# Any tips on my fog chiller with inline fan (similar to Bose Einstein)?



## ReneRobert (Oct 15, 2018)

http://imgur.com/PovxTes

 So I've got one metal duct on the right side of the photo for inlet that the fog machine will pump into and terminates in one corner after a zigzag. Then another duct in the opposite corner to pick up the fog and after another zigzagis pulled through the outlet with a cheap variable speed inline fan I got off Amazon.

Plan is to fill the first lower tier of pipe with salted ice water for maximum coverage of the pipe, then just ice up to the bottom of the inline fan so it does not get soaked. Besides sealing up the inlet and outlet I'm looking for any criticism or advice.

Thanks everyone


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Personally, I think the fog chiller is one of the most over-thought pieces of equipment. As long as you can get 'cold' in a box and move some fog through it, you're going to be 98% the way there, so don't sweat the details.

If you're planning to fill the bottom with water, that brings up the extra requirement that everything be water tight up to some small amount of head pressure... 6, 8 inches, a foot, or what ever. But pressure none the less.

I don't know if that pipe is really pressure rated. Obviously it's a pretty non-critical application, but if the pipe fills with water, the fog will be blocked. So just a consideration if there are any pinholes, leaky seams, etc.

Not sure what size fan you have, but it's been my experience you want just the gentlest waft of a breeze. I use a 50mm cooling fan running off a 9v battery on my cooler stuffed with ice, just to keep things going in the right direction. A fan adds energy, energy is heat, so sort of counteracts the chiller effect.

Hope this helps.


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## ReneRobert (Oct 15, 2018)

Yeah they're over-thought, but at the same time there are many poor designs that irk me and would have substantially better fog with simple changes. The ones that keep the smoke in PVC or corrugated ABS plastic is just a bad conductor. PVC is almost an insulator between the ice and the smoke...bad at transferring temp. I just like sticking to the two basic ideas of you make contact with something cold and to make contact with as much surface area and time as possible. Like if you had a room temp 6-pack you wanted to get cold the quickest is going to be to cover it in salted ice cubes/water.

I filled it with water last night without issue luckily. The duct is hose clamped onto the inlet (duct elbow) and outlet (fan) so it's a pretty simple watertight connection to keep the fan/pipe dry unless there's a pinhole like you mentioned. As a redundancy I put duct seal putty on the hose clamp edges and penetrations too. Just need to throw some sheet metal screws in those folded metal tabs as a last measure.


http://imgur.com/fLrVCWF


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

All true. Don't guess I've noticed any designs which keep the fog specifically in PVC/ABS pipes for cooling, though have seen some people use plastic pipes for distribution, or stick ice/frozen soda bottles in a pipe for cooling and distribution at the same time. But maybe some are out there.

Really, I'm not sure what the benefit of any pipe in a box is. I typically throw several gallon jugs of water in the freezer in the weeks before Halloween, break that up into softball sized chunks and toss it in a cooler, then let the fog fly. Fog always seems to find its way out and stick to the ground so much as ambient temps and wind will allow.

I believe some of the 'low lying' fog recipes were using the hygroscopic properties of glycerine, thinking it will pull moisture from the air, creating larger / sinking droplets of fog. So there may be additional benefit to the simple 'ice box' method with no pipe at all - in that the fog can pick up additional moisture from the ice box, helping the 'sinking' effect.

But again, likely overthinking... I've never had one single ToT refuse candy because the fog wasn't low enough!


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