# Making of a fog chiller



## turtle2778

Okay i have the fog machines, now im onto the chiller. This is the plan i intend to follow http://www.gotfog.com/fog_machine_chiller2.html any comments or suggestions on this? Also have you used primer on your coolers before? Or what about the krylon plastics paint to cover the cooler. I know most paints dont stick to the plastic very well so i was just wondering what you all use to cover it. I am planning on making 2 of them to cover a yard about 18X50 give or take a foot. Is this too much? I want to make sure that i have enough fog so it looks creepy NOT on fire. I planned on using the dryer tube to go out and around through the cemetary and add frozen water bottles along the tube to keep it cool. I was thinking like 6-8 feet out into it from both sides. Let me know what ya think...THANKS


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## Fright Zone

That's a loaded question! ; ) Give yourself 2 hours and start reading our Vortex Chiller Manual thread:
http://www.hauntforum.com/showthread.php?t=3577

There's a bunch of dead links in that thread and a lot of discussion on trying to tweak a couple basic designs. But they do in fact work. There's a lot of discussion of testing on inlets, outlets and attachments. Bottom line is that the DIY chillers that work are the A) Vortex Igloo Ice Cube Chiller 48qt or 60qt size of which Wal-Mart has in stock right now in season. See the Vortex thread and my Photobucket links below in the last paragraph. It can also be made out of things the size of kitty litter pails and 5 gallon buckets for smaller indoor areas 



 B) a larger 120qt Coleman if you happen to have a 1000W or higher or 1300W constant fogger (which you do not) gmacted made one shown here and I believe Zombie-F uses this design and then there's C) Ghosts of Halloween trash can design shown here and D) a modified version of the gotfog.com chiller you're looking at in the link in your post. Otaku explains his mod on page 54 of the monster Vortex Chiller Manual link I posted above and there's the E) a trash can style Vortex design (not to be confused with the Ghosts of Halloween trash can design) this one shown 



 acts like a large cooler and uses no dryer ductwork. F) Not part of the Vortex thread but here's a "$20 chiller."

The thing about that Vortex Manual thread is a lot of us intentionally experimented to see how we could get our intended effects for the outdoor or indoor, large or small foggers, large or small areas, windy or not and shared ideas and results. ie. I encourage you to experiment yourself. I had two 400W Gemmy foggers which shut off a lot. I used my Vortex Igloo Cube to make a fogging cauldron while I used my trash can chiller with a Hefty bag on the outlet for graveyard fog successfully. Note for creeping, lower-lying fog, use a Hefty trash bag on the chiller outlet. Experiment with the size you cut it down to.

Note that anything corrugated like a dryer duct will create a wavy effect to the fog. Packing a tube with frozen water bottles is not necessary and will in fact slow down the fog output.

I successfully used Krylon Fusion Camo Ultra Flat Black (no need for primer) in Wal-Mart's paint section.

I personally don't have diagrams or printed instructions for my chillers because I liked the free-form experimentation aspect of figuring out how to make them work, but for my part, I posted photos on Photobucket with descriptions a long time ago. A 48qt Vortex Igloo Ice Cube Chiller Fog Chiller Construction pictures by bpesti - Photobucket. Fog Chiller Tests pictures by bpesti - Photobucket (which I included in response to your Fog and Strobe thread). My trash can chiller I used successfully last Halloween on Trash Can Chiller Construction pictures by bpesti - Photobucket (note the Hefty trash bag was cut smaller than what you see in the photos) and Trash Can Chiller Tests pictures by bpesti - Photobucket.


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## turtle2778

HOLY CRAP....WOW!!!! THANKS. That was soo helpful. I appreciate the time and effort. Ilook forward to finishing this one.


