Klineka's Garage Simulator Build Thread

[klineka]

I am will be using this thread to ask for advice as well as post my progress as I plan and eventually build a hitting bay in my new garage.

We are currently building a new house which has a 3 car garage, scheduled to be done at some point this summer, probably June or July. I have already gotten the approval from the wife to do a simulator/hitting bay in the garage, with the only caveat being that it can be easily moved out of the way so that we can still park both cars inside the 2 car garage.

Specs for the garage

• 2 car side - 22' deep, 20' wide
• 1 car side - 20' deep, 10.5' wide
• 12 ft ceilings except for the first ~6-7 ft of the 2 car side closest to the garage door, ceiling drops down to ~9ft 
• Open area between the two garages, metal pole wrapped in drywall between the two garages ~7ft in from the 2 car garage door
• Will be doing a jackshaft/wall mounted garage door opener so only overhead considerations will be the garage door rails.
• Ignore the outlet and light locations in the images below, those are just the standard ones, I have modified the locations and increased the quantity significantly of both the outlets and lights in the custom design phase of the build.

Specs for the setup

• Launch Monitor - Mevo+
• Hitting Mat - TBD
• Net/Impact Screen - TBD
• Projector/Tablet/Computer - TBD

As I've been thinking about this, I have two main possible configurations I've thought of, but certainly open to other configurations/layouts. I have already ruled out using the 1 car garage due to the limited width, the support pole being in the backswing, and the fact that I will be using that space for work benches, cabinets, lawn equipment, etc.

1. Hitting across the width of the two car towards the one car opening between the door and the pole. 
   • Doing it this way I would likely do some sort of curtain style system where the net/impact screen could slide along a rail attached to the ceiling, then when not in use I would bunch the net up and secure it to either the corner between the two garages or secure it to the support post to keep it out of the way of car doors and such. (Or I could do the motorized roll up screen in this layout/direction too)
2. Hitting towards the house/rear of the 2 car garage
   • Doing it this way I would probably do a motorized/roll up screen (Likely "The SportScreen" with an impact screen added onto it as many people have done already)
     • My main concern with the motorized screen and also this direction of hitting is how I would add a side net specifically on the right to catch shanks. In the curtain style system, I could have another curtain rail perpendicular to the main hitting net and just bunch it all together when I was done. Not sure how I'd do that with the motorized screen. 

One main thing I'm still undecided on is how wide I want the main net/impact screen to be. 

Regardless of which layout/configuration I choose, I will have an outlet in the ceiling so I'll be able to mount and power a projector, although I do envision this project happening in a multiple phases, so I will probably get the Mevo+ and net/screen set up first, then save up and add the projector a couple months later.

Attached are a couple images of what I'm thinking so far, the red box is the approximate Mevo+ location (likely as far back as possible), the green is the mat/hitting area, and the blue lines are the rough net locations.

I'm open to any ideas or suggestions anyone might have, I still have a couple months to figure this out so I'll be sure to update this thread as I dial in more of the official plan and design.

Edited February 3, 2022 by klineka

[iacas]

You may want a roof, too. There's a reason, too, that many enclosures are four sides: left, right, top, and impact area. 🙂

I'd not recommend scrunching it up like curtains. The image will be wavy and not look very good at all. They have roll-up screens now that do a great job, and you can always get the side net to roll up, too. Or I've seen people rig up a pulley system for that.

Where's the drywalled support pole in the diagrams?

I've seen some where you basically… do this:

If you're literally only ever going to care about righties hitting in there, you could just use one side and connect a triangular piece of netting corner to corner.

[klineka]

38 minutes ago, iacas said:

You may want a roof, too. There's a reason, too, that many enclosures are four sides: left, right, top, and impact area. 🙂

I'd not recommend scrunching it up like curtains. The image will be wavy and not look very good at all. They have roll-up screens now that do a great job, and you can always get the side net to roll up, too. Or I've seen people rig up a pulley system for that.

Thanks for the insight to not scrunch it up like curtains, I hadn't thought of the result that'd have on the screen. That option is out now.

