Thread: Interesting Chauvet Hurricane 1250 observations

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I opened up all three of my new Chauvet Hurricane 1250 foggers yesterday to get them filled with juice and tested. I'm concerned about power draw for my haunt so I put my meter on each of them.

All three foggers drew about 800 watts each when the heater was running. I found that quite interesting since these are supposed to have 1200 watt heaters.

I put a call in to Chauvet and they made some comments about 1200 watts being the maximum the heater could draw but it might not need to all the time. Sounds strange to me. They're supposed to do some testing and call me back.

I also noticed that the heater does not run while the pump is on. I found this on another fog machine as well. That seems to be strange since it guarantees that the heater will cool down and need to recycle. I always thought that the process of heating up the fog juice cooled down the element requiring a pause and reheat. I never knew that they don't run the heater at the same time. I wonder if there is a limit on how long the heater can run continuously without burning out? This would seem to be a standard thing on all (non-continuous) foggers.

One last observation is that the split yoke bracket/stand is useless as a stand. There is so much weight to the rear of the machine when it's filled with fog juice that they drift to a nose high attitude after a little while no matter how much you tighten the knobs.

I'll follow up with what Chauvet has to say when they call me back.

Good luck on that call-back. They've never returned a call to me. Very interesting about both the power draw (800W) and the heater shut-off during pumping. Seems to me that you could get a longer burst/shorter re-heat cycle if the heater stayed on.

Hey OTR, do you have a Kill-A-Watt meter? If so connect it and meter it for an hour and see what it comes to.

The one thing you need to be more concerned of and if it only draws 800 watts that might not be a bad thing, is the power consumption. A 1200 watt machine will pull 10 amps. So if you have 3 of these machines that is 30 amps right there. Depending on how many outlets and circuits you have to work with you might be limited in your set up. You need to check your outlets and see if the circuit is 15 or 20 amps that way you can distribute your power accordingly to your machine and other devices that use power in your haunt. Because if you are limited in power you might only be able to run one machine.

Yeah, I let it run for a while and a number of cycles and it always came back to right around 800 watts. It's great for power consumption but lousy if I paid for a 1200 watt fog machine. We'll see if Otaku is right about them calling me back. I have the technicians name so if they don't call me, I'll be calling them.

I am using a Kill-A-Watt to test the power draw. It's an excellent little meter. They should be drawing 10 amps each which is why I was testing and sorting out all my circuits to make sure I don't start blowing breakers. That's one Halloween surprise I don't want!

Most of the foggers i have seen seem to be pretty simple. I am wondering if they are sophisticated enough to either have a 2 stage heating system, or multiple heating coils as the technician stated ? It would seem to make sense that you used 1200 watts all the time (esp. on the initial heat up) . If you are not using it then when ? esp if it is shutting down during fog output.

On an simialar note, last year I bought a cheap 400 watt fogger from Rite Aid just to use in a prop and it really worked quite well. This year i picked up another 400 watt from Target and I immediately noticed that the heater assembly appears to be way smaller than on the model from last year on an otherwise identical fogger.... I am really not very impressed at all with the output of the new one even though I am only using it in a limited capacity I've noticed the fog barely seems to linger....

I ran this same test with my Kill-a-watt and discovered the same measurement.

I feel a little ripped off. Wait, a lot ripped off. My Kill-a-Watt also only measured about 800watts. Actually, it always seemed to somewhere in the 790's. I only did a brief test and thought maybe it would surge when I actually blow fog with the combination of fog pump and heater.... however, I was in a hurry (wife had dinner on the table) and I had to stop the test. I was going to retest... but at this point the measurement is a mute point until after halloween. It'll only frustrate me.

It makes me want to go buy one of those cheapy 1000watt foggers at Party City to see if the results are way under the spec as well.

I have an old LiteF/X (fog f/x?) 800watt fogger I will run the test on as well. Probably not until Fri/Sat.

400watts under the spec seems insane. That's only 66.666% of the spec'd power usage. And the lack of heater during fog pumping is also hard to swallow. I bet there is a warranty breaking rewire to get around that. I recently saw a how-to guide for my lite f/x fogger... but now can't find it.

Originally Posted by Texan78

Hey OTR, do you have a Kill-A-Watt meter? If so connect it and meter it for an hour and see what it comes to.

The one thing you need to be more concerned of and if it only draws 800 watts that might not be a bad thing, is the power consumption. A 1200 watt machine will pull 10 amps. So if you have 3 of these machines that is 30 amps right there. Depending on how many outlets and circuits you have to work with you might be limited in your set up. You need to check your outlets and see if the circuit is 15 or 20 amps that way you can distribute your power accordingly to your machine and other devices that use power in your haunt. Because if you are limited in power you might only be able to run one machine.

Agreed about the potential limitations on the number of foggers one could use on a single breaker, but if they advertise 1200 watts, I would expect the hardware to meet that claim. I'll reserve further comment except to say that my 1250 isn't markedly different in output than my old 700 watt Lite F/X fogger - maybe now I know why.

Diabolik, Are you using the same fog juice? I experienced something like that as well but sort of determined it was the cheap brand of fog juice... I say sort of because testing fog out put is so subjective.

Originally Posted by Diabolik

I am really not very impressed at all with the output of the new one even though I am only using it in a limited capacity I've noticed the fog barely seems to linger....

Originally Posted by dqderrick

Diabolik, Are you using the same fog juice? I experienced something like that as well but sort of determined it was the cheap brand of fog juice... I say sort of because testing fog out put is so subjective.

I actually have 3 or 4 different brands of juice and tried them all. none really seemed better in this particular machine.

I do need to break down next year and invest in some Froggies.

Otaku and OTR , Are there any manuals or spec sheets with the foggers ? I am curious as to what the MFG. cut sheets rate them at for actual current consumption...

I'm totally hip to this too. I paid $150 for 1200 watts. Not for something that only uses 800 watts! I would have saved my money and just bought a 1000 watt machine.

I guess in reality... its all about the cubic feet of fog it puts out. The Chauvet 1250 brags 10,000 cubic feet per minute (cfm) Which is odd since many websites advertise it at 7,000 cfm. example

I thought maybe they enhanced it at some point. Now I want everyone to go and get a Kill-a-watt and test their other brand foggers! Kill-a-watt Link

I always thought 10,000 seemed unusually high for even a 1,200 watt fogger.

Originally Posted by Otaku

Agreed about the potential limitations on the number of foggers one could use on a single breaker, but if they advertise 1200 watts, I would expect the hardware to meet that claim. I'll reserve further comment except to say that my 1250 isn't markedly different in output than my old 700 watt Lite F/X fogger - maybe now I know why.