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## Fright Zone

It's the one prop I'm confident sharing info on ; ) Have fun and knock yourself out. And to answer your other question above, yes with the two 700W foggers you have, two chillers will work fine for that 18x50 size yard. Fog will linger because it's chilled but can also go up in the air more up around head-level if you don't use the trash bag on the outlet. Using the trash bag on the outlet slows down the velocity. It won't cover as large of an area but it will cause the chilled fog to lay lower around you ankles or as high as your knees. This is from my first-hand Halloween observation. A ToT accidentally stepped on the bag and it came off the outlet of my trash can chiller. So I saw the difference using a bag on the outlet and not using one. But then again your mileage may vary depending on how much ice you use to chill the fog (it will linger more the more ice you use) and putting a bag on and taking one off is extremely easy to experiment with. Here's airscape's 



 of his 1200W fogger and 60qt Igloo with a trash bag on the outlet. And another 



.

One last note: If you use a cooler design where the fog comes in contact with the ice inside of the chiller then it's a better idea to make and stock-up on home-made refrigerator ice cubes. They don't stick together nearly as much as the store-bought ice cubes in bags. You may also have to take a hammer and break up the ice inside the chiller in the middle of a yard haunt because the ice will eventually stick together no matter what from the fog hitting it. Now if you use a Ghosts of Haloween trash can design, then the type of ice you use doesn't matter because the fog never comes in direct contact with it. The ice in that case is used to chill the outside of the aluminum drier duct which in turn chills the fog as it travels inside 18-plus feet of the drier duct inside the trash can (sort of like intestines ; ).

Note: I looked up my bookmarks to add some additional links to my previous post. It's off-season so you probably won't get many other responses. But that about sums up the proven-successful DIY fog chillers. Have fun!


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## turtle2778

Cool thanks. That really helped clear up my questions. Im definately gunna use the bag theory


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## gmacted

FrightZone did an excelllent job summarizing the Vortex chiller and it's variations.

Here is a link to a video of my fog chiller in action. Please note that this is an outside video as most videos you find are inside videos.

I also had great success with it on Halloween, but had to take down the video do to web space constraints.

I used a variation of the chiller last year, but did care for the results much. I am planning on going back to my original design this year as I feel it produces the best results.


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## The Haunter

personally i use a 2 chamber design with frozen waterbottles


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## heresjohnny

The Haunter said:


> personally i use a 2 chamber design with frozen waterbottles


Got any details on this? A design, or comparison to other designs?


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## Revenant

Uh-oh... just when you thought it was safe to go back to the forum... is that the Evil Spawn of the Vortex Manual thread looming up out of the fog...? :voorhees:


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## The Haunter

basically an old cooler with 2 chambers made with cardboard and duct tape one chamber is 2/3 of the cooler that holds the water bottles.The other chamber has room for the fog to coolect before exiting via the computer fan. Input is from the top The chamber seperator is semi sheild shape so fog can move from the top and bottom. Not sure how it works compared to others but it held its own at the Great Lakes Fright Fest Fog Off 2 years in a row.


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## heresjohnny

Revenant said:


> Uh-oh... just when you thought it was safe to go back to the forum... is that the Evil Spawn of the Vortex Manual thread looming up out of the fog...? :voorhees:


LOL, well speaking for myself I enjoy threads like that as long as they don't get personal. I am always trying to learn new, better, and especially cheaper ways to do things. I tried frozen water bottles in a vinyl carpet tube last year, and it was free and worked okay, but I would like something better this year.


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## The Haunter

With the bottles I've found its important to put them in loosly to let the fog travel through them


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## Sloatsburgh

Has anyone thought about making blocks of ice out of 1/2 gallon milk/juice containers (discarding the cardboard) and using those as a channel for the fog? 

Additionally, if one fills up a tube, like in the $20 model, should one ony fill it up half way?

What I'm trying to get at is which is more important: making sure that the fog will get chilled or making sure that the fog has clear passage.


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## charlie

Instead of filling the cooler with ice I used two milk jugs that I had filled with water and froze. I wasn't using a very high output fogger, but it seemed to do the trick. The main advantages are that you don't have water from melting ice leaking all over the place, and it's cheaper. I also used a cheap Styrofoam cooler instead of a real plastic one.

charlie


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## Fright Zone

> Uh-oh... just when you thought it was safe to go back to the forum... is that the Evil Spawn of the Vortex Manual thread looming up out of the fog...?


