Yet another fogger advice thread.

[cromag]

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OK so I'm looking at purchasing a fogger of my own this year. Last year I just borrowed two from friends.

I bought two of the 400W models from Party City on sale yesterday for $24 per. I thought it was a good deal till I opened one and tried it in my garage. It didnt blow long and took a while between cycles. Worst of all when it did work the smoke was vey transparent and not thick at all. It was pretty crappy in general. I realize that part of this is the generic fog juice that party city sells.
Both of these machines are going back tomorrow.

So I bought some of the froggys Backwood Bay juice today and now I need some advice.

I've read some posts here and I'm trying to decide between a party city 1000Watt machine or buying a Chauvet Hurricane 1100 for almost twice the price.

What I want to know is am I going to get that much more bang for an extra $40 bucks? Keep in mind I'll be using good fluid in whichever unit I buy.

This is going to be for my outdoor fake fire effect that I did last year.

Thanks for reading.

[cromag]

I'd just like to thank everyone for the overwhelming response.

[untillater]

You really think being a jerk about it is going to increase your odds of someone helping you out?

1) you are asking something very specific about 2 specific models which would require you to be extremely lucky that someone happened to have both to be able to critique them well
2) you didnt even wait an hour for a response
3) you should spend a little time reading through the fog machine threads, opinions vary far and wide on the subject, search is your friend, in the upper right hand corner...

[cromag]

untillater,

1. Both the foggers I mentioned are pretty common models. Party city sells thousands of these every year and the Chauvet Hurricane seems like a pretty popular semi-pro model according to the threads and the internet.

2. Read the dates I posted. I actually waited 6 days for a response, not an hour.

3. I'm well aware of how to search through forums and have done so extensively on this forum and others concerning fog machines.
I was just throwing this question out there and hadn't checked back in a while and was surprised that no one responded. Post #2 is harmless sarcasm and I think you should lighten up just a tad.

[untillater]

I stand corrected on the time stamp. the rest still holds. And if you want to argue about how common they are..... why does this even need its own thread then?

lighten up a little, well you could be right there also, but then on the same token, you might want to as well.

any-who.. you have my apology on the time stamp error, i failed to look at the date and just looked at the time.

[cromag]

Thanks for the apology.

Accepted. Happy Halloween.

[bfrd22]

As a user of the cheap 1000 watt fogger, and as a seller of professional smoke machines. I can tell you there is a world of difference. You want a fogger that will pump out a ton of fog or smoke $60 to $150 isnt going to do it.
I have my cheap little fogger set to 10 second intervals with a 30 second break between. Seems to keep up.
You want constant fog your going to spend
$500 on a machine and the "juice" used in the fire service is $70 a gallon.

[Crunch]

I don't know a whole lot about foggers. I have one myself, I bought last year and this year will be the real test (with a timer this year). Although, it worked fine last year, for a Walmart 400W fogger. I was actually happy with IT itself, and not so happy with our cold Canadian Prairie climate. However, I consider myself a fairly novice knife collector, and although I haven't bought any "cheap" knives, at the advice of a good friend and long-time collector. He advised to not get cheap junk cause (in the knife world) they break. He said "You get what you pay for." Even thought I've had no experience with either of the foggers in question, I've heard the brand chauvet numerous times on the thread and have heard nothing but good about them. With that, I would opt for the chauvet.

[cromag]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Just a few days ago I called froggy's fog and Spoke with one of their customer service guys for about 5 min.

He couldn't give me comparisons on the PC fogger vs the Chauvet machine but he told me that he'd take one cheap 1000w fogger over three or four 400 watt machines any day of the week. I also asked him to recommend some fog juice. He was very friendly and helpful and asked me all about my project and what I wanted the fog to do. (its for my fake house fire.)

He recommended their Backwood bay and told me it was pretty much the thickest stuff they make. He said its what the fire departments use for smoke when their training.

So

I ended up returning the two 400w foggers in exchange for the $59.00 1000w PC fogger.
While waiting for the froggys stuff to arrive we tested the new 1000w fogger with some of the cheap fog juice that party city sells. It took about 20 min of cycling on and off to fill my two car garage full of fog thick enough so that we couldn't see each other at maybe 6 ft.

So today the froggys backwood bay stuff arrived and we tested it this evening. As we waiting for the fogger to warm up I was sceptical.
Then the machine warmed up and that first blast of fog came out. Holy smokes what a difference!
By the the time the first the first 30 sec blast was done the garage was completely full of thick smoke/fog. By the time the second cycle was finished we couldn't see each other in the garage and were fumbling through the fog to get to the door and open the garage.
We let it cycle once more then cracked the garage door about 1/4 the way open and went outside to see how it looked.
"Smoke" was billowing out of the foot wide crack at the top of the garage door. As far as making the house look like it was full of smoke It looked great. On halloween we plan on putting two more foggers by the "fire" window.

Now I'm sure I sound like I work for Froggys or something but I dont. I just wanted to post this up here to recommend their stuff. The difference is night and day compared to the cheap stuff from the halloween retail stores Like spirit and party city.

Given the results with the new juice I'm going to keep the cheapie fogger from party city. If it breaks this halloween I'll take it back and get a Chauvet next year.




PS


If anyone is interested here is the fire FX from last year I'm referring to.

My house caught on fire.

[wheussmann]

I have an eclectic collection of foggers,,,, some old some new.. I use the PC 1000 watt units mostly. you dont get more bang for you buck on a fogger until yu get above the 1500 watt size. then I have noticed/. you get what you pay for,,, dont go cheap.

on the 1000 watt or under units the way to make them work best is to spend your money on the Fog Juice... and a timer...