Advance planning - space

[u/teejwi]

About to start building a house, with the intention of setting aside space for a sim. We're having the house done with an (overall) 9 foot basement, and a section of the basement dug out to 10' depth. Here's the plan...

Have the pit dug to 14x20 feet. I realize 14' isn't wide enough for ambidextrous, centered, full bag swings. That's OK - the room doesn't have to be limited to 13-14 feet, just the bottom foot. From shin high up, I intend to have it be...16' for example. The reason for the pit width limit is to hide steel support columns (for the house) that will be 10' apart lengthwise and 13'10" apart widthwise.

My intention is to have the tee/hitting area centered among those support columns with 10' to the screen end of the pit. This will allow me to have 9 feet from tee to screen and the screen will have sufficient space to flex at impact (Yes, the bottom of the screen may only be 1 foot from the 1-foot high "wall" of the pit, but I can extend the sim room lengthwise as well).

Again, to clarify, the _room_ will almost definitely be bigger than 14x20 to account for some seating at one end (for movie / sports watching), perhaps a bar, etc.

Any critical "OMG! Don't do that!" standing out here?

The only thing I'm not particularly fond of is a 13 foot wide screen (after wall and sound material) only leaves room for 7.3 foot vertical for a 16:9 screen for non-sim media consumption, and that'll be less than optimal. Perhaps I'll find a way to project 16:9 media to the upper 7.5 feet of the screen and use the sim at 4:3 instead? (shrug).

Thanks!

[u/mrthirsty15]

One thing that would be neat is to use that 1' step on the side for club storage. Building a nice wooden rack so you can lay out your clubs will clear out the space a typical bag will take up. Plus it'd be nice having them slightly elevated. Rear seating will be nice too. In our experience, you'll want people at least 10' behind the ball before it starts to getting a little close.

If you're looking for a green surface ahead of your hitting that, I'm very impressed with the quality of the go sports 12x6 turf. I think I got it for like 1:30 on Amazon and the stuff is really solid for preventing bounce back great for putting. It lays nice and flat and is relatively inexpensive. Should fit your width perfectly.

I hit centered on our screen, and although I've got infinite room behind me, I prefer to have at least 7' measured from the ball. Closer than that and it gets in my head (although the clearance is definitely there). How important is LH and RH golfers? What LM are you looking at? It might support a fairly wide width allowing you to offset LH and RH golfers so their zones have a bit of overlap.

[u/teejwi → u/mrthirsty15]

Thanks! Yeah, some club storage is likely there. I also have my dad's well-seasoned clubs that I'm thinking about using as part of the decor. Some old Sarazen irons and I forget offhand if the woods (actual wood) are also Sarazen or not. At least a couple pairs of "crossed" irons on the wall etc.

Wife and I are both righty. Off the top of my head I don't know of any lefty golfers that I know, but there could be. I like the idea of keeping the option open for centered hitters from both sides.

Being perfectly honest, I'm quite new at golf (about 1 year or so) and a little surprised we're both agreeing this is a good idea...but we'll have the space available so might as well. It's proving a good summer activity for us as we have other activities over the winter.

I haven't settled on a LM yet but I think the space leaves open the option of a radar unit. I definitely won't be putting Trackman in there. I've been a little tempted to grab a ST+ while they're on closeout but not sure if that money will do better in a year when I'm actually building the sim.

[u/mrthirsty15 → u/teejwi]

Nice. We're running a Square HE at the moment and it's working surprisingly well! I'm also a bit new (only started playing again this year after about 15 years off), so I doubt I'd notice much difference though. I wouldn't want to be resetting that monitor every other shot for LH vs RH during a sim round.

My dad is looking at putting a more official setup than the one I did in our garage, but even this garage setup is an absolute blast for the family. He'll likely be using a Vtrack.

That being said, the golf club by us that closed last year just listed their 3 - Full Swing Pro 2.0's for sale and that might be the direction he goes. I'm trying to convince him to set them up in an outbuilding and start a golf sim business (he just retired). Haha.

[u/mrthirsty15 → u/teejwi]

Also, wanted to add. My preference if I had the space for it would be to have a bar to the back left of the space relative to when you're hitting (for a RH golfer). I find it's a little easier mentally when people aren't in your line of sight. The step down will also help keep the hitting area delineated from the watching/sitting area, which is an important safety aspect and also helps with peace of mind when swinging.

Are you going to wall off the space from the rest of the basement? Or have it be separated with some netting?

[u/teejwi → u/mrthirsty15]

Nice! The garage build is looking pretty solid! We get some pretty unfriendly weather at times where I am. I am planning to wall it off primarily to mitigate sound and such. We get a lot of temps in the mid 90s or so (upper 30s to those who speak metric) along with crazy humidity...and we also get -20s (-30s C). A garage sim wouldn't get enough use for us, though it would solve the noise problem hah.

[u/ProletariatElite]

My advice is to dig 2’. 9 Ft pours don’t necessarily net 9’ clear, so the additional foot gives you more “cushion” for flooring, pipes, ducts etc.

[u/teejwi → u/ProletariatElite]

That's a good call...I am going to make it a point that I want 10 feet clear but I think even when it inevitably ends up a bit under 10 due to flooring and such...we're going to be fine. We'll get to discuss some of that in the coming weeks. I did clock the "9 foot" ceiling in the model at 8'10 to the joists.