That's why I told her it was a loaded question LOL! Many qualified variations in search for the perfect low-lying or at the very least, dense, slow, lingering fog ; )

I think we're on the right track. I like the ideas of freezing different plastic containers and using that inside of a chiller instead of melting ice cubes. I would try those if I get the chance. Why not. I had previously tried frozen water bottles laid cap-to-cap in a 8ft aluminum 3" dia drier duct using a 400W Gemmy fogger. It worked but not nearly as well as the *Fog Expanding* Vortex-inspired Igloo Cube or the Ghosts of Halloween Trash Can IMHO. But like I said your mileage may vary.

I happened to want to play around with the Igloo Cube once I discovered it in the store off-season last year because the overall shape reminded me of the Vortex Fusion shown here. Yes it took time, money and materials and figuring and refiguring testing and experimenting endlessly and sometimes needlessly but it was fun to do. There's nothing wrong with trying to perfect a $20 chiller either. I'm fascinated with how many variations people come up with. But the ones I listed on the first page are proven to work either thru video, photos, more than one person reporting success, logic or the honor system of reporting how well each one worked. Of course people live in different areas of the country and the weather and ambient temperature and wind or no wind, outdoors or covered porch, etc are all variables to consider.

So now we have some new ideas here on what to chill the fog with besides ice cubes on this thread. And that's a good thing especially since Turtle mentioned she wanted to try the frozen water bottles up front. The Vortex Manual thread primarily addresses the physics, reverse-engineering, and physical structure of the chillers and attachments and modifications in depth.

That's why I say the Vortex Manual thread went so long because a lot of DIY haunters were experimenting. And for that matter I forgot to mention if you try the Igloo Ice Cube ("cube" meaning the relative shape of the cooler and also a marketing play on words) then you have the option of trying a 1/3 fog expansion chamber at the bottom with a 2/3 ice tray area while filling the ice layer no higher than approx. 1" from the closed lid -OR- you could reverse that proportion and use a 2/3 fog expansion chamber at the bottom and 1/3 ice tray area at the top to within no more than 1" of the closed lid. I found it depends on the fogger as well. A low wattage 400W fogger has a hard time getting thru a thicker level of ice (or bottles I suppose).

I do think a higher wattage fogger gives you more of a chance for fog not to dissipate because I've seen a major league amusement park use over (100 ct) 1400W and a few 4400W LeMaitre stage quality foggers and probably top notch fog juice (NOT chilled though) fill up entire midways during their Halloween events by windy Lake Erie. I'm stuck financially with the 400W foggers for now but will eventually step up to a 700W, 1000W, 1200W or maybe VEI 1300W constant foggers one of these days and maybe a little Froggy's Fog Juice. I think I'd use a larger chiller and more ice based on reports from other haunters.

Here's another example of the "$20" chiller filled with ice cubes. They have a video at the bottom of their Village Haunt page. It works indoors but doesn't cover any serious kind of area. But it depends on the intent.


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## heresjohnny

Sloatsburgh said:


> Has anyone thought about making blocks of ice out of 1/2 gallon milk/juice containers (discarding the cardboard) and using those as a channel for the fog?
> 
> Additionally, if one fills up a tube, like in the $20 model, should one ony fill it up half way?
> 
> What I'm trying to get at is which is more important: making sure that the fog will get chilled or making sure that the fog has clear passage.


Hmmm, I wonder if you could come up with a way to make ice containers with channels through it something like this








only with more holes. These could be used in the vortex style chiller, maybe giving you the cold surface area you need with the convenience of frozen containers and ice that does not need to get busted apart?


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## gmacted

I think everyone has a different opinion on what works and what doesn't work. I think that's what made the Vortex chiller thread so interesting.