Hadn't really given the roof much thought either with how high the ceilings are, I just figured I'd have the impact area net be full length floor to ceiling but I'll start thinking about a ceiling net too now. Is a roof really needed if the netting is 12 feet high?

38 minutes ago, iacas said:

Where's the drywalled support pole in the diagrams?

The drywalled support pole is there in red, about an 8 foot gap between the pole and the back wall of the 1 car garage, I was thinking at least 10 foot width for the screen (if not like 12-14 feet wide) and having it extend a little bit in either direction beyond that gap too if I went with that layout (which is the layout/hitting direction I am leaning towards)

 

I do like the idea that was used in those pictures you shared, that could definitely work along the rear wall, I could use the roll up screen idea back there and then have the foldable side panels in flush against the wall when not in use.

I don't know a single left-handed golfer so I think I could definitely get away with just the right side netting, but the cage style like you posted does look more complete.

I haven't come across roll-up side panels yet, just the roll up impact area/screens, so I'll have to keep looking for that. If I did find that, I wonder how that would connect to the front panel, I'd want something fairly secure so that the ball wouldn't fly out of the corner if it was hit into the corner where the two pieces meet.

I don't have any recent pictures, but next time I visit the build I'll take some pictures for reference since the concrete floor has been poured and the garage is fully framed now.

Edited February 3, 2022 by klineka

[iacas]

44 minutes ago, klineka said:

Hadn't really given the roof much thought either with how high the ceilings are, I just figured I'd have the impact area net be full length floor to ceiling but I'll start thinking about a ceiling net too now. Is a roof really needed if the netting is 12 feet high?

If a ball can be hit there, it will be hit there. Ever pop up a driver? I've seen some odd shots.

Speaking of which…

44 minutes ago, klineka said:

I haven't come across roll-up side panels yet, just the roll up impact area/screens, so I'll have to keep looking for that. If I did find that, I wonder how that would connect to the front panel, I'd want something fairly secure so that the ball wouldn't fly out of the corner if it was hit into the corner where the two pieces meet.

The one thing I'll say to that is that at least shanks don't have a high ball speed. You don't need quite as much protection there as you do for direct hits.

I'd email these folks and ask them:

Carl's Place - Best In Class Golf Simulators & Screens

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Pro or DIY, Carl's Place has the impact screens and enclosures to help build your indoor golf simulator. Let's hone your golf skills!

 

[dennyjones]

I'll echo what Erik said about a roof.   The athletic club near me has a 10x10x20 with a roof and the roof gets it fair share of use.

[vasaribm]

15 hours ago, klineka said:

I was thinking at least 10 foot width for the screen (if not like 12-14 feet wide)

Consider the output aspect ratio of the tablet or computer you will use to run the sim software.  4:3 I believe is commonly recommended for golf sims, so a 12ft x 9ft screen would scale nicely.  If you want 16:9 or 16:10 you can adjust the screen size accordingly.

[boogielicious]

This site has a section on builds.

Forums - Golf Simulator Forum

---

Golf Simulator Forums

Also, I just bought a Holy Grail Hitting Strip from these guys. The forum people really like it. The True Strike mats at Golf Evolution are good too, but I’m using mine outdoors and temperature may effect it. I am building up a hitting mat with the Holy grail and will let you know how it goes. I’ve had a Real Feel mat for a few years, but it is stiffer at impact and affected my left wrist.

Holy Grail Hitting Strip

---

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FOR PRE-SALE! EXPECTED TO SHIP MID MARCH. We designed our Holy Grail Hitting Strip to provide a realistic hitting surface, with real-world ball flights, while...

 

 

[iacas]

56 minutes ago, vasaribm said:

Consider the output aspect ratio of the tablet or computer you will use to run the sim software.  4:3 I believe is commonly recommended for golf sims, so a 12ft x 9ft screen would scale nicely.  If you want 16:9 or 16:10 you can adjust the screen size accordingly.

