Hi! Thanks for any answers in advance, should anyone be able to help me out.

I'm in a 2500 square foot house (excluding our finished basement.) Half of our basement is finished while the other half (which houses our furnace) is in the process. Our hope is to turn it into a theater of sorts, however our furnace poses concern. Whenever the unit is on, we cannot hear our system, television, or ourselves thinking. In the summer it wasn't an issue but winter is approaching quickly, and the unit will be running almost always.

My question is, can we build a room around it? An insulated closet or the like. Or is this breaking serious building codes. Or, does anyone else have any suggestions? I know very little about such matters and figured wrapping it in blankets to deafen sound was probably unsafe, figured here would be a good place to turn. :)

Random info, if it'll help : The furnace is oil, 20 or so years old, and supposedly running great (else we would have replaced it by now.)