project

[G-Man]

Impressive with a capital I. Forget about using a turntable with sub power like that. Power should be measured using the Richter Scale. We'll be hearing over here in WA state.

[Erwin.BE]

Jul 23, 2012 10:42:00 GMT -5 Darksky said:

Beautiful work, Erwin. I wish I could walk the site with you. I would like nothing more than to bring my tool bags and spend a few weeks helping and learning from you. I am impressed with your envelope.

It is interesting to me to see the TJI used on end as framing members. It certainly gives you your space for insulation. I would imagine the simplicity of labor while framing them offsets the additional coet of the material.

It does not lok like you use much roll blocking. Do you get a lot of wind load? Here I have hurricane ties and straps everywhere...

With your weather is there any need for a environmental cooling system?

Are you on a water tap line or a well and septic? Have you considered grey water diversion? I did not do grey or rain water diversion and now wish that I had.

I enjoy your progress and pictures. I envy your theater.

-Bradley

Thanks for the encouraging words Even I learn every day, if I'd do it again, it would be better!

The TJI are superior to solid wood because the narrow "body" leaves more space for insulation and less wood means less thermal loss. Only downside is the odd shape makes it tough to fill using semi-rigid fiberglass, hence blown-in cellulose is the best way for insulation. Insulation has a great return on investment, so anyone building with less than optimal insulation thickness is a thief of his own wallet. Mind you, the cellulose is not as performant as polyurethane foam (PUR) for instance. In Flanders, 80-90% of house are made of double brick wall. If 2 layers of 3.6" PUR are used against the outside of the inner wall, this results in the same heat resistance as my 1' of cellulose. But I almost every time see houses built with only 1 layer of 2.4" thickness PUR (or styrofoam). Shame!

Luckily, European winds are nothing like what you get in USA... We never get 100 mph. Though the build could resist that.

All our sun-faced glass will have solar screens (from a Hunter Douglas local division). They're motorized and automatically steered: they go down if temp goes up and up if wind gets heavy. This should be enough to keep out most of the heat. Another benefit of the cellulose (in both walls and the very large flat roof) is that is very good against heat coming in. Good performance from insulation against cold from a material is not the same as insulation against heat! Fiberglass and rockwool are very weak heat resisters. Cellulose (and wood, which is also cellulose) is much better. It takes 12-15 hours before the heat gets through cellulose , by then the day is almost over. It takes only 4 hours for heat to pass fiberglass and RW. But the fastest way to heat up a building is via the sun hitting the glass, so we need screens...

There is a little bit of cooling capacity via the floor heating. This is powered by a thermal heat pump and it can reverse in the summer, pumping "heat" into the soil. We call this passive cooling. Our oustide Summer temp is very rarely above 30°C (86 fahrenheit). Winter never lower than -10°C (14 f). So all in all very moderate.

We will pump up water for drinking, bathing and cooking. We will use rainwater for toilets, dishwasher etc.

Cheers!

[The Mad Norseman]

Erwin, GREAT progress!
Be sure to put in a wood floor over/atop the sub-slab you've got for bass isolation, because a wood sleeper floor will give the bass WITHIN your theater good travel, while the concrete keeps it from other parts of the house.

As to the cellulose filled walls (instead of fiberglass batts), be sure you get good distribution, also this kind of insulation has a tendency to 'fall', or 'settle' over time, so some kind of internal wall bracing to keep it place (vertically I mean) would be a good investment.

Looking forward to your XPR-5 reports - once the beast arrives!

[Erwin.BE]

Jul 23, 2012 12:43:33 GMT -5 The Mad Norseman said:

Erwin, GREAT progress!
Be sure to put in a wood floor over/atop the sub-slab you've got for bass isolation, because a wood sleeper floor will give the bass WITHIN your theater good travel, while the concrete keeps it from other parts of the house.

As to the cellulose filled walls (instead of fiberglass batts), be sure you get good distribution, also this kind of insulation has a tendency to 'fall', or 'settle' over time, so some kind of internal wall bracing to keep it place (vertically I mean) would be a good investment.

We plan to use a oak floor, but very thin (8mm, 1/3") to let the floor heating pass through. I never thought about wood floor being good for bass. How is that and how thick does the wood needs to be?