Note that the height is pre-fixed and if you go to 4:3 it chops off the sides.

You’ll probably want 5,000 lumen.

 And if you can get away with a regular not a short throw it’s going to save some cash.

Mess around here:

Projection Calculator Pro - Projector to Screen Distance

51 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

Also, I just bought a Holy Grail Hitting Strip from these guys. The forum people really like it. The True Strike mats at Golf Evolution are good too, but I’m using mine outdoors and temperature may effect it. I am building up a hitting mat with the Holy grail and will let you know how it goes. I’ve had a Real Feel mat for a few years, but it is stiffer at impact and affected my left wrist.

Yes. It’s just dense foam beneath the grass.

[klineka]

17 hours ago, dennyjones said:

I'll echo what Erik said about a roof.   The athletic club near me has a 10x10x20 with a roof and the roof gets it fair share of use.

Thanks for the insight, definitely will be doing some sort of roof now. I watched a couple videos last night where some guys mounted some foam acoustic panels on the ceiling to both act as a way to (slightly) reduce noise as well as provide protection for the ceiling. Strongly considering that option, I also have seen a few setups online where people use a thick fabric and made like baffles and use that as the roof too. 

3 hours ago, vasaribm said:

Consider the output aspect ratio of the tablet or computer you will use to run the sim software.  4:3 I believe is commonly recommended for golf sims, so a 12ft x 9ft screen would scale nicely.  If you want 16:9 or 16:10 you can adjust the screen size accordingly.

2 hours ago, iacas said:

Note that the height is pre-fixed and if you go to 4:3 it chops off the sides.

Now I'm a bit more confused. What do you mean by the height is pre-fixed? Meaning that the sim software/apps are designed for 16:9 aspect ratio even though something like the iPad has a 4:3 aspect ratio?

I think 16 feet wide will be too wide for the direction I want to hit, so to make sure I understand, if I got a 10 foot wide screen, I'd do a 4:3 aspect ratio and the projected height of the image would roughly be 7.7 ft, which would give me blank space (not black bars but just white space) on the impact screen above/below the image if my ceiling height was taller, say like 10+ feet?  If I wanted to keep it at 4:3 but go wider I could do 12 wide and 9 high? Then if I wanted to do 16:9 I'd either do 13 wide and 7.7 tall or 14 wide and 8 tall?

 

4 hours ago, boogielicious said:

This site has a section on builds.

Forums - Golf Simulator Forum

---

Golf Simulator Forums

Also, I just bought a Holy Grail Hitting Strip from these guys. The forum people really like it. The True Strike mats at Golf Evolution are good too, but I’m using mine outdoors and temperature may effect it. I am building up a hitting mat with the Holy grail and will let you know how it goes. I’ve had a Real Feel mat for a few years, but it is stiffer at impact and affected my left wrist.

Holy Grail Hitting Strip

---

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FOR PRE-SALE! EXPECTED TO SHIP MID MARCH. We designed our Holy Grail Hitting Strip to provide a realistic hitting surface, with real-world ball flights, while...

 

 

I came across Gungho Golf stuff too, let me know how you like their mat. I will probably just do a single like 4x5 mat or something to start with, I want it to be easy to set up and tear down for when I have limited time to practice.

[iacas]

13 minutes ago, klineka said:

Thanks for the insight, definitely will be doing some sort of roof now. I watched a couple videos last night where some guys mounted some foam acoustic panels on the ceiling to both act as a way to (slightly) reduce noise as well as provide protection for the ceiling. Strongly considering that option, I also have seen a few setups online where people use a thick fabric and made like baffles and use that as the roof too. 

Yeah, it doesn't have to be netting, and often those look better and you don't have to remove them, etc. Some even have detachable type "snaps" or "clips" for the back so you can take them down if needed.

14 minutes ago, klineka said:

Now I'm a bit more confused. What do you mean by the height is pre-fixed? Meaning that the sim software/apps are designed for 16:9 aspect ratio even though something like the iPad has a 4:3 aspect ratio?

