Neal from Essex here we're going to do kind of a unique walk around here on something that we built that I think is worth putting online we do a large Christmas light show every year we were looking for a snow special effect and in our case we needed a snow effect that was going to cover the large parking lot a lot of space and it didn't look like using traditional like stage snow effect machines I was really going to work for us for two reasons one we wouldn't get nearly enough volume over nearly enough area but also the duration in the amount of time that we run these things we will be constantly adding snow juice and ore into the snow machines to make that work so we kind of dissected a snow machine and came up with the concept of how one works and scaled it way up using some of the stuff that we had here around our equipment dealership in order to put it together so you see right here the heart of this thing is a 10,000 CFM industrial fan this thing came to us with a seven horsepower three-phase electric motor on it we were able to swap it out with a five horsepower single-phase motor that we would use on pressure washers one of the most challenging things with this thing has been getting the 30 amps at 240 volts required down to this thing in order to turn it on start it up and have it operate so we were eventually able to get that working with some large generator cabling motor starters and some relays in order to make it work so the air for this thing is blown up into this nose cone and there are two pieces here there's this outer cone which channels the air and also an inner cone as well if you point the camera down the nose up here there's an intersection up there that takes some of the air and then funnels it down this nozzle down here in the middle and on the inside of this is a hose that comes out of the tank that sprays the juice down into this thing and then this is weed Matt right here the juice gets on the weed mat and then that air that's diverted down the middle will create suds and soap off the end of this and then the air stream blows it up into the air making it look like snow because we're making so much of a commercial snow juices are incredibly expensive we calculated in the month that we're going to be running this thing we're going to need somewhere in the neighborhood of about a thousand gallons of fluid commercial snow juice is around about $1,500 or a 55-gallon drum rather than doing that we took one of these totes that we normally use for hay preservative and filled it up with water and then a little bit of antifreeze in order to keep it from freezing and then purchased online sodium lauryl sulphate which is the additive that you find in most soaps shampoos toothpastes and that kind of stuff that causes them to foam so rather than buying box soaps we just bought the bulk drum of the foaming compound itself we run about a 3% solution of sodium lauryl sulfate to water and that mix when it goes through creates enough suds when it comes out the end of the fan we also put a tank heater in here since we are doing this in the winter time that holds this fluid up around 80 degrees or so because it does seem to separate more when it gets down to lower temperatures so let's fire this thing up you you so this part really is unique to us because we're using this in a light show but anybody else that's building something like this probably doesn't need all the guts of electronics that are down in here we use light aroma for our Christmas light show this is a simple DC board so that a data cable feeds a signal into here and we're ready for a 12 volt line one of these will turn on the fan and one of these turns on the pump that runs the the snowmachine inside the other box here is a motor starter motor starter that will turn on the motor that runs the fan and a solid-state relay that trips the switch to activate the motor starter and then down here is another solid-state relay that we use in order to turn on the pump in the tank there is a three-quarter horsepower submersible pump that we just drop down into the tank and then that pumps the tank fluid up the hose and then down into that central cone that creates the soap so that's the snow machine for the Messick's lightshow special thanks goes out to Ben Williams who did most of the welding and fabrication on this thing Brandon Wright who supplied the nose cone for us Kubota tractor corporation and Messick's who pay for most the construction costs to put this show together all to raise money for local charities so if you want to see this thing come out and visit us here in 2016 the Messick's Christmas lights show

German are you ready for this yes it's a snow machine whoa and snow juice actually I think it's called snow fluid but we'll call it snow juice right yes let's try this out all right German let's open this up so here's what's in the box obviously your machine and it's got uh this sprayer cloth and tie on the end of it which it also has a bag with a replacement one and then it's got an extra fuse which you know your fuse is back here on the back your power cord and then it has another cord that goes to this point on off switch and then of course your Reservoir here for your snow fluid which we are going to mix up and see how this works so this is our snow fluid and it has an eight ounce bottle and it says to dilute it because it's concentrated with 120 ounces of tap water now we're just going to try it out so I think we're going to do four ounces so we're going to do 60 ounces which is you know about two quarts and we're going to mix it together and give it a shot foreign half of our bottle mixed up and about a half a gallon of water that's roughly what that is and I'm gonna carefully pour it into the reservoir says not to overfill which is pretty much common sense and not to run it you know without any fluid in there once again I think that's common sense but you never know all right so we got a reservoir field but we have you know about half of what we mixed up left so basically that will hold about a quart which it comes out to two ounces of the of the snow fluid concentrate with about a quart of water uh roughly give or take so that's about what it took um like I said don't hold me to that exact number but it's close just so you know before you buy so now we're going to plug it up and are we ready for this yeah all right let's go here we go we have not tried it out yet oh my God so we moved it to a little higher up you know right needs a little bit of elevation and we can use in this tailgate so you ready turn it on [Music] [Applause] [Music] that is so cool [Music] well what do you think about your purchase you like it better it is here it is it's October and it's really nice outside and we've got snow there you go what do you think it's awesome yeah yeah pretty neat right we don't hardly ever get any snow so the reason you bought this was for two things specifically right yeah yeah trick-or-treating yes one is uh one thing we do in town a community one yeah and then the other one's at the church yes so and that at the time you bought it how much for the machine [Music] okay for like 90 off Amazon we'll put that link on here and then the bottles of snow there's four bottles per box [Music] okay and the four pack is how much um to get twenty dollars a bottle so so a little over a hundred dollars in your own business here and you've got snow you can make homemade juice [Music] okay all right well either way that's not bad and uh that's a lot of snow can't believe how good it works all right so we're really happy with it took a wet cloth went over it wiped it off and so that was easy to clean it seems to be easy to maintain the snow fluid or snow juices we'll call it we used uh four ounces of that bottle an eight ounce bottle so half it made about a half a gallon and it lasted roughly 20 minutes or so um so that's really good I mean I think that goes a good ways because I can't imagine for special events we're gonna use it for probably more than an hour tops must be obviously it's going to be a huge hit here in South Carolina because we don't get snow hardly ever so this will be really cool so there you go happy snow blowing thank you

today I'm going to show you how to make a foam snow machine so the whole things made out of orange Walmart blower on taskbar and on the top is a PVC pipe that I zip tied to the grate and left a little bit of space maybe quarter hat half-inch around and then I zip tied a sock to that PVC pipe with a tube vinyl tube you already underneath it so that vinyl tube goes to this juice bottle with dish soap and water in it and when the cap is opened and the machine will turn it turns on fake snow will flow out of the machine [Music]

if you've ever seen the film snow machines that work by blowing little globs of form out that looks incredibly convincing honestly it does look like snow if it floats through the air and when it lands and surfaces it gradually disappears this is what's inside them that's not an awful lot basically speaking you've got the foam sock which air that the actual form forms on you've got paper going in you've got a solid pump to feed the liquid into that and the liquid itself is just a diluted detergent you can