BTW: here's an article by Ethan Winer about wood and other surfaces for floors in recording rooms.
www.realtraps.com/art_surfaces.htm

We in EU don't have the experience you Americans have with celullose. But the machine that does the work is finetuned to electronically apply the right filling pressure appropriate for the situation: vertical vs horizontal, thick vs thin wall, smooth vs rough surfaces... I actually did a 2-day course in Germany to use it a few years ago. So nothing should go wrong there.

[Darksky]

I use a geothermal heating and cooling system here, so I understand using the reverse cycle to cool the house.

I would like to see you divert some of your grey water into a garden, maybe growing shade to help cool in the summer or provide you with vegetables. You could do just the shower drain from your main bathroom. Another thing I have seen that struck me as interesting was diverting the shower drain to supply the toilets.

I watched a program on EarthShips (rammed earth homes built into leeward hillsides with the window bank facing south). They had the grey water diverted into a six foot wide trough that ran the length of the house buried just inside the windows. In that trough they grew the majority of their food.

They had massive water collection on site and used only rainwater. They also used solar / thermal to heat the water and augmented the thermal mass heating of the rammed earth with it. They wer fully off grid with solar and some wind. It was a little too rough for my tastes, but the technology was solid.

I wish solar would come down in price to where it was practical. I would like to have an inverter on my home with panels on the roof, but the cost is prohibitive. For me it is 15 years to reach the breakover and recoup the investment.

Are you going to use a light reflective roofing material? I like the idea of reflective (galvi) roofing raised of the decking with batten boards to allow heated air to rise out the ridge. That would help limit some of your summer gains.

I would love to see those window blinds. I am considering something along that line, maybe a little more rudimentary.- Stay in place aluminum slats angled to block the light on my upper widows in the summer late afternoons. I designed my eaves to do most of it, but I wanted my view unhampered. Now, I realize I can see the sky through the lower windows just fine.

To get the insulation in my home I used ICF (insulated concrete forms) from the basement all the way to the rafters- 2.5 stories.

My experience is very limited. I have built this house and only done other remodels and simple projects. Watching someone with your level of expertise work is exciting and educational.

Please continue to keep us informed.

-Brad

[The Mad Norseman]

Erwin typed:
"We plan to use a oak floor, but very thin (8mm, 1/3") to let the floor heating pass through. I never thought about wood floor being good for bass. How is that and how thick does the wood needs to be?"

Its a tip I learned from that book by Jim Smith that I posted up in reply #35 .
Its just that concrete won't carry the bass - especially if on grade. So a sleeper wood floor is best (and you can also run wiring under he floor then too!).
Maybe a bigger benefit is that the room will simply sound better, as one whole surface can resonate better instead of dull the sound. This is true even if a concrete slab is covered with a thick pad & carpeted. Better sound.

[Erwin.BE]

@ darksky:
We all got to draw the line somewhere... Mine is growing vegetables!

The government here subsidises the use of PV cells. Or rather: they make the other users pay for it... The cheaper those panels get, the lesser they pay. I believe it's about 8 years before the investment is returned, after which you got free electricity. We will decide when the house is finished. Maybe wait 5 years because after a house turns 5 years, VAT on jobs for that house is only 6%, rather than the normal 21%..

Reflective roof material (like white EPDM) is no good idea in our situation. The system actually needs the summer heat. it's complicated, but the vapor barrier at the inside of the roof is very much "closed" during the winter (hence preventing most of the moist to get into the roof), but more open during the summer (hence letting the moist that did got into the roof escape back into the interior). So the roof surface must be black and uncovered. Otherwise, we would have used an extensive green "carpet" (moss) on top.

vapor barrier:
www2.proclima.com/co/INT/en/intello.html

I once saw a documentary (Swiss if I recall correctly) where they did the opposite from what you did for walls: use polystyrene hollow "bricks" and then poor concrete in the gaps! Very effective.

The window blinds are actually roller "curtains" which disappear into the horizontal (ceiling) cladding. You can see through(-ish), they are used at the outside and should be over 90% effective.

www2.hunterdouglascontract.com/nl-BE/suncontrol/extBlinds/helioscreen/index.jsp

[Erwin.BE]

Jul 24, 2012 12:30:50 GMT -5 The Mad Norseman said:

Erwin typed:
"We plan to use a oak floor, but very thin (8mm, 1/3") to let the floor heating pass through. I never thought about wood floor being good for bass. How is that and how thick does the wood needs to be?"