No, the projector is. So if you can project a 9' tall image that's 16' wide at the normal HD 16:9 resolution and with the projector mounted at x distance, a 4x3 image will be 12' wide and the same 9' tall. It doesn't change the height.

So some projector math does the diagonal, like TVs. If it's 16' x 9', that's a 220" diagonal, but at 4x3 it's not going to be 220", it'll be 180".

So you put the projector at the distance where the HEIGHT is filled, and then it chops off the sides if you do a 4 x 3 image.

16 minutes ago, klineka said:

I think 16 feet wide will be too wide for the direction I want to hit, so to make sure I understand, if I got a 10 foot wide screen, I'd do a 4:3 aspect ratio and the projected height of the image would roughly be 7.7 ft, which would give me blank space (not black bars but just white space) on the impact screen above/below the image if my ceiling height was taller, say like 10+ feet?  If I wanted to keep it at 4:3 but go wider I could do 12 wide and 9 high? Then if I wanted to do 16:9 I'd either do 13 wide and 7.7 tall or 14 wide and 8 tall?

I'd try to make the biggest image you could, and thus, I'd try to fill it vertically as much as you could, and accommodate the width.

It depends on what hardware you're going to use to project it, too. An iPad will do it, but you're going to be a little limited on the aspect ratios. A PC could do anything, of course.

16 minutes ago, klineka said:

I came across Gungho Golf stuff too, let me know how you like their mat. I will probably just do a single like 4x5 mat or something to start with, I want it to be easy to set up and tear down for when I have limited time to practice.

And you may want to set your mat up so it's off-center, since you're a righty, so you're hitting from the middle. That way you'll have room to both sides for righties and lefties. And you won't have to do any "alignment shifting" which not all software packages do (i.e. putting your aim point to the right side of the projector).

[Denny Bang Bang]

To throw another option out there, NetReturn makes a simulator version and they don’t take up much space (about 3.5 ft depth, which may allow you to leave it up and still park a car).  On top of that, they’re lightweight and pretty easy to move around.  I think they have different sizes.  I don’t have the simulator version, but have been happy with the regular version.  I got the side barriers, and glad I did.

The Net Return Golf Simulator Series

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The Net Return introduces its new golf Simulator Series. Pushbutton Quick Color Connect Setup, Compact Design, Floating Textilene Screen and can be used with any Golf...

And with ceilings, I haven’t hit it yet but can definitely see it happening.  Instead of acoustic foam, maybe consider something a little denser.  Along the lines of a 1” gym mat that you can staple to the ceiling.

[iacas]

1 hour ago, Denny Bang Bang said:

To throw another option out there, NetReturn makes a simulator version and they don’t take up much space (about 3.5 ft depth, which may allow you to leave it up and still park a car).  On top of that, they’re lightweight and pretty easy to move around.  I think they have different sizes.  I don’t have the simulator version, but have been happy with the regular version.  I got the side barriers, and glad I did.

The largest one is 8'10" tall and 12' wide.

And costs $4k.

Simulator Series 12 – The Net Return

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The Net Return™ introduces its new 12' Wide Golf Simulator Series. The Simulator Series 12 has so many benefits including:  Super Easy Assembly with our Push Button Quick Color Connect System Wide Design (12'...

And barely has a roof, or much in the high corners.

[klineka]

2 hours ago, iacas said:

Yeah, it doesn't have to be netting, and often those look better and you don't have to remove them, etc. Some even have detachable type "snaps" or "clips" for the back so you can take them down if needed.

No, the projector is. So if you can project a 9' tall image that's 16' wide at the normal HD 16:9 resolution and with the projector mounted at x distance, a 4x3 image will be 12' wide and the same 9' tall. It doesn't change the height.

So some projector math does the diagonal, like TVs. If it's 16' x 9', that's a 220" diagonal, but at 4x3 it's not going to be 220", it'll be 180".

So you put the projector at the distance where the HEIGHT is filled, and then it chops off the sides if you do a 4 x 3 image.

