Thread: Fog Machines - advice needed!

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Hi everyone

I need some help on using fog machines. I'm moving house and having a halloween party a week after. No, I'm not crazy it's a very small house and only 20-25 people.

What I would ideally like is two fog machines, one for our mezzanine level so that fog drips from the balcony into our living room. It's positioned so that the balcony is right over the space between the kitchen and living room (open plan room). I think the effect could be neat

The second one, I'd like potentially outside, though it depends on how easy it is to hook up an extension cord. I've seen other people talking about making fog 'heavy' so it creeps along the ground - how do you do this? Certain type of fog?

Any advice on using fog machines would be great, I've never tried them before!

There have been a ton of theads on foggers as of late. A quick synopsis would be: To get the best low lying fog use froggy's fog juice and a 4" perforated irrigation line filled with ice. From my personal experience I would suggest at least a 1000watt fogger. My 400w Fog Machine just couldn't pull off the effect. Seach the theads for "Fog" and you will get tons of theads with awsome links.

You will need a fog chiller to make the fog sink to the ground instead of dispersing into the air. You can find lots of plans and ideas on fog chillers in this forum and the internet.

I've tried 4 or 5 different styles with various success. A lot of it depends on the outside temperature where the fog will be used. You have to chill the fog cooler than the ambient temperature to get it to sink, or else it just rises up and fills the air. Different fog chillers have different cooling properties, but generally the more ice you can pack in while still providing a large amount of surface volume for the fog to roll over the ice, the better. The colder it is outside on Halloween night, the colder you will have to make the fog to get the effect you want.

I have not tried walkingcorpse's ice filled irrigation line, so I can't compare it to the ones I've built. I'm currently using a trash can style chiller. I'm pretty happy with it. I've tried various cooler box styles and even built a chimney pipe / coiled copper tubing heat exchanger and the trash can style I use is by far the best set up for me.

Good luck!

We tried the irrigation line idea last year, and it worked really well. We ended up having to go a different direction tho (box style chiller) because of the space we had available where the foggers were going. I think if I had the chance, I'd probably go back to the irrigation line though. Oh, and if you live in a cool area, DRY ICE is AWESOME. Because it's SOOO cold, it can definitely chill the fog to stay on the ground. I really wish I could locate the video we took. the fog really hangs on the ground when chilled with dry ice. It's a little more expensive than regular ice, but you also don't have a ton of water all over the place as the dry ice is used up. =) #justsayin

I built a fogger in a box that works marginally, but this year I have a 55gallon drum that I plan to fogger-ify if I can find the time/money/resources. I plan to use regular ice.

Say you have limited space and you need a little chiller because your car say is a mustang and has no space for anything in it what-so-ever.

I have looked at the different style of chillers...

Trash can. - would be awesome to make but with the space limitations and transportation needs wont work.

Plastic Ice chest chiller. - would again be awesome, is bigger and will cost some money to put together because do not have the correct tools to drill into it.

Styrofoam Ice chest chiller - This is small enough to fit in my car, and easy to set up from what I have looked at, though there are a few designs out there and I do not know which one is the best...

What is your take on the styrofoam ice chest chiller? I heard using an Alumium dryer vent hose works well because it chills the ice since its going through metal. Though I have seen the exact same chillers but used with gutter material or chicken wire.

Can someone give me a definite answer on that and maybe you can help me decide what would be best for me and what would work well for a small front yard with a cheapy Walmart fog machine?!?!!

Thanks!

i built a fog chiller just using a drainage pipe filled with bottled ice.I learned from this video

Thats a great video and all but it doesnt really give specifics. How many watts was the fog machine, how did he hook the hose up to the fog machine.

You want to do a quick tutorial on it???

Obviously this is the easiest set up I've ever seen for a 'fog chiller' when its not even using ice, just compression and making the fog high density before it releases from the holes.

Fog juice can leave a coating on stuff it's near, so using it inside a house could result in a bit of film/mess if you have it RIGHT by stuff...

And you want to alert anyone with breathing problems too. Breathing in a bunch of that stuff isn't too fun either. (not that it's toxic or anything - but it's a chemical mist so it could trigger someone with asthma or the like)

I'm going to build this:
http://www.gotfog.com/fog_machine_chiller.html
I'll let you know the progress during the next few days.