I let my video do the talking. I don't think anyone can say that my fogger/fog chiller doesn't produce a high volume of low lying fog. I'm happy with it.


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## turtle2778

Hey anyone tried cooling the fog juice? Also why do i need a space for air at the top? THanks


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## Sloatsburgh

heresjohnny said:


> Hmmm, I wonder if you could come up with a way to make ice containers with channels through it something like this
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> only with more holes. These could be used in the vortex style chiller, maybe giving you the cold surface area you need with the convenience of frozen containers and ice that does not need to get busted apart?


Last Halloween I used 7 blocks in a wire milk crate and the lasted the entire night (3 bottom, 2 middle with gap, 2 top cross pieces). The ice lasted the entire night. I cannot comment on how well it did. It was an improvement over last year without chilling. Maybe it would do a lot better with 2 sections.

To do what you suggest, I bottom sealed tube of 1 to 2" should be placed in the ice. Once the ice freezes, poor some hot water into the tube to extract it. That would be the best way to make the form. Personnally, I like the idead of using 4 (or 8) blocks and carving out the corners, or maybe bending in a corner length before freezing. (ease, cheap, disposable....)


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## Sloatsburgh

turtle2778 said:


> Hey anyone tried cooling the fog juice? Also why do i need a space for air at the top? THanks


From what I understand, it's the heating of the fog juice that causes a chemical reaction and makes it foggy. I have seen some "make your own" instructions using an old iron.

As for the the the space at the top, I understand it's a vent allowing clean air to come back to the nozzle/allowing cold air to touch the nozzle so it doesn't over heat.


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## Revenant

Which chiller design and "open air space" at the top are you talking about Turtle? If you're talking about the "reverse Vortex" design from the other thread (the fog comes in through the inlet pipe into the open space at the top and then filters down through the ice) that top space is the expansion chamber. When the fog juice is first boiled off by the machine, it's clear vapor and it creates fog when it expands into the air. If you don't give the fog a chance to expand before chilling it a lot of the hot vapor will just re-condense before the fog is fully formed and you won't get much fog out of it.

An idea I had long before reading the Infamous Vortex Thread would reduce the problems cause by ice melting but be a lot pricier and tougher to set up. Have your expansion chamber and final collection chamber connected via several copper pipes, so the ice water never comes in contact with the fog (I chose copper simply because it won't rust). The metal transfers heat rapidly and the melting ice will still keep the tubes heat-sinking long after the vortex design would be too drowned to work. Think of it as a subcompact GOH trashcan. The problem is expense (copper ain't free) and construction (a bit more involved than PVC pipe). I'm considering it... just wondering if the actual gain in fog is even noticeable, let alone worth all the trouble. 

Is all this brainstorming really yielding noticeable improvement over existing designs or is this just a "guy thing" that we're getting swept up in?


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## Fright Zone

> Is all this brainstorming really yielding noticeable improvement over existing designs or is this just a "guy thing" that we're getting swept up in?


I'm confident the basic chiller options I listed on page 1 of this thread all seem to work. Your mileage will vary slightly. I think this thread somehow started to go down the road of examining options besides ice cubes. So that's interesting. But I wouldn't see it improving the basic effect. Just options to ice cubes for one reason or another.

I think the tweaking and experimenting and why the Vortex thread went so long stems from the fact people have different wattage foggers, different uses or intentions for indoors and outdoors, different chiller containers, variations on those basic containers since the designs are DIY and not off-the-shelf products (even then people would be hacking and modifying like the Vortex Fusion itself) and differing amounts of ice or now as we see other cold items to chill the fog and make it heavier, more dense, linger and hopefully lay low. Everyone has different or no documentation to share their results. That's why I like to see videos outdoors.

