Build moving to the basement from the garage - questions

[Leo Spaceman]

Hi everyone, I'm in the process of building a house and caught the build early enough to put 10' ceilings in the basement. Looking forward to getting my sim in place once the house is finished.

In the meantime, I'm starting to think about how best to use the space with the existing gear I have or whether it's worth upgrading some pieces.

I currently have:
Skytrak
CCE mat
Net Return Pro with screen and the Optoma EH200ST

Basically the rainorshine package that I got a couple years ago.

The space I'm planning to put this in is 11.5 feet wide but plenty of depth. The overall depth of that area is 30'. It's about 12' from that pole to about where the screen would be. I need to leave some room behind the net since a window is back there as well as the electrical panel.

Main question is about the width. I've taken my driver down there and can swing comfortably, but I'm fairly certain I'm going to have to set up the room off-center. Not a huge deal except that my youngest son is a lefty. He's young enough now that I don't think it's too big of an issue and that gap between the wall and the pole may give enough extra width to work. Longer term, who knows.

Any other concerns to watch out for with the width of the room?

Beyond that I definitely want to upgrade the mat. I was considering one of the Fiberbuilt mats, but then saw another build on here that just used the hitting strip and then surrounded the area with the grass carpet squares. Do those work well enough for a stance or is having the fully build Fiberbuilt mat better?

Finally the projector. With the Optoma it looks like it needs to be 5-6' from the screen. I'd love to ceiling mount it, but that seems like it would be in a potentially bad spot. I've got the setup to hang it off the net in my current build and my boys have dinged it a couple times already on mis-hit sky balls. Would a floor mount be a better option or go with a projector that could be ceiling mounted further back?

Thanks for the help.

[golfsimulatorsite]

leo

with 11.5 width, your ball will be around 84 inches from left and 54" from right. off center. give or take. if you do a floor mont projector it will mount approx 5-6 ft from screen. once you add the depth of the box and mat, you would be hitting 10-11 ft from screen. your current projector might work. Our ceiling mount projector would mount in the 10-12 ft from screen range. How deep do you want the sides/top? we can do a custom build to fit your space at no upcharge from stock. I would go with a 5 x 5 real feel mat that holds a real tee. check out golfsimulatorsite.com. We can get you a layout and some options. the good thing about the skytrak is you can move it from left to right to accomodate your son. If interested in some ideas. let me know
thx
chip
spectrum golf

[Treyc321]

I have similar dimensions and hitting off center isn’t too bad. Have someone monitor your swing where it is comfy and mark that location with tape (keeping in mind that should be the left edge of the mat for righties). For the projector my ceiling is 10’ and it’s pretty much flush and I don’t hit anywhere close to it. I would recommend ceiling mount so it’s out of the way (I have to gt1080 and it’s closer to 7 feet back…). I would assume it would get hit way more on the floor.

in terms of the mat, I love what I did. Just used stall mat + EVA foam + putting green turf. Then cut the fiberbuilt strip into that. Feels great and is pretty much flush. I hit ~8’ from the screen for reference.

[adilgolf]

what's on the opposite side ? (where you are standing when you took the photos).
It looks wider there, can you rotate your setup 180 deg ?

[Leo Spaceman]

Yeah, I was going to get one of the floor mount protectors if I went that way. $300 seems crazy for essentially a plastic and turf box but better than a shattered projector.

What's stall mat? The more I think about it something like that or the carpet squares with the hitting strip built in seems to be the way to go for looks and cost.

I have similar dimensions and hitting off center isn’t too bad. Have someone monitor your swing where it is comfy and mark that location with tape (keeping in mind that should be the left edge of the mat for righties). For the projector my ceiling is 10’ and it’s pretty much flush and I don’t hit anywhere close to it. I would recommend ceiling mount so it’s out of the way (I have to gt1080 and it’s closer to 7 feet back…). I would assume it would get hit way more on the floor.

in terms of the mat, I love what I did. Just used stall mat + EVA foam + putting green turf. Then cut the fiberbuilt strip into that. Feels great and is pretty much flush. I hit ~8’ from the screen for reference.

[Treyc321]

It’s a thick rubber mat that’s sometimes used in horse stalls. Here’s a link to what I used

https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/4-ft-x-6-ft-x-3-4-in-thick-rubber-stall-mat

[Leo Spaceman]

I don't think so. I took the picture from near the back wall where the rough in for a bathroom is. Even if I just didn't do the bathroom the width would be about the same with the pole in the way. Plus it would chop up the space.

