Starting a 5-6 month Golf Sim / Home Theater Build

[Keith]

I've been enjoying lurking and learning on this forum. Now I'm getting ready to actually design and build a cinema/golf-sim room over my garage. Here's the current draft based on info from this forum and other home cinema forums:

• 25x15 room with 10 ft ceiling.
• 16x9 movie screen on back wall
• Retractable impact screen 6-12 inches in front of the movie screen (is that enough? I do NOT want to damage the movie screen)
• Touch screen for golf computer control
• Ceiling-mounted heavy curtains to protect the side and rear walls (see attachment):
  • For movies, they will stay on the side walls to minimize acoustic bounce interference.
  • For golf, they will cover the side walls completely and curve either behind the screen or in front of the screen: Curving in front of the screen is simpler, but curving behind the screen would provide additional protection to the movie screen. Comments/suggestions would be very much appreciated.
• The golf mat centerline will be ~ 8ft from the the impact screen and ~6 ft in front of the closest theater seats.
• I haven't figured out how to best protect the ceiling (suggestions?)

[Keith]

I bought my retractable screen from GungHo Golf. It has a aluminum bar at the bottom of the screen that keeps it tight and in place. However, they warn that you need to put protection at the bottom to avoid tearing the screen if you hit one directly on the seam between the weight and screen. They suggested triangular light-weight foam from Home Depot but it started to shred very quickly.

So I decided to glue a bunch of denser foam together onto a 1x6x12' plank and wrapped the whole thing with black felt. A lot more labor but it seems to have solved that problem. I hinged it so it'll be easier to pack away when I'm using the media center for something other than golf.

[Keith]

Brettster, I can't remember where I got that specific foam but I've recently bought some from Amazon that feels about the same density. https://amzn.to/3ZmHX9I.

fyi, this current design is also flawed. It's a good foam but since it uses a flat surface rather an shallow angle like the gutter foam, the ball comes straight back at an uncomfortable rate of speed. I'm taking it apart and cutting the foam with an 30-45 degree angle later this week. I'll let you know how it goes.

[Keith]

Brettster : I found the link for the first set of foam. It is advertised as white but all I saw was green foam in the store.

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Tenex-24-in-x-72-in-White-Foam-Sheet-Multipurpose-Flooring/1002893038

[Brettster]

Thank you Keith

[Keith]

To protect the canned lighting close to the impact screen, I used cheap round cooking grills in addition to the golf netting.

[Keith]

My grandson aiming for the center of the lake

[TBTooBad]

Great looking build. I have a similar sized room that I am eventually hoping to install something close to this. Love the dual functionality of home theater and golf sim.

What seats are you using there? When I did a rough calculation on space needed for two rows of recliners in my 25’ long room it started to get pretty close to the golf mat.

I think you mentioned the impact screen is 1.5’ from the front wall, then mat is 8’ from that leaving roughly another 15’ for a buffer space to the seats and two rows.

How much space do you have between the back wall and each row of seats. And how much space between the mat and the first row?

[Keith]

There's no way to be 8-9' back with a seat right behind your backswing. So my ~30" aisle is in the center. I offset my mat a little to the right so a driver doesn't get close to the seats (but certainly nobody sits in the recliners right next to the aisle).
------------------------------------------------
From my post on a different site (https://www.avsforum.com/forums/dedi...nstruction.19/)

"The room is 14'x26'x10' (W/L/H). The movie screen portion of the front wall extends out ~5" to allow for the in-wall L/C/R speakers. Subwoofers are recessed to help protect them from the golf simulator. Distance from movie screen to front of the first row of Octane Flash chairs is 16' with the chairs in the upright position. Retractable golf impact screen is ~18" in front of the movie screen. I plan to mount a combination of netting and vant panels for ceiling protection.

Walkway in the back row is 3' with the chairs in an upright position. When everything is reclined, guests will still have about 9" legroom to squeeze over to reach the two end chairs (but I expect the folks in the back row will just bring their chairs upright to make it easier to get by). I am offsetting the gel portion of the TrueStrike golf mat about 9" from the center of the room. This is to provide enough room for my backswing. I had hoped to make it centered so we could also handle lefties, but the pillars and sconces were too close for comfort. The tee will be ~ 8.5' from the impact screen."

[Keith]

I like the True Strike mat a lot but there are a two relatively minor issues I didn't anticipate (I think I have solutions for both). The issues are:

1. Using the mat arranged as shown below, my feet are in position 1, the Gel mat is in position 3, and the mat with a built-in tee holder is in position 4, This lets me use irons easily on the gel mat and use the tee holder in position 4 when using a driver.. But this puts the back of my feet very close to the back edge of mat 1. Tall golfers with a long driver would have trouble.
   I could rotate Mat4 180 degrees to put the tee holder further away but that would limit the amount of space on the gel mat visible to the active area of the Uneekor golf simulator sensor on the ceiling.
2. The Uneekor tees slip into the Tee Holder easily but they have barbs on the end that hold the tee in tightly. So the tees are very easily shattered and very difficult to remove. I've used regular tees in the holder instead but since they don't react like a tee in turf, they also break quite often.

My plan is to:

• Switch the Mats in position 3 & 4. This will put the Gel mat as far away as possible from the back edge. (please excuse the clumsy graphic). And don't use regular tees...use BirTee flexible plastic holders instead (I'm currently using these instead of the tee holder and they work great). You can set them on the gel mat, giving you plenty of space to use a long driver. And they are incredibly sturdy.
  
  
  
  I'll probably try this alternative later this month. I'm having too much fun to do it right now. ⛳

[Brettster]

Keith - maybe these will help, don't know, I've found these tees to be very durable:

https://tinyurl.com/Maxfli-Perform-LowResist-Tees

Especially when used in the yellow rubber tee holders:

https://tinyurl.com/Proactive-G-Tee-2Pack

The Uneekor tees slip into the Tee Holder easily but they have barbs on the end that hold the tee in tightly. So the tees are very easily shattered and very difficult to remove. I've used regular tees in the holder instead but since they don't react like a tee in turf, they also break quite often

[Keith]

Finished my last acoustic panel.
The universe is once again in balance......John Wick is in the house!

[Keith]

Build protection for the bottom of the golf impact screen
1st attempt failed because it just wasn't dense enough.

2nd attempt stood up to the golf balls but having a flat front just doesn't slow down the ball enough so it comes right back at you way too fast.




3rd attempt looks like a winner. 15 degree foam ramp deflects any low balls into the impact screen

[Keith]

I finished the last of my 11 acoustic panels for our media room. Acoustic panels absorb and diffuse sound waves bouncing around the room, keeping the audio clean. And this is one way of building them. (If you don't like Benny Hill, just mute the sound)

[Keith]

Here's the updated link to my build. Thanks for all of the help!

[Keith]

Whoops....let's try that again.

https://vimeo.com/876233363?share=copy

[longhorn84]

What did you end up doing on the projector set up? Same for both screens?

[Keith]

What did you end up doing on the projector set up? Same for both screens?

Sorry....I haven't been on the forum lately.
I used separate projectors for the golf and video. Details, photos, and video are in my AVSforum post:

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/theater-golf-simulator-is-finally-started.3234860/page-1#post-62077753