Its a tip I learned from that book by Jim Smith that I posted up in reply #35 .
Its just that concrete won't carry the bass - especially if on grade. So a sleeper wood floor is best (and you can also run wiring under he floor then too!).
Maybe a bigger benefit is that the room will simply sound better, as one whole surface can resonate better instead of dull the sound. This is true even if a concrete slab is covered with a thick pad & carpeted. Better sound.

Mmm, Ethan Winer claims wood is too reflective, especially when glued to concrete. I am thinking about doing the whole central zone of the HT in thick carpet with a rubber subcarpet. The calculations I did showed that even with all the heavy curtains and all those soundtraps below the ceiling and behind the screen, reverberation time (T) = +/- 0.5 sec, which is very good for a normal livingroom, but still rather high for a HT. I saw recommendation of T = 0.3 sec somewhere. That could only be approached with a thick and roomwide carpet.

www.realtraps.com/art_surfaces.htm

[Erwin.BE]

Did some more research on acoustics. Found a (dutch) tool that calculated the reverberation time (T-60dB or the time a sound from a source/speaker takes before it becomes inaudible) but only a limited choice of materials was available.

home.deds.nl/~rhordijk/nagalm/nagalm.html#

The nice thing is that it takes a wide frequency band into account. Which is what you want for music.

Another great dutch pro article with an example room (concrete basement of 75 m3 or 2,700 cu ft) here:
www.soundscapes.nu/nagalm.htm

The author writes that the desired reverberation time depends on
a/ the purpose: a HT should be 0.2 sec less than a stereo listening room.
b/ the actual frequency: reverberation time for low frequency (below 250 Hz) can be up to 0.8 sec for stereo vs 0.6 for a HT. And for mid-high 0.5 for stereo vs 0.25/0.3 sec for HT.
c/ the size of the space: a bigger room will show a more even reverb pattern, hence for a 150 m3 (5,000 cu ft which is our HT) it could be 30% longer reverb time.

The author starts his calculations with the choice of the floor surface (for the said 75 m3 room). If a room-wide carpet is chosen, all the targeted absorption for the high frequencies is already full-filled. Which is a problem because you got none of the mid+low absorbers and when you add those, you end up with a dull room because too much of the high frequencies is damped! There are no floor surfaces that do well in taming mid frequencies. So, better to start with a reflective material such as wood or ceramic for the floor! He chooses laminate.

After this, he adds a bunch of bass traps (basically the whole front wall and most of the back wall). The ceiling gets a textile "Texaa". Then some panel absorbers and a carpet. This does the trick and the curve is now neatly within the chosen target parameters.

My own HT of course is bigger and only the structural floor is concrete. The tool of the former website shows (correct, I hope) that I do not need to have an absorbent floor. My basic idea is now honed to do it like this:
a/ floor: floating concrete (10 cm or 4"): good for bass absorption/isolation! Such a floor should be effective even to as low as 10 Hz... (will finish with hard wood)
b/ walls: use "light metal-stud" structure, completely independent from the building (except for the top attachment) and use double gypsum with Green Glue in between. Green Glue is supposed to be effective from 125 Hz and upwards.
c/ ceiling: use "light plagyp" structure, with acoustic hangers attached to the structural joists (TJI) and also with double gypsum with Green Glue. Fill the gap between TJI with fiberglass. These TJI are no less that 40 cm (13") in height, so that's a lot of "fiber" to play with!
d/ front wall: use all the gaps I got behind the AT screen to add fiberglass absorption.
e/ ceiling/listening zone: apply the Texaa textile at a height of 240 cm (8'), which is 0.5 feet below the gypsum and fill the plenum with fiberglass. This should do great with high and mid frequencies, especially with the filled plenum (it usually is applied with like 1" gap, we will have 6")
f/ ceiling surrounding listening zone: lowered to 8' with a suspended structure cladded with again double gypsum + Green Glue. The space is there to put the ducts etc, but can be filled with fiberglass. This comes to almost 2' of fiberglass, including that between the joists.
g/ floor of the space above HT: load with concrete (have to do some calculations for the weight but it seems awfully strong, it didn't move a hear when the contractor put down a pack of OSB on it)
h/ use heavy theater grade "ultra black" curtains to cover all that glass!

