Installing a hung ceiling in a full basement. What do you do with the A/C ducts that run down the middle of the room. I’m thinking of boxing them in. Then sheetrock the box. The height from floor to bottom of ducts is about 7′ 6″. What do you do about the main beam. I’m thinking of sheetrocking it. Any suggestions, comments.
thanks.
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I'm doing that exact thing right now, Sheet rock on the ducts dropped everywhere else. One Thing I considered, not knowing too much about your project.....I was thinking of doing the boxes with poplar G1S plywood, so if access was ever needed into the ducts it wouldn't be hard to do. The other thing I thought of was just to cover it and photograph what is in it, so in the event of problems, you would know where to dig. You really shouldn't need to get in there but you never know.
I build ladder bars and frame around then drywall all of it.
I usually talk clients into drywalling the entire ceiling too, so long as there are not too many valves that we need access to. (drywall ends up with too many access holes in it and doesnt look clean)
People argue they want access, so i put in drop ceiling, but it then looks like a basement or costs a fortune for nice drop ceiling.
There is not much more in a basement ceiling than a 1st floor ceiling and I never see drop ceilings there.
When I did the basement ceiling in the last house, I spent the money to buy nice looking ceiling tiles and was very happy with the look. Around the ductwork I boxed it in with drywall which looked good when finished. When I did another room in the basement I decided to do it differently around the ducts, which ended up being much simpler and I was very happy with the results.
What i did in the second room was dropped ceiling again, but as i got next to the ductwork I screwed a 2x2 to the bottom of the floor joists running parallel to the ductwork. I then screwed a piece of drywall to the side of the 2x2 so that it was hanging down with the bottom edge just slightly lower than the lowest section of the ductwork I was hiding. I then attached the same "L" bracket that was used around the perimeter of the room for the ceiling tile, so that it would support a ceiling tile under the ductwork. I did the same thing on the other side of the duct... and hung the normal ceiling support wire between the ducts if I needed to span more than one ceiling tile wide. The result was a very uniform look to the ceiling, and far less work than boxing in the whole thing in drywall.
"nice looking ceiling tiles"?do you know the name/manufacturer? all the ones i see look kind of.....well.....basement-ish.thanks
I will look up the name and manuf. of the ones I used and post it.
Hang the whole ceiling at 7' 5."
Or are they planning on having Yao Ming over to watch videos?
Only mutants would be able to tell the difference.
Edited 2/21/2008 9:31 am ET by peteshlagor
If you don't want to use dw at your drop areas you can use the same grid and panels to box in around those them. Just drop the tee bars down and use wall angle to turn the corners at the bottom. Vertical panels are held in with butterfly clips that snap over the tee bars.
We do this al the time in commercial work. It keeps everything consistent.
Remember to read the instructions for the grid/tile combination you select. Some require as little as 3" or more than 4" clearence to ket the tiles laid in.
In my basement, I didn't want to build a ladder out of 2x stock, so I built boxes of OSB and laminated them with drywall. Then I realized I'd wasted a step, because my OSB could have been MDF! I could have just painted the MDF and skipped the drywall. I've had opportunities since then to use MDF bulkheads.
Sure, MDF is heavy, but it holds fasteners for drop ceiling L-angle, doesn't need corner bead applied (useful for long stretches), and you can even use biscuits to align sections greater than 8'. You can put a nice round-over on it too, for a less severe corner that's not as huge as round corner bead.
Works for me. MDF, by the way, is dimensionally stable, so it takes joint compound just fine. You don't need finish carpentry techniques to make a paint-grade box.
Edited 2/21/2008 11:01 pm ET by Biff_Loman
Thanks for all your inputs. I'm going to give the clients all the options. See what he thinks. I'll probably lean towards boxing in the A/C and drop ceiling the rest. I can't drop ceiling the whole basement at 7'5", because of the main beams. They are at 6'10".
thanks
You could make the boxes out of steel stud. The lengths are long and always straight. Narrower stock is available if you look around.
If you want to go the extra mile and do something extraordinary, how about a fiber optic ceiling?
http://http://www.pegasusassociates.com/FiberOpticStarCeiling.html
Gord