Thought I would start my game room thread early in the planning stages. I'll start with some CAD 3D images with a concept that I chose and will continue to add details to it. I need to plan for moving walls, electrical, plumbing, lighting, display cases, storage spaces, etc.. So, to kick it off, I currently have 5 pinball machines, English Mark Darts, pool table, foosball, air hockey (might get ride of that), ping pong. Future plans include adding a multi-cade, and of course another pinball likely. For the bar, I want it big enough as most of my family and friends like to sit "at the bar" for socializing. I have to remove walls for that area. Multiple TVs are a necessity for multiple sports on at the same time. There are a few other walls that I have to remove/move as well. I want a "football hall of fame" for my football paraphernalia as you approach the bar from the stairs. The fireplace is already there and need to work around it, but make it a good focal point too. In these images, the bar stools are larger than I will likely get and pulled out a bit as if everyone was already sitting at them. It is a little better than 4 foot wide between the bar and the angled wall (that I would have to move). I might make the bar a little smaller, but not much. I used to be a bartender and my wife was a waitress at the same bar/restaurant where we met ... 30 years ago. The bar is an important piece to us, so a small little bar just wont cut it. Coolers, sink, maybe a mini glass washer and ice maker too.

Obviously I can move "stuff" around. The initial real planning is walls, electrical and plumbing with "stuff" configured in a fun atmosphere. I'll update this on rare occasions to show the slow progress, as I likely wont start on it all until next fall. I have until then to polish my plans with the details ... but here are some basic concepts with it being actually dimensionally correct. These are not the final color choices or such ... just my starting point.

This is going to be a big do it yourself makeover project! It will take a few years before it is totally completed.

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When I got the software (2 years ago), I only had 1 pinball machine and the air hockey was going to go in where the pinball area is. I may have to shrink the bar in that direction about a foot to give it a little more room. I'll have to measure that out. Right now the pins are in another room, but I want them visible from the bar area ... watching inexperienced pinball player's body language and expressions playing pinball is entertainment in itself. I'm thinking of another alternative plan to take out the one closet near where I have the foosball and put a few pins there ... but they wont all fit on that wall. That might be a "change at the last minute" idea if I add more than 1 additional pin to my collection in the meantime. I need storage space though too - wife mandated. I might look into some warehouse shelving units for my pole barn to shift some storage "stuff" out there as a compromise.

I will have speakers ... just don't know yet if they will be mounted in the ceiling or hung on the walls. They sell lights with speakers in them ... those might be ok for sports on TV, but likely not for music.

Thanks for the input.

Air hockey is a space hog and not too popular with my adult kids. It was cool at first, but my family lost interest in it. I'll keep it temporarily in an adjoining room. Once the remodel is completed, if friends and family don't play it much, I'll get rid of it. I've seen others post that air hockey lost interest real quick with them too. That's why I'm leaning that direction. Guessing that pinball and the multi-cade will attract the most interest with foosball as a runner up ... we will see. Foosball is big on one side of my family, but they don't have pinball at their houses.

Thanks for the input.
1. I had my 1st pinball machine there and it wasn't too bad. That cove area is pretty deep so the player might be standing even with the front face of the fireplace wall. It is a good concern that I also share. I might have to put the darts in there if I move the pool table elsewhere. This was the best arrangement I came up with, but can always punt and just put all the pool table sticks/rack in that little cove (out of the way), and put the arcade game over on the wall by the foostable. That's where the darts will likely go too ... the darts machine was not in the CAD game room library, so I'll have to come up with something for that.
2. The software forces there to be a lip sticking out over the hearth. In real life, it is just a squared off tomb of brick in front of the raised fireplace. It would be toes getting stubbed over shins.
3. Good frivolous idea. I thought about having the option for one of the TVs at the bar be able to be switched to be like those live streaming broadcasts with the multiple views. I like that. That would be good if my friends turn into pinball geeks like me.

Yes it is a basement that was previously half finished off. I'll be tearing out 90% of what previous owners did with walls and such and rebuilding. I already finished off one basement room where we added on a addition to the house, and that is where the pins, foosball, and some couches are now - out of the way for the remodel of the rest of the basement, but still usable in the long process.