Maybe I'm overthinking this since plenty of people have figured it out, but what does "chop off the sides" mean? If there was text or info displayed on the iPad/computer in like the upper left corner, would that end up appearing on the impact screen or no?

So say a particular retractable screen I'm looking at is 10x10 how do I determine the best aspect ratio and image height If I were to go with a 4:3 aspect ratio (which is supposed to be 12 feet of width based on a 9ft height) does that mean I will lose 1 foot on each side of the width? Like where does that width go? Would it shine out onto the side curtains, would I just lose the first X number of pixels that appear on the left and right of the monitor/iPad (thus making me lose like data points, score, name, etc), does the image that appears on the iPad/monitor just squish together to fit into the 10ft width, etc. For some reason I just can't seem to make sense the relationship between the iPad/computer resolution, the projector resolution, and the screen size. 

[iacas]

8 minutes ago, klineka said:

Maybe I'm overthinking this since plenty of people have figured it out, but what does "chop off the sides" mean?

It chops off the green. It doesn't use that resolution to make the image taller or anything like that.

So you need to, when picking and placing your projector, plan for the image height, not what you read as the projector diagonal as that gets decreased when you go to 4:3 from what's stated as the 16:9 diagonal.

10 minutes ago, klineka said:

So say a particular retractable screen I'm looking at is 10x10

Well you generally will want to stick with a standard aspect ratio, but… the most you could fill that is with a 4x3, so your image size would be 10' wide and 7.5' tall. You'd be better off doing a 13' x 10' screen, which would almost be filled (or have a tiny bit of spill if you went to 10' height).

10 minutes ago, klineka said:

So say a particular retractable screen I'm looking at is 10x10 how do I determine the best aspect ratio and image height If I were to go with a 4:3 aspect ratio (which is supposed to be 12 feet of width based on a 9ft height) does that mean I will lose 1 foot on each side of the width? Like where does that width go? Would it shine out onto the side curtains, would I just lose the first X number of pixels that appear on the left and right of the monitor/iPad (thus making me lose like data points, score, name, etc), does the image that appears on the iPad/monitor just squish together to fit into the 10ft width, etc. For some reason I just can't seem to make sense the relationship between the iPad/computer resolution, the projector resolution, and the screen size. 

It'd just spill out onto the net or whatever, yeah. But you don't want that. You want the largest image you can get, the brightest, and one which fills the screen without much spill.

[iacas]

 

[klineka]

17 hours ago, iacas said:

 

Very cool. Do you know who made that video or is it just a random video you found on YouTube? I like that the sides are retractable too, I wish he went into a little more detail in the video (or he didn't have comments turned off) regarding how he managed to have the sides and the impact screen use 1 motor together, I can't really figure out how that's possible because I thought the motor went inside the tube/roller. I have come across the METechs brand for motorized rollers in some of my initial research, but their site doesn't go into any detail regarding using 1 motor for multiple rollers, it's not any cheaper than the SmartScreen option and add my own impact screen to that and just have the sides be on curtain rails that slid out of the way and hung on the wall when not in use.

But if I was able to utilize one motor and control the sides and impact screen from METechs I'd definitely be interested.

 

Edit: Nevermind I found the post where he talks about it in more detail on GolfSimulator Forum. 

Finished my garage build and I'm EXTREMELY happy! - Golf Simulator Forum

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-Video link below- Just finished installing the following in the 3rd stall of my heated garage: Flightscope Mevo+ $1800 TGC 2019 $950 9'x11' screen from fabric@worldmarkettrading.com $270 6.5'x10' black photo backdrops for...

 

Edited February 8, 2022 by klineka

[Darkfrog]

I don't have anything useful to add, but I am following this thread. I have a 10x20' free standing garage, and once I have the foundation on the main house redone with a partial basement (hopefully this year), my plan is to convert the garage into a simulator space, also using a Mevo+, so I might be stealing some of these ideas.

[iacas]

1 hour ago, klineka said:

Edit: Nevermind I found the post where he talks about it in more detail on GolfSimulator Forum. 

Yep. 🙂