Achieve ways to produce fog machine low lying fog by yourpro equipment

Posted by John on October 11th, 2015

Frequently, it's desirable to possess fog stay low towards the ground. This effect creates a dreamy environment on the stage and is utilized often in ballets, operas, concerts along with other theatrical productions. I don't think I have ever seen a performance from the classic ballet "The Nutcracker" that didn't use this kind of effect. Since the fog from the fog machine is comfortable, it tends to rise and fill an area instead of hugging the ground, which can make it difficult for that audience to see what's happening about the stage.

Fortunately, there are a couple of different effective ways to produce fog machine low lying.

Make use of a Dry Ice "Pea Souper" Haze Machine. Basically, a pea souper is merely a container filled along with heated water. When fog is required, lots of dry glaciers are lowered to the water, usually inside the metal basket. As the dry ice subliminates from the solid to gas within the hot water, it produces clouds associated with cool carbon dioxide for some minutes. This gas is piped towards the desired location with clothes dryer hose. Pea soupers work well for creating thick reduced hanging fog since co2 gas is heavier compared to air; it stays low towards the ground. Since the main consumable of the pea souper is dry ice and never fog juice, they quickly become a lot more expensive and difficult to make use of than a normal haze machine. A popular type of Pea Souper is the LF05E produced by LeMaitre as well as at nearly 0, is more expensive than it appears as though it should be. Nevertheless, most rental houses ask them to on hand if you want it for only a few days.

If you decide a pea souper is the best option for reduced hanging fog, here really are a few tips:

Look up industrial gas supply companies in your town to find the greatest prices on dry glaciers. It's far cheaper to purchase it in bulk from their store than from the grocery store.
If you break in the dry ice into scaled-down chunks, you will get much more fog output in the shorter time than if you are using larger chunks, but will even get less fog period. An effective way I have found to break up dried out ice into smaller pieces would be to then use metal tongs to place it in a heavy cloth bag after which hit it with the hammer until you've reached the required size.

You can safely shop large quantities of dry ice inside a normal insulated cooler for some days, but do NOT store dry ice inside a normal freezer. To the actual 110 degree below absolutely no dry ice, putting it in the freezer almost 130 degrees hotter than it's akin to putting a normal ice cube inside the hot oven. If you need to do this, your dry glaciers will evaporate within several hours.

Be very careful if you are using dry ice. At the temperature of -110 °F, dry ice requires that you simply take special safety safeguards during handling and storage space. Always wear thick mitts, eye protection and use metal tongs to take care of dry ice. Never touch dry ice together with your bare skin, it may cause frostbite burns within seconds and may leave lasting damage.

Right now, a few other methods to achieve low hanging fog having a normal fog machine.
Develop a Fog Chiller to cool the fog from the normal fog machine. I have tried this numerous occasions with mixed results, but sometimes it really works pretty well. The idea is by using dryer hose to duct the fog output in the fog machine into a chilled chamber to lessen the temperature of the fog to be able to discourage it from increasing. This can easily be performed by cutting a hole within the side of a water-resistant box (Styrofoam coolers are a terrific way to inexpensively try this) that's filled with ice. A hole about the opposite side of the cooler could be connected to more clothes dryer hose to pipe the fog nearer to where you want it in the future out. Tip: I like to make use of those reusable sealed cooling packs rather than ice because they stay frozen considerably longer than normal ice and do not make any mess once they thaw. I've also tried using a tiny bit of dry ice (about 5 lbs) in order to cool the fog, which works pretty much. The downside to this method is that fog output out of your fog machine will end up being reduced somewhat. Some from the fog will condense to fog juice inside the actual cooler, so you need quite a powerful fog machine to obtain a decent amount of reduced hanging fog. This technique won't achieve exactly the same thick low hanging fog effect how the pea souper would produce, but it is a great way to get a similar look with no mess and expense of considerable amounts of dry ice.

Obtain a low lying fog with the built-in cooling system. American DJ makes the fog machine called Mister Kool which takes the principle referred to above and builds it to the same unit as the actual fog machine. You simply fill the Mister Kool along with 4 pounds of normal ol' ice and haze juice and out arrives reasonably low hanging haze. As before, this won't replicate the pea souper impact exactly, but it could possibly get fairly close. It also has an integrated water drainage system to make eliminating the water from the melted ice simple, something that's definitely less easy with a home-built reduced lying fog solution. If you want thick ground-hugging fog, utilizing a Dry Ice based system may be the only reliable way in order to consistently achieve it. Nevertheless, if you just want the fog out of your fog machine to stay nearer to the ground, chilling it is almost always an effective way to acquire that effect.

For more information, or to dmx fog machine, contact us at http://yourproequipment.com/lighting/fog-haze-dry-ice-machines.html

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John

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John
Joined: December 27th, 2014
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