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Build your own
Fog Chiller
by Chuck Rice
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I purchased two F-70 fog machines this year. Like all fog
machines, they put out hot fog. Because it is hot, the fog does
not hug the ground, so if you want ground hugging fog, you have
to chill it.
There are a number of ways to do this, but I chose to make a heat exchanger
box. This picture at the left is the first one I built, I did
not have a very good camera at the time, so I have gone back
and retaken some of the pictures which you will see below. At
this time, I do not have pictures of the chiller in the process
of being built, but there is a diagram that shows some of the
construction details.
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The design uses 2 hand made soft copper coils that get placed
inside a a stovepipe. The coils are connected via plastic tubing
to a fountain pump that is placed in an ice chest full of water
and ice. The cold water is pumped thru the tubes and returns
to the ice chest where the ice chills it again.
To build the inner coil, I took 25 feet of 1/4 inch soft copper
tubing and bent it around a inch and a half scrap piece of PVC
pipe. The soft copper bends well enough that it is easy to coil
it around the pipe (well you hands might cramp a bit :) ).
For the outer coil, I did the same using 50 feet of 3/8 inch
copper and a 3 inch scrap piece of PVC.
Once the coils were made, I pulled the scrap PVC out of them
and spread the apart a bit like a spring till they were the same
length as the stove pipe.
Then I connected the inner and outer coil with a short piece
of plastic tubing and pipe clamps and attached longer plastic
tubing to the other ends to go to the pump and ice chest.
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Here is what the stove
pipe looks like I added a handle to make it easy to carry. |
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This is what the end of
the chiller looks like. You can see the 1.5 inch inner coil and
the 3 inch outer coil and the short plastic tube connecting them. |
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If you look closely, you
can see how the coils are suspended inside the stove pipe. I
used red plastic wire ties to connect the inner coil to the outer
coil, and a second set of ties to connect the outer coil to the
stove pipe. |
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Here you can see how the
ties connect to the stove pipe. I drilled two small holes for
each tie and then just looped the tie through one loop of the
coil and through the holes. Start by leaving the loop loose,
and attach the coil at three points around the stove pipe, then
tighten the loops a bit at a time till the coil is in the middle.
Do this at both ends and add a few in the middle. You may have
to get your kid to do the inner one. My hand was too big! |
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The handle is just bolted
on top. You can also see a couple of coil support holes here. |
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This is the other end of the chiller. The red caps came on
the copper I bought. You remove them and that is where the plastic
tubing is attached. I drilled some larger holes for the tubing
to exit that you can just barely see on the top of the stove
pipe.
You can also see another view of the wire ties that suspend
the coils.
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is the list of parts that I used. All items can be purchased
at the local hardware store. |
| 25' |
1/4" copper refrigerator tubing |
| 50' |
3/8" copper refrigerator tubing |
| 12' |
3/8" Clear plastic tubing |
| 2' |
1.5" Pipe (used as a form, then discarded) |
| 2' |
3" ABS plastic pipe (used as a form,
then discarded) |
| 2' |
6" Sheet metal ductwork pipe |
| 4 |
Pipe clamps for the 3/8" Clear plastic
tubing |
| 1 |
small submersible pump (80 gal/hour) |
| 1 |
Package of plastic wire ties |
| 1 |
Handle and screws |
| 4 |
Stick-on Rubber Feet |
| 1 |
Ice chest |
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Please note:
I can make no warranties on the methods and procedures presented
here. I have built this device, but your tools and skills are
unknown to me. Proceed at your own risk.
I also do not endorse any of the products here except the
FerretTronics chip.
They are just the products I chose to use for this project. You
may find that they work better or worse for you. Experiment for
yourself. That is half the fun!
On the other hand, if there is a step or procedure here that
you do not understand, let me know using the Comments
button and I will see what I can do to explain it better. -Chuck-
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