This is my favourite thread on pinside, been waiting a while to contribute to this thread.

Not finished, construction started September last year:

Approximately 160m^2 (1750 sq ft), the layout is wrong, but its the most up to date I have.

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This is where it is at currently, main gameroom and batcave - the batcave took inspiration from pmwolf's build and will hold the majority of my machines, 14m (46ft) long, 4.5m (15ft) wide:

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There is a build thread over at Aussie Arcade starting with the plans back in 2011. Tonnes of photos there.

Temp setup for a newspaper shoot in part of the gamesroom. Games are fresh out of storage and aren't levelled. Gamesroom not completed. The two rooms will eventually hold 51 pins.

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This room isn't my pin room - its the gamesroom attached to the pinball room. I just had to set up some games for an article they were doing on the resurgence of pinball. The row of Sterns will stay, everything else will go in the other room. A lounge + TV will go in this room, plus a couple of driving sims, my Hercules, some dedicated arcade cabs, and a poker table.

This is the room where the majority of the pins go 46ft long, 15ft wide - the entrance to this room is from the one in the previous photos:

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Its the basement of my pool house, which I extended so that it would connect back to my house. So the pinball room (batcave) at the far end has a lift shaft (with a lift eventually) which goes into my billiard room in my house.

In effect the Batcave is a tunnel, it is almost 2ft underground. Its like a bomb shelter with pins. Kind of like pmwolf's setup only mine goes between two buildings.

This is the pool house, and the batcave sits under this lawn:

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The back side of the pool house, showing the basement underneath:

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The gamesroom with the pool windows down the end (those two rectangle windows look into the pool):

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The camera overexposes it, this is more how it looks from in the room:

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Looking from the far end of the batcave into the gamesroom gives you an idea of how long it is:

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Entrance to the batcave from the main room + the toilet and shower:

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Gamesroom looking back toward the batcave entrance:

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There is a full build thread over at Aussie Arcade if you want to see more. Couldn't be bothered upkeeping 2 build threads which is why there isn't one here.

Pool windows are perspex, not likely to break, just crack. The Batcave did have several leaks due to a fault in construction, all fixed now. The whole outside of it was covered in a membrane however the membrane was pierced in about 10 spots (all really close together). Those got patched and it doesn't leak now.

Why not?

I wanted a space that didn't offend my wife, and was still attached to my house but would not be somewhere she'd be bothered about entering. In the US for most guys this is usually a basement. In Australia it is generally a shed. I was doing a large renovation project at my house and this ticked a lot of boxes. Aesthetics came into play as well, the fact that you can't see it from the house is a big win.

From the house, yes.

Thanks - still a work in progress but I'll update when the lighting is in.

I used weather proof 24v LED strips in my shadow line and use repeaters with a wall mounted controller to sync the whole lot - it wasn't cheap but the effect is cool. The only issue is where the shadow line is directly over 4 pins, these machines are unplayable with the LEDs on.

I'll put up a photo when it gets dark.

I stuck this in another thread, but here is the batcave with a bunch of games setup in it - still very much a work in progress. Still a bunch of stuff that is unfinished including the floor:

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Not even close. One of the largest collectors in the world lives in QLD (approx 2500 machines - not a typo).

It is nice to have some of my games setup permanently though so thanks!

Heres one of my early mocks using sketchup. I think most people doing a gamesroom do some sort of mockup.

Edit - can't get the image to load from phone, will post it later.

Here is those mocks I was talking about before - all done in sketchup several years back. The layout is totally different now, but whatever.

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I've got a shadowline ceiling in part of my gamesroom (with white ceiling and walls) and the leds are concealed in there. You wouldn't think it but it lights up the whole room. I agonised about how much light I was going to get from it, but in the end it didn't matter, and shadow lines are far more concealed than a cove with LEDs pointing at the ceiling.

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If you’ve got a white ceiling and you’re using RGB LEDs you’re going to struggle as the ceiling acts as a reflector. I took inspiration from www.avsforum.com because this sort of thing is done in home theatres a lot more than games rooms.

Because LEDs act as a point source of light, on a white ceiling in a dark room you get reflections of the LEDs in the ceiling itself - hard to describe but it doesn't look good (you don't get a solid colour wash, it more looks like individual streams of light). However, now that you've mentioned that the room will be lit, you just need a dimmer to adjust the brightness to find what suits.

As for cove/soffit placement and concealed LED lighting, you're very unlikely to get an accurate answer here. If you go to avsforums every second home theatre has concealed LED lighting using either a cove or a soffit, and the community there is 100x the size of here, so it has been done thousands of times.

That is the more important factor. The effect I was talking about is more prominent the closer they are to the surface they are to reflect off. You can buy smoked diffusers to stop the issue.

These ones are for recessed strips, like in a shadow line, also they're in Australia, but it gives you some idea of what is available to reduce the effect even if you don't want to run a cove.

http://www.sunnylighting.com.au/led-strips/channels-accessories/slt6000/product-detail.aspx

Or like this, wall mounted up or down lighting:

https://www.ledlighting.com.au/led-strip-profiles-led-p019/

45 degree mount:

https://www.ledlighting.com.au/led-strip-profiles-led-p007/

Anyway, getting away from your original question but there are lots of things that are traditionally used in home theatres that could be used in home arcades to great effect.

To get the thread back on track - just a nice shot I took the other night showing part of my shed setup for a meet.

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Australians tend to call any outbuilding to the house a shed, especially if the building is metal (the vast majority are). In this case its probably closer to a workshop or warehouse being brick.

I'm in planning to do a very similar thing. Thanks for the post - looks great. Is that exterior wood or metal?

Awesome setup. Like in any hobby there will always be naysayers for whatever reason. You do you. I like what you've done, the black lotus is the icing on the cake.