I think some basic things that came out of the Vortex thread did improve general fog output and low lying fog for everyone: The use of a pseudo venturi or alternatively a 3-4" gap between the fogger (no matter what the wattage) for all important air convection leading to fog expansion in the DIY Vortex chiller designs, the separate expansion chamber and ice chamber in the Vortex DIY design, and the trash bag on the outlet of any design. The 90 degree bend inside the Vortex DIY. However gmacted's fog on the rocks setup with a 1300W constant fogger and 50lbs of ice in a 120qt cooler worked better without it. An example of how the mileage may vary.

For my part a good example is that my Vortex Cube design worked better using a 3-4" gap from the fogger to the reverse Vortex inlet under a covered porch BUT a slight wind out in the open yard was enough to blow the fog coming out of the low wattage 400W fogger within that gap to push a lot of it away from the inlet! So either a higher wattage more powerful fogger would alleviate that problem or the pseudo Wye venturi adapter on the inlet pressed up against the nozzle of the 400W fogger would be the other option just to get the required air convection for fog expansion. Furthermore my low wattage fogger and 48qt Igloo cube chiller worked better using the reverse inlet and the 1/3 ice to 2/3 lower expansion chamber. So yes, I'd say that's an example where there is a noticeable difference in the end result arrived at by experimenting with the basic principles discovered in the Vortex thread and then observing the results and noting where there's room for improvement, or at least how to achieve satisfying results over unsatisfying results.

But where we're at now examining alternative to ice cubes. I don't think it'll make much of a difference. It's just different ways to chill the fog within that part of the whole proven system. And yeah, that may be a guy thing to do.


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## halfcracked

on the question of cubes VS bottles, if the fog is in direct contact with the ice/bottles the cubes will chill better. There's more surface area for the heat to transfer with cubes. That's part of the point of the Vortex chiller to create an extended path through the ice & increase the surface contact between the fog & cold surface.


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## Long_Tom

If you don't want to spend several days collecting enough homemade ice, you can buy bagged ice and then stick it in your freezer overnight to bring the temperature down. I have no idea whether the shape of the store ice makes a difference in how they melt, but the bags seem to come out of the cabinet at the store pretty watery to begin with. So I freeze 'em good and solid again the night before.


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## Fright Zone

I actually enjoyed making ice cubes. I got a bunch of those trays and to tell you truth the more you keep that in a refrigerator freezer that doesn't get filled up much it helps on the energy savings because the cube trays pack the freezer more. Or so I've been told.

Anyway turtle, did you make a chiller and if so which kind?


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## typodaemon

Hey guys, I'm new to the forum (this is actually my first post).  I'm in the process of building my first fog chiller for a Halloween party this year. I'm with Fright Zone, it's a test and adjust process. I'm making my way through the vortex thread now (not done yet! someone needs to summarize that thread in a page!), so I'll try not to rehash things that have been covered there.

I think a very real benefit to using frozen water bottles over ice cubes is that you could run a fog chiller indoors without needing a run off for the melted ice. You'll get some condensation, but nothing like the amount of water produced by melting ice. 

The downside is that your chiller won't transfer heat as well - the surface of plastic bottles just doesn't transfer heat as well as ice and (like halfcracked said) you'll lose surface area too. You could easily counter both of these by building a larger chiller if not leaking water or paying for ice is important enough to you.


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## madscientist70

Trash Can design Hands down!!


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## halfcracked

halfcracked said:


> on the question of cubes VS bottles, if the fog is in direct contact with the ice/bottles the cubes will chill better. There's more surface area for the heat to transfer with cubes. That's part of the point of the Vortex chiller to create an extended path through the ice & increase the surface contact between the fog & cold surface.


I'm going to have to back up on this a bit.... In theory more surface area = more heat transfer - that's why computer heat sinks have fins. However, I've discovered that in real world application it doesn't make a big difference.

I recently used my Homer bucket vortex design in a theatrical production. The ice melt became a significant issue with water all over the stage.

So I decided to give bottles a try. using the newish 14 oz. coke bottles I was able to fill my chiller with bottles frozen at home. there was no noticeable reduction of chilling effect.


