RE: Home Cinema basements?

["Nigel Giddings" <nigel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark,

I have a basement, and a house with no windows.... (well it has a few
windows now, but not enough yet!)

I can't say how well the basement works when you have all the other rooms
available to you but at the moment it's great... And I would definately do
another one if I were to build again (No plans for that though)...

My basement has three rooms:

1. Node 0
2. L Shaped room for Bar / Cinema / Party Room (Still under Construction)
3. Games room with 3/4 snooker table, air hockey, Full Size MAME console
and Dart - Board. It also houses the Boiler, Hot Water Thermal Store,
Central Vacuum and Water Softner.  (Still Under construction)

Big deciding factor is that Basement is not considered as 'Habitable' space
and therefore you are not restricted on size. Planning Permission usually
limits the size of the built form.

I also made the basement ceiling 2.8 Metres high giving 400mm void above a
normal 2.4 ceiling to run all those wires / cables / ducts and pipes needed
in a modern home. The basement void services the basement and Ground floor.
With the 1st floor served by the loft space.

Cost of building a basement is comparable per square foot to above ground.
What you save on windows gets used on higher spec walls and
waterproofing...

I personnally like the feel of a basement, especially this time of year. In
the summer of course you can't beat Sunlight...

I would think twice about a 'Study' in a basement, however a 'workshop' as
part of the Node 0 works for me.

HTH

Nigel

http://photos.corbenic.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: mark_harrison_uk2 [mailto:mph@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 04 November 2004 17:47
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] Home Cinema basements?




Hi all,

The "Mark Harrison long-term plan to self-build" gets a little
further. One of the key decisions we need to make is whether to have a
basement or not, since that influences site selection.

It's always struck me that a Home Cinema in a basement would work
fairly well, since it would be dark :-)

It's also struck me that the other rooms to have in the basement are:

- Laundry
- Node zero / network room / server room
- Storage room

So, two questions:

1: Do you have a basement home cinema? If so, has it actually worked
out well?

2: What other rooms do you have in a basement that have ended up useful.

What I'm trying to avoid is building rooms that never get used....

M.