Fog Chiller

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So you just bought a fogger for your next Halloween haunt. Your excited, you can't wait to see all of the Trick-or-Treater's reactions to the graveyard scene in your front yard, fog rolling in between the headstones, a bone sticking out here and there etc. So you finally get home and plug it in, just to see it work, but to your dismay, it doesn't produce that creepy, ground hugging fog you wished it would. Instead, it all rises and your living room is now filled with thick smoke. Fear not, for there is hope.

The problem with foggers is that in order to create fog, they use a really hot (800 degree) heater element to vaporize a solution of water and glycyrin to create that lasting fog. Since the fog is just like steam, its less dense and the colder, denser air will displace it and the fog will rise. Now, there are 2 solutions to this problem, raise the room temperature above that of the fog, or lower the temperature of the fog. Since 800 degrees Farenheight is rather dangerous to life and your heating bill would be insane if you tried that, the latter solution will do much better.

The fog chiller is just a simple heat exchanger, not unlike the cooling system in your car. The hot fog is passed over coils of tubing that have cold water running through them. The water in the tubing will absorb all of the heat from the fog and it will stay near the ground.

This is the cooling tube used in my fogger. Its just a long peice of aluminum tubing from an old dehumidifier condenser coil. I wrapped it around the handle of a shovel to get the coil. there are plastic tubes runing from each end that go to the bucket of ice water.

The pump used for the cooling water is just a standard automotive window washer fluid pump, hooked to a boat battery.

This is the fogger I used, $20 At Wally World (Wal-Mart), its a rather small unit, but Steve's garage isn't that big. ;)

Here it is, all in the box, ready for me to seal the top on (so it doesn't leak fog). The condenser coil is in the big black tube at the bottom, and that in turn, leads to the exit port on the right. Oh yes, Steve gave me a hand with this part :p

1/20/05