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## typodaemon

I'm pretty surprised to hear that worked out for you. The thermal conductivity (measure of how well a material transfers heat) for regular ice is between 9 and 14 times better than PET (the material coke and water bottles are typically made from). Plastic is an insulator that doesn't conduct heat well.

Have you tried the same chiller/fogger combination with plastic bottles in a haunt situation? I'm thinking that the heat from the lights contributed to the chiller's success on stage.

On a side note, the thermal conductivity of regular ice is also between 20 and 25 times better than dry ice, which is why you don't see a huge benefit from dry ice's drastically lower temperature.

Thermal conductivity depends on temperature and quality of the material (which is why I've given ranges).


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## Desmodus

It may actually turn out to be a good thing that PET isn't so good a conductor - your "ice" will last longer, for one thing. I don't think there's any real doubt that the cold bottles will absorb the ambient heat inside the chiller eventually, plus the fact that the chiller is insulated in itself, but I guess the question is, how fast does the heat have to conduct to be considered effective?

I would expect, with enough bottles - and preferably, several smaller ones as opposed to a few large ones, in order to facilitate air flow and increase surface area, you'd get pretty sweet results w/o the mess of ice.
I'm definitely trying it this year.
Of course, maybe we can come up with an alternative container material too. Ideas?

But consider this.. put a milk jug full of water in the freezer and let it freeze solid overnight. Then take it out and press it against your upper arm for 30 seconds. If you still feel PET is a lousy conductor after that, well. . what can I say, use ice. I know just from holding a cold milk jug while running around the store , that's it's been enough to cause pain! .. and that wasn't even frozen solid.


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## niblique71

I'd love to try the frozen bottles in my "Scratch built Fog Chiller". Given the large size of it it could be very effective. Someone mentioned in another thread to put a little salt in the bottles to keep the ice from expanding and also lowering the effective temperature of the ice (or something like that).


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## The-Haunter

A guy at great lakes fright fest suggested using aluminum venom energy drink bottles . Haven't tried it myself but seems like a good idea


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## typodaemon

That's a good point. Water bottles aren't thick enough to really be an insulator like a cooler is. Now I'm curious if you're better off building a dryer duct style chiller that doesn't leak or a ice chamber style chiller filled with frozen water bottles.

Alternative containers? Glass bottles and aluminum bottles come to mind. Both have significantly higher thermal conductivity, but I've never frozen either kind. I'm told you won't destroy the bottle if you leave the top off. YMMV


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## typodaemon

Actually, glass would be a really poor choice. The bottles are much thicker than water bottles, so you'd probably get worse thermal transfer. Tin plated aluminum cans (soda cans) would probably be really good (much better than water bottles), but you can't really seal them back up... so there's a chance of spilling them.


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## halfcracked

typodaemon said:


> Have you tried the same chiller/fogger combination with plastic bottles in a haunt situation? I'm thinking that the heat from the lights contributed to the chiller's success on stage.
> Thermal conductivity depends on temperature and quality of the material (which is why I've given ranges).


In theory the heat from the lights would make it tougher to maintain ground fog as the radiant energy would be absorbed by the fog causing it to heat up faster.

However our lighting isn't THAT overdone. no where near the 80 degree weather I've seen on some Halloween Eve's here in Houston.

What I'm really talking about is that Experience does not always match up with theory. I agree that in theory the bottles shouldn't work as well. However, my experience was that you couldn't tell the difference when I switched.

There may have been a difference but it was so minor that it was easily overpowered by other factors.

I like the aluminum bottles idea.. Especially if someone were to weld aluminum fins on to them


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## tbishop

Do think this one will go over 100 pages and make it last for 4 years(discliamer if it last more the 4 years please see your Doctor). Oh yeah i made 3 of these today fogger on top 1/3 expansion 2/3 ice (2 400w foggers big foam coolers goodwilll $1 ea and 1 700x fogger 50 qt cooler) I would post pics but need ice and have 2 shiatus' and 4 statics i need to get done


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