The other side of the stairs is a similar space that's 15' wide that would be absolutely perfect, but my wife has nixed any idea of the sim over there since it's more of an entertaining area. If my lefty son really gets interested and we need to accommodate him better I'm already starting to plant the seeds of swapping the sim over to that area with some upgrades.

what's on the opposite side ? (where you are standing when you took the photos).
It looks wider there, can you rotate your setup 180 deg ?

[Leo Spaceman]

Thanks for the ideas. I've already got the Net Return Pro and screen so not looking to do anything new for an enclosure at least at this point. But sounds like I'll probably want the net offset as far against the right wall as I can so it'll be at least decently close to a center hit for the righties.

leo

with 11.5 width, your ball will be around 84 inches from left and 54" from right. off center. give or take. if you do a floor mont projector it will mount approx 5-6 ft from screen. once you add the depth of the box and mat, you would be hitting 10-11 ft from screen. your current projector might work. Our ceiling mount projector would mount in the 10-12 ft from screen range. How deep do you want the sides/top? we can do a custom build to fit your space at no upcharge from stock. I would go with a 5 x 5 real feel mat that holds a real tee. check out golfsimulatorsite.com. We can get you a layout and some options. the good thing about the skytrak is you can move it from left to right to accomodate your son. If interested in some ideas. let me know
thx
chip
spectrum golf

[AndersonRains]

I just finished mine today with 11.5’ width. Plenty of room for me to swing all of my clubs comfortably and stand just barely off-centered. I’m 5’9”

[golfsimulatorsite]

just keep in mind you need 84" from ball to wall behind you ( left wall ) to comfortable swing a club.

[Leo Spaceman]

So my project has evolved to a different area of the basement after some rethinking on our layout. I'm now looking at this spot which has opened up a lot of possibilities I think and removes the shortcomings of the narrowness of the previous space.

This "cutout" in the wall is 12'4" wide, about 4' deep, and it's 9' to the bottom of that steel beam. Still 10' ceiling behind the beam and in the hitting area.

Am I oversimplifying to think I could just hang a screen in this cutout and have a nearly ready to go enclosure? I could easily run conduit up both walls and across the ceiling. What size screen would fit to accommodate the bungies and provide enough tension?

I was then planning to repurpose the side nets from my Net Return Pro as extra side protection and either put up some Vant panels or curtains or some other method to cover up the screen frame and make it all look pretty.

The other thought we had would be to use this as a theatre area as well. I've been trying to read up on people doing both and it seems like there are trade-offs on the screens. I don't really want to have 2 separate screens and as long as the image is HD quality or better I'd be fine. I can live without it being 4K for TV or movies as golf will probably be the primary activity. But then that raises the whole other question on a projector, aspect ratio, etc.

[golfsimulatorsite]

Your space is almost a perfect 4:3 ratio at 12-4 ft x 9 ft. We have a simple screen frame that is 14" deep and is basically free standing. You could just slide it in that space. We can make it with 0-5 ft sides/top. An idea is to make it with a 3 ft top and then use the angled nets on the net return on the sides. You definitley want protection on the sides/top of the cutout. The screen is same size as frame ( so around 144 x 105 ). We have a premium poly spacer screen that has a great HD image and is layered for durability. can use for both theater and golf. Ours comes with back panel. Checkout

https://shop.virtual-golf-simulator.com/Golf-Screen-Frame-with-3-ft-sides-and-top-CHOOSE-SIZE-10081.htm

we can do bungee panels or velcro panels for a better look

If you want to go high end, checkout our proseries line

let me know what you think

thx

cChip

[Leo Spaceman]

So if it's 4:3 does that make it a problem for theater? I've been trying to navigate all these threads and it seemed like you'd want 16:9 for theater but 4:3 is pretty ideal for golf. Do you just use 16:9 on the projector for theater use and accept you wouldn't use the full screen on this setup? That's not the end of the world for me, but just trying to think of the next step and what projector would be best.

Your space is almost a perfect 4:3 ratio at 12-4 ft x 9 ft. We have a simple screen frame that is 14" deep and is basically free standing. You could just slide it in that space. We can make it with 0-5 ft sides/top. An idea is to make it with a 3 ft top and then use the angled nets on the net return on the sides. You definitley want protection on the sides/top of the cutout. The screen is same size as frame ( so around 144 x 105 ). We have a premium poly spacer screen that has a great HD image and is layered for durability. can use for both theater and golf. Ours comes with back panel. Checkout

https://shop.virtual-golf-simulator.com/Golf-Screen-Frame-with-3-ft-sides-and-top-CHOOSE-SIZE-10081.htm

we can do bungee panels or velcro panels for a better look

If you want to go high end, checkout our proseries line

let me know what you think

thx

cChip