This all should result in a great room to enjoy music and movies!

[The Mad Norseman]

Jul 24, 2012 14:28:09 GMT -5 Erwin.BE said:

Jul 24, 2012 12:30:50 GMT -5 The Mad Norseman said:

Erwin typed:
"We plan to use a oak floor, but very thin (8mm, 1/3") to let the floor heating pass through. I never thought about wood floor being good for bass. How is that and how thick does the wood needs to be?"

Its a tip I learned from that book by Jim Smith that I posted up in reply #35 . Its just that concrete won't carry the bass - especially if on grade. So a sleeper wood floor is best (and you can also run wiring under he floor then too!). Maybe a bigger benefit is that the room will simply sound better, as one whole surface can resonate better instead of dull the sound. This is true even if a concrete slab is covered with a thick pad & carpeted. Better sound.

Mmm, Ethan Winer claims wood is too reflective, especially when glued to concrete. I am thinking about doing the whole central zone of the HT in thick carpet with a rubber subcarpet. The calculations I did showed that even with all the heavy curtains and all those soundtraps below the ceiling and behind the screen, reverberation time (T) = +/- 0.5 sec, which is very good for a normal livingroom, but still rather high for a HT. I saw recommendation of T = 0.3 sec somewhere. That could only be approached with a thick and roomwide carpet.

www.realtraps.com/art_surfaces.htm

Sorry it took so long to get back to answering this one!
But in Jim Smith's book "Get Better Sound", Tip #60, on page 66 reads as follows:

"If your listening room is on a concrete slab with wall-to-wall carpeting, before spending lots more money on new components, the chances are that you can transform the sound of your system for a modest investment.
I first discovered this phenomenon when making master concert recordings. When we recorded a concert in a venue with concrete or other artificial flooring, the sound of instruments took on a colder sound.
Those same musicians, when playing at a venue with a wooden surface made a wholly more musical sound. And they would comment on the live sound themselves. The difference is a slightly colder, less involving sound versus a warmer, more compelling sound.
All you need to do is put down some 2 x 4s on their sides and fire the nails that hold them in place into the concrete. Consider putting some insulation in the voids between the concrete and the bottom of the wooden floor that gets screwed to the 2 x 4s.
You want to keep the solidity of the foundational concrete surface, but change its timbre. The floor doesn't have to be exposed hardwood planks. It can be plywood sub flooring on which you reinstall your wall-to-wall carpeting.
Note: I've not found any preamp, amp, or cable that can make such a difference in tone!
Here is one caveat regarding wooden floors - if you already have a suspended wood floor. you may need to brace it from underneath. This is especially important if you can easily feel footsteps in the room.
If not supported firmly, the floor may act like a tympanic resonator, smearing the leading edge of notes and producing boomy bass. That's why I strongly suggest that the 2 x 4 floor supports on the concrete surface be only 12 inches apart to support the new wood floor solidly.
Listeners are always surprised to hear greater dynamic range when the wood floor is suspended/supported properly. Greater dynamic range and warmer tone will yield greater musical involvement."

That's it -makes good, believable sense to me!

[Erwin.BE]

Thanks for that! As it happens, I am looking into the possibilty to add a floating floor on top of the (also floating) concrete floor, but only to the (central) seating area.

Starting from the concrete foundation/garage/basement, it would be built like this:
*suspension (foamrubber, polymere)
*boards (OSB)
*12 cm thermal insulation (hard PUR)
*foil plastic
*10 cm concrete (supports the HT inner dry-walls)
*3mm foam
*15 mm OSB under floor
*8 mm oak hardwood (finished in black oil)

The surrounding parts would be finished in something more suitable to floor heating Glued, not suspended, maybe even metal plates, like steel. The central part does not get floor heating since we only need like 750 Watts to keep the space warm. (passive house standard)

It's just a thought, hard to find info on it.

[The Mad Norseman]

You're very welcome!

And what you're planning sounds like it should get you about 90% of the way there, so that 'seems like a go' to me!
Keep the updates and photos coming.