Almost a full day before I got that. Well ... don't tell my wife if you see her at one of the shows or expos , but a backup plan for that is there if my marriage eventually allows for it. I'm currently using an adjacent room as my "temporary" game room that is about 18' x 20'. That will accommodate 12-14 pins with still having closet access. So, "technically" I "could" still have 18-20 pins with room to spare if I worked it right. Honestly, I don't think I would ever get that many, but the bar size would not stop that.

Good idea. I do plan on putting a TV on the wall between the pins and the arcade game (I'll add that to the CAD file), but a small monitor above the pins aint a bad idea.

The one wall in my "temporary" game room not accounted for in my plans ... yet ... hehe.

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Thanks! We wanted a variety of game play style in the lineup. The pin I play may depend on how much time I have to kill. My wife wants to play Aerosmith at the Ohio show to see if that is "her" next pin. I want to see what JJP has in line after Dialed In first. There's a few in my wish list that I'm keeping one eye on. My wife has been playing Hobbit for the last hour trying to beat my #8 high score to get on the board. Glad she is a pinhead too.

Funny ... speaking of it, she just came up jumping around and smiling/laughing that she got #7 high score. Gotta love it!

I thought about this some more ... if it is a smaller monitor, us "older" people would not easily be able to read the tiny score of a game at the bottom of the screen easily from 10 feet away for quick glances. I'm thinking of tying this particular monitor into a live stats webpage that shows the score and stats. In football, some stats pages show the play progression down the field graphically too. That might be better for this purpose. Even if I find a place for a 27 or 32 inch monitor on the side, this might be better for the quick looks.

There is a Budweiser red flashing light WiFi gadget that lights and makes a sound when your team scores. I might eventually get that. I think it only works for hockey, but that's the most important update attention getter for that sport. I could even set that so that the red light sync goes off just before the goal shown on TV (due to broadcast delays). They need something like that for football too.
http://www.budredlights.com/

I hear you and can relate. Those that are following that don't care to read about HVAC stuff, skip my next two loooong posts. I'll try to make a real long story short.

About 20 years ago I was having Superbowl parties in this basement. The first year I had a fire in the fireplace downstairs with about 20 people at the party. I had to open the basement windows because it got real warm. No more fires with big parties.

About 15 years ago we put a large addition on the back of our house and the contractor said that we needed another furnace because our house would heat too unevenly. Coupled that with having 2 fireplaces upstairs (one in the new addition). Another bad thing is in the winter, if the sun was out the bedrooms facing South would get warm, but the rest of the house cold. Cloudy days the opposite. When I had a fire in the front room fireplace near the house thermostat, the other rooms would get real cold. I tried playing with duct dampers, but the balance would keep changing from day-to-day. Getting back to the contractor, I told him to just make long runs to my still over-sized inefficient furnace and I would figure something out. Blah, blah, blah ... research ... blah, blah, blah

What I landed up doing is I put in a zoned HVAC system. I have 13 zones - pretty much each room in the house has it's own zone except for the bathrooms. The basement has 4 zones. There is one master control panel and thermostats in each zone. Each zone is programmable like a normal thermostat - 4 events/temps per day, individual 7 day schedules. I installed it and wired it myself, with dampers in just about every round duct run. Another couple years later, I had a contractor install a new efficient (smaller) furnace that has two stages of heat. With the zoning controller I can program how many zones need to call for heat/cool and how many zones trigger the second stage to kick in. I have it so that 3 zones triggers the first stage and 5 zones triggers the second stage. The second stage usually only kicks in on extreme hot or cold days.

In the end this saved 60% of my gas usage in the winter and about 40% on my electrical bill on the hottest days of the year. All rooms are heated/cooled on a schedule that keeps us comfortable. If there is a fire in one of the fireplaces, the rest of the house is still comfortable. At night, the heating/cooling is basically only on in the bedrooms and the rest of the house is turned way down.

This is a long story to tell you that for the basement, I likely wont have the fireplace going for large parties. If it still gets hot, I can turn on the HVAC fan to specific zones manually to circulate the air. If it gets extreme, I could have AC programmed for downstairs and heat programmed for upstairs - it has a hot/cold timeshare mode. I've never done that, but it is possible. After I say all that ... I would probably just open the vents in the basement glass block windows.

I do plan on insulating my renovated basement outside walls, as it is usually just my family playing down there 4-6 days a week for the last 8 months or so with all of our newly acquired pins. We are down there a lot more often now.

