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Over the last 2 years I have been planning for our new house build and including a golf sim room. I have spent countless hours on various forums reading about work works / what doesn’t work and much of that info was very helpful to me in my project. So I thought I would share a quick summary of my build and what I did so I hope it can help others who are doing a golf sim.
This was a new build so I had complete flex to design the room dimensions as needed (within reason…).
First key decision – room height. My ground floor is 9’ but I had my architect drop the golf room floor by 1’ so I could have a 10’ ceiling in the room which is more than enough. We actually ended up at about 9’8” as we had some water table issues that stopped us from getting to 10’. Room width is 15’ and length is 18’. Concrete floor with in-floor radiant heating.
Second key decision – DIY or use a golf sim provider. I spent lots of time talking to groups who do this work. In the end, I decided to have my contractor who was building the house do the install work. I sourced the materials and designed the room and he just implemented the plan. This takes some research regarding design, materials and equipment but it worked well. I enjoyed the time planning this.
Design decisions required up front include:
Turf and hitting mat:
Wall protection:
2nd Monitor
Resources used:
Lessons learned:
This was a new build so I had complete flex to design the room dimensions as needed (within reason…).
First key decision – room height. My ground floor is 9’ but I had my architect drop the golf room floor by 1’ so I could have a 10’ ceiling in the room which is more than enough. We actually ended up at about 9’8” as we had some water table issues that stopped us from getting to 10’. Room width is 15’ and length is 18’. Concrete floor with in-floor radiant heating.
Second key decision – DIY or use a golf sim provider. I spent lots of time talking to groups who do this work. In the end, I decided to have my contractor who was building the house do the install work. I sourced the materials and designed the room and he just implemented the plan. This takes some research regarding design, materials and equipment but it worked well. I enjoyed the time planning this.
Design decisions required up front include:
- Determine where you are going to mount your projector and what projector you are going to get. Every professional firm I talked to told me to mount at the back of the room…but this can create shadows based on angles when I did the math…so I decided to mount the projector ABOVE the hitting area. Your golf swing will NOT hit the projector. I am very happy with my decision and I have no shadow issues.
- Run conduits to the floor that allows for both power and CAT6 connections. Also run conduits to the side of the room if you are going to have a second display monitor. Run HDMI to this location.
- Run conduits to the projector location for HDMI and install power outlet in the ceiling
- Putting holes – do you want them? I decided to include three holes in my build. Since I have concrete floors, we needed to put spacers in the floor before we poured the concrete.
- Single use room or multi- use...I decided to add a mini work out space in the back of the room for a Peloton and other equipment. I installed a rubber floor in the back 1/3 of the room to allow for this.
Turf and hitting mat:
- I went with NP55 putting turf from STI for the room, other than the hitting strip. It works great.
- Hitting turf… I looked at Fiberbuilt and Country Club Elite and I decided to with the country club elite strip mat (20”x36”). The CCE strip was 1.75” deep so I had to build up the area around the hitting strip with plywood so I could get the hitting strip flush with the putting turf.
- Mounted the center hitting area to be 9’ from the screen. This is enough space to prevent bounce back.
- This set up worked great, until the body told me things weren’t working great. It turns out the CCE strip was causing some joint pain issues in my elbow as I was using the sim A LOT.
- So, I ordered a Fiberbuilt 9’x4’ dual hitting mat. MUCH better on the joints. This is a personal decision as many use the CCE with no issues. But for me, it was causing problems.
- Interesting sidenote: spin numbers are quite different from CCE to fiberbuilt…
Wall protection:
- There is no general consensus on this. People are all over the map – curtains, custom pads, netting etc.
- Its important to remember that you only need the protection to stop your walls from looking like crap from ball marks. You DON’T need fancy pads that kill the ball. And why do I say that? Because any errant shot is going to bounce off the wall and hit the impact screen which WILL kill the speed.
- So, I installed Vant panels which are basically decorative in nature that have some minor padding in them. They stop ball marks and do the job great. And you can buy them on sale all the time and you can decide how much space you want to cover.
- These are easy to install – two tracks are mounted on each column and you click the individual panel into place. Check out their web site to see how it works. They look great and are reasonable in price.
- Again, similar to wall protection. Lots of different solutions being used.
- I went with baffles that work fine.
- These were installed by double sided Velcro attaching the baffle to the drywall.
- I could have likely used vant panels in the ceiling as well but I have 3 pot lights in the front of the room by the screen which I need to protect so I went with the baffles.
- So far, the baffles have not been hit. I am 8 months into this now.
- Looked at Carls and par2pro who each do custom screen sizes.
- Went with par2pro SQ-W custom screen. It works great.
- The first screen I recd had water marks on it so par2pro had it replaced at no cost right away. Good service from them.
- Mounting was simple – we installed 1” angle iron 12” from the front of the room on the side walls and ceiling. The screen attaches via grommet holes to the angle iron with bungies
- Par2pro also supplied me with padding for the sides and top of the screen to cover the mounting and frame the screen to what ever format you want (16:9, 16:10 etc)
- I really only looked at GC Quad. Added on the club data but did not buy the putting data.
- Ball and club data are fantastic. Very accurate. If you can have that in the budget, do it.
- I also purchased e6 connect that integrates with foresight. To be honest, I don’t think this was the best idea as the courses are ok but the launch monitor data and integration isn’t great. Yes course graphics are better than the foresight courses but the integration and club/ball data isn’t as good IMO.
- And, there are some known issues with putting uphill on e6 that you can find on various forums.
- In hindsight, I would have save the cash I spent on e6 connect and used that to buy foresight courses. Just my opinion…
- FSX Pro is a great program for practicing. Its free with FSX2020 license.
- Dell G5 desktop. 16 gigs ram and RTX2070 graphics card.
- More than enough horsepower.
- Computer is located in my AV closet so I bought a Logitech wireless keyboard/trackpad combo that works great.
- You need to decide what aspect ratio and where you are mounting.
- I wanted 16:9 so I could put other video sources on the screen when not using the sim.
- I went with the Optoma GT1090HDR
- I didn’t do 4k as many things I read said the lumens wasn’t strong enough unless you pad big $$. So its 1080p resolution and it works fine.
- I used a low profile chief mount which is great and provides good flex in mounting options.
- One thing to know about this projector is that it did NOT have a zoom feature…which means the mounting location is critical to get right as you have limited flex to zoom in or out to fit the screen frame.
2nd Monitor
- Touch screen or not…I spent lots of time thinking about the need for a touch screen monitor – lots of mixed views on this based on my research.
- I decided to just install a 60” TV that I had.
- Works great, can watch TV on this if I want to mix the video feeds around.
- No need for touch screen – see the wireless keyboard/track pad solution from above.
- I think the larger screen size outweighs any benefits of touch screen (if there are any)
Resources used:
- Spent time on the phone with Foresight team who were helpful in conceptual planning. They will also design and install the room if you want them to. I chose the DIY option but talk to them.
- For projector location and selection, go to projectorcentral – it has the calculations for where you need to mount the projector you selected.
- Par2pro was also very helpful with design and technical questions. I purchased the launch monitor, screen, CCE strip and ceiling baffles from them.
- Some good postings on mygolfspy and this forum
Lessons learned:
- Its not the hard to DIY, just plan and check your layout multiple times
- E6 connect wasn’t a good investment, stick with foresight courses
- Hitting mat is better with Fiberbuilt – costs more but better for me.
- GCQuad is great. You learn a lot about your swing and your numbers.
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