(By the way, have you tried out your new XPR-5 yet to make sure its working okay after such an obviously rough ride on its way over there from Tennessee?).

[richardrc]

Hi Erwin, thought you might like this house, except the owners passion is her car!!!

www.abc.net.au/tv/dreambuild/episodes/ep02.htm


Are you aiming for a passive house certification?

[Erwin.BE]

Aug 7, 2012 13:04:31 GMT -5 The Mad Norseman said:

You're very welcome!

And what you're planning sounds like it should get you about 90% of the way there, so that 'seems like a go' to me!
Keep the updates and photos coming.

(By the way, have you tried out your new XPR-5 yet to make sure its working okay after such an obviously rough ride on its way over there from Tennessee?).

Someone wrote to me that a foam would loose thickness in time hence the floating function would vanish. So I'm not there yet... I will let it sink for a while and pick up the thought later!

I tried the XPR-5 but got nothing out of it. Turned out the adapter I was using was having bad connection. Rocking it (much later) did click on the amp, so I will connect a heavy plug straight to the heavy Emo powercord. The amp seems fine. Although the cardboard got wet and desintegrated because of that, and the straps caused the styrofoam to break, I am confident nobody ever dropped the amp to the floor.

[Erwin.BE]

Aug 7, 2012 20:42:40 GMT -5 richardrc said:

Hi Erwin, thought you might like this house, except the owners passion is her car!!!

www.abc.net.au/tv/dreambuild/episodes/ep02.htm


Are you aiming for a passive house certification?

The clip is only avalable from within Australia... But the one photo shows a nice shape...

I was aiming for a passive house certif, because at the time of design, this would have resulted in paying no taxes on the house for the first 10 years (saving about 10,000 euros in total). But the economic crisis made the gouvernment do some cuts... I might still go for it, I never had my standards lowered on the execution, so it's possible. One thing possibly bothersome is the fact I made the window frames myself, instead of using certified passive frames. And I cannot afford to do scientific tests if simple calculations are not accepted....

The better triple glass is today only 0.5 W/m2 and not 0.6 W/m2 which was the standard when I designed in 2009 (only 0.4 with Kripton gas inside, but that is simply to expensive). If I tell you the windows are responsible for 75% of the heat loss of my design (since there's so much of it: 120 m2) then you know gaining 0.1 W/m2 means 120*0.1=12 W profit for each degree celcius difference between inside and out. That's rougly 400 Watts per hour on an average winter day/night... Just from 3 years of manufacturing progress!

[Erwin.BE]

Aug 7, 2012 20:42:40 GMT -5 richardrc said:

Hi Erwin, thought you might like this house, except the owners passion is her car!!!

www.abc.net.au/tv/dreambuild/episodes/ep02.htm


Are you aiming for a passive house certification?

The clip is only avalable from within Australia... But the one photo shows a nice shape...

I was aiming for a passive house certif, because at the time of design, this would have resulted in paying no taxes on the house for the first 10 years (saving about 10,000 euros in total). But the economic crisis made the gouvernment do some cuts... I might still go for it, I never had my standards lowered on the execution, so it's possible. One thing possibly bothersome is the fact I made the window frames myself, instead of using certified passive frames. And I cannot afford to do scientific tests if simple calculations are not accepted....

The better triple glass is today only 0.5 W/m2 and not 0.6 W/m2 which was the standard when I designed in 2009 (only 0.4 with Kripton gas inside, but that is simply to expensive). If I tell you the windows are responsible for 75% of the heat loss of my design (since there's so much of it: 120 m2) then you know gaining 0.1 W/m2 means 120*0.1=12 W profit for each degree celcius difference between inside and out. That's rougly 400 Watts per hour on an average winter day/night... Just from 3 years of manufacturing progress!

[Erwin.BE]

Connecting a pro grade Belgian powerplug to the Emotiva cable.

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[Erwin.BE]

The finished thing compared to a standard Belgian powercord+plug. The fact the Emo cable is suitable for 110V means it's double the thickness needed for our 230V! We're good!

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[Erwin.BE]

XPR-5 in action feeded by an iPod touch with lossless files ALAC and AIFF) via Pure i20 dock and XDA-1 with XLR

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[Erwin.BE]

Testing-grade connections

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