Attached are photos of the HVAC zoning controller and one of the motorized duct dampers. The plus is that I have a CCTV power panel for the damper power. I have extra power circuits that I could use for cameras over the pins. [Lightbulb in my head turns on.]

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Next I'll talk about Humidity. I bought and installed a whole house dehumidifier that is yet on a different kind of zone system. There is a dual mode/zone for this system. I have it monitor and adjust the humidity in the basement. The 10" round duct eventually splits down to seven 4" round dampered vents spread throughout the basement. This pretty evenly and consistently keeps the basement humidity at or below 60%. The humidity level is adjustable, but I keep it there.

There is another mode/zone for that. When the HVAC system kicks on, and if the dehumidifier has not worked with the HVAC system in the last 30 minutes, the dehumidifier system will open a damper and monitor/adjust whatever HVAC zone is active. This year the winter in Michigan has been really damp and a lot more rain than snow, so I have kept that system active for the entire house. If we have a real cold winter, I deactivate that dehumidifier mode and turn on the regular HVAC humidifier.

On hot summer days, we do not need to drop the temperature as much because the humidity is lower in the house. Sometimes in the spring, when the upstairs is hot and the downstairs is still cool, I'll just turn on the HVAC fans in specific downstairs and upstairs zones to circulate the natural cool basement air upstairs and save "some" energy. The dehumidifier would still dehumidify the house without the AC on.

Anyway ... another long way of saying that I have the humidity levels in the basement covered too. Attached is a pic of that whole house dehumidifier. We can now resume game room discussion. Sorry if I went off on a tangent, but I think this HVAC system is pretty cool. Then again, I am a Mechanical Engineer.

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I'm always interested in ideas and have been glued to these home game room threads for ideas while still in the final planning stages.

Ha. Hi grumpy! I'm still going through that one and modding it out. It's my current mod project pin. Just changed all the rubber and swapped out all the LEDs with brighter frosted ones. I got LED flasher bulbs instead of the 89 incandescent ... hope they work as is (TBD). Modfather everything, Hooked Apron, MikeD LCD, pinbit lightning bolts, ColorDMD, Cliffys ... and more.

Still keeping an eye out for a Fire! (that I would likely beg you for help on) or maybe a NASCAR too. POTC is on my radar, but waiting to see if JJP will do a newer POTC [rumors] or a Harry Potter.

[Grumpy is a great resource for system 11 help at minimum. He helped me major league with my F14 to hit it out of the park.]

That's another option that I would not have to move more walls for, but probably would have to hire someone to move it. Right now it is the wife friendly layout as there "may" just be 1 or 2 more pins to be added that she's limiting my count on ... until she sees another pin she wants a few years down the line. She's starting to get that pin hunt bug.

I thought about this one. Your way is fine and cool if you only have a couple of games. What I might do on non-sporting event party days is use one of the monitors at my bar or near the pins (the monitor talked about for checking game scores real quick at a glance) is display a Excel pivot table of game name, player name, player game initials, high score, pin software version, "my variation version", date, maybe one or two other things. With the pivot table, I could just filter the display info for the people at my event and/or just the current version of the pin software, etc. I think the software version would be important to the true pinheads, as different software versions would be a variation that could effect high score. Some pinheads are real competitive about that. The "my variation version" for me would be different settings on the pin that effects scores. Sometimes on new pins we start out at 5 balls per game to learn the game and see the modes, then switch it back to 3 balls per game a few months later. It could also be timed game high scores for JJP pindemption games, or tournament setting/button scores for Stern games. If it were to get too big of a table with all of the variations, I would put all the info into a Access Database and just let them filter the data however they want it from a remote laptop. A good topic to think about and play with ideas on.

More planning ... I'm working on an idea with my nephew-in-law (not sure the real terminology for that) to add some lighted and 3D effects to my future bar top. I want a real unique idea. I'm not sure if I want to go with the whole "Hell" kind of theme with flames and such, or make it more sports oriented. My nephew-in-law does custom painting mostly on vehicles and can make images appear and disappear in 3D as you walk by or as lighting changes. He can do something like what is in this video on my bar with just paints and lighting or use this same Lumilor paint method in the video (he did not do this one). He has made 3D skull images appear on fenders and bike gas tanks with painting effects before. Just starting to float ideas about it back and forth with him. If I do it, I can just power it down for when it is not appropriate for the occasion. Gonna try to keep it "upscale" though for if I ever sell the house before I die ... or at least make the painted images possible to remove from under the bar top.

https://www.facebook.com/thebikerbrotherhood/videos/1162334207216702/

I shrunk the bar by a foot or so to give 6+ feet between the pins and the pool table, about 4.5-5 foot away from the bar stools pulled out a bit. I now have a little more than 5 foot width for the walkway (without the bar stools) between the bar and the angled wall. I video'd a 30 second walk through to show some of the spacing better. I still have to modify the closets more, but getting there with concepts.

In 6 months to a year I'll inquire with you what the best equipment is for that ... keep in mind there will be 6 pins so I'll probably just setup the top 3 or 4 pins played so the costs don't get too ridiculous.

They do have silhouettes of people (ghosty looking people), but no normal looking people. And they don't move. That library costs $3.99 ... I'll get that incorporated this weekend. Why not?

I got a lightning deal on Amazon for it for around $40. It was the 2014 version of Home Designer Suite from Chief Architect. I see that now the 2017 version is about $100. If you put it on your Amazon wish list, sometimes they give you better deals, especially if you can catch it on a lightning deal.
https://smile.amazon.com/Chief-Architect-Home-Designer-Suite/dp/B01CCBEUGE/ref=sr_1_1
I did not spend anything extra for the libraries of 3D objects I have. But there are tons that you can download - some for free and some for a nominal fee. The "core catalogs" of objects includes quite a few of electrical outlets, switches and such. I'll be adding those to my walls soon ... right after I finalize my new wall locations for my closets.

The software has tutorials online that help you to figure out how to do stuff. There is a forum that helped me figure out how to do my custom shaped bar top - a low soffit only 2 inches high. It's not that hard once you figure it out. If you know a CAD software, this will be easy and likely "primitive" to you. I drew my upstairs too. It seemed easier to just go one level down from there for the basement.

If you dot all the i's and cross all of the t's, you can get a bill of material out of it. I probably wont take it that far.

Sorry if I babbled here, but it's pretty cool software and was worth it to me to plan ahead and figure everything out.

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Pinball - drinks ... pincups from Modfather. No eating food "while" playing pinball. ??? (sounds like a good rule)
Pool - food & drinks ... I have a small pub table that I need to find a location for, and/or I also have those billiard chairs that hold your cue stick and a drink. Those might go against the wall. With over 5 feet of space between the pool table and the wall, the chair backs could be against the walls in the table diagonal corners and should not be a problem (TBD).

The pool table is 3 piece slate, so it can come apart to be moved. If a few people were strong enough to lift it intact, it would indeed fit between the bar and the wall with the bar stools removed. Someone would probably still need to come out to smooth the slate seams with beeswax (or whatever they use) as those would likely be disturbed.

Thanks everyone for the questions and comments. It does make me think about it in different ways. That's good for conceptual plans.

I'm so happy that I FINALLY figured out how to add my translites to the pinball machines. The blue one is a future one TBD. Adding more details.

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Good points. Where the pool table is now (where the pins are in this new plan) I need a short stick for a corner shot. In the current plan, I have 5 foot + on all sides from walls. Noise reduction is another very good point. I'll have to think a bit on that one ... especially since I have a sub connected to 4 of my pins ... might get a second sub to split when/if I get my 6th pin. My "temporary game room" is looking better for the pins all the time and the noise factor puts another + on that ... but not a good setup for spectators and only one circuit in that room ... too late to add more circuits easily. I'll make a "Plan B" arrangement for that, but the new walls in the new area would not change for that. I would just put something else there. More to ponder ... good stuff though.

Popcorn is my wife's favorite junk food snack. She has hinted that she wants one "some day". Thanks for the recommended brand name. Maybe a Christmas present one year. But ... butter on fingers ... pinball buttons ... Argh!

When we go to the Ohio show in a month, we are going to stop about 25 miles away and look at a new real nice 10,000 in 1 two player multicade with supposedly a great sound system. Looks good online. Might be bringing one back with us if it matches our interest level and impresses us.
https://vimeo.com/146194654