Home Theater with a Cork Interior

[austinblackboxspace]

Hello folks,

Today, we just had a wonderful and very informative meeting with our builder to educate us on the advantages of using cork and hemp insulation for our remodel/annex project. We had an extensive tour of one of their experimental structures. ( see images) Suffice it to say we learned a lot! Very exciting stuff. The question of possibly using cork for also the interior or our small black box home theater came up. My wife and I thought it would be wonderful if we could make the cork interior surfaces black and completely non-reflective. We have not talked about this possibility with our HT dealer/designer yet. Any thoughts on that from this forum? Cheers.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Find someone who knows something about acoustics.

 

[ddude003]

An entire room of cork covered walls would be pretty dead... Your looking for a happy balance between live and dead... As @Kal Rubinson said "Find someone who knows something about acoustics."

http://arqen.com/bass-traps-101/placement-guide/ is always a good place to learn a little so you can talk with your "HT dealer/designer" with a little foreknowledge... Feel free to come back and ask more questions when your ready...

 

[austinblackboxspace]

Find someone who knows something about acoustics.

Yes, our next dealer acoustician and contracted builder meeting is in a few weeks and we'll be bringing it up. It was just something extra for this forum for any further outside experience/knowledge on the subject beforehand. I'm thinking since we want zero light reflection in the room, it probably won't work. cheers.

 

[Gerry Iaria]

Yes, our next dealer acoustician and contracted builder meeting is in a few weeks and we'll be bringing it up. It was just something extra for this forum for any further outside experience/knowledge on the subject beforehand. I'm thinking since we want zero light reflection in the room, it probably won't work. cheers.

it's been a while since this post, but how did you get on with your HT room? did you use much cork? and did it work the way you wanted??

 

[austinblackboxspace]

Hello Gerry, the HT space is a part of a new build annex that is on hold until our main home remodel is completed. Probably start breaking ground on the annex in two years. Our home is over 100 years old with very tight city codes to keep it historic so that is a lot more work for us. Also horrible interest rates at this time forced us to pay cash for everything... The good thing for us is costs for everything are still dropping and a new liberal granny flat code frees up more space for the project as a whole. The screen that will be wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling with auto masking will be a bit bigger now. Cheers. ||||K

 

[Gerry Iaria]

Hello Gerry, the HT space is a part of a new build annex that is on hold until our main home remodel is completed. Probably start breaking ground on the annex in two years. Our home is over 100 years old with very tight city codes to keep it historic so that is a lot more work for us. Also horrible interest rates at this time forced us to pay cash for everything... The good thing for us is costs for everything are still dropping and a new liberal granny flat code frees up more space for the project as a whole. The screen that will be wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling with auto masking will be a bit bigger now. Cheers. ||||K

I'm sure that will be amazing when finished, is the cork produced where you are? I live in Portugal, and it's the biggest producer of cork, cork trees here cannot be even trimmed without authorisation from the local government

 

[austinblackboxspace]

It is called Thermacork.
Here are a couple of links to that project I took early images of.
All-natural cork house and 14 others lay out the welcome mat for spring Austin homes tour
CROSS CABIN

Suffice it to say that for the most part, mostly the outside of the annex will have exposed cork, with a mixture of wood, iron, and steel since materials costs are still dropping. The completely black box of death screening room will not have any exposed cork. The only visible item in that space will be the wall-size screen. Hopefully, even the seating will be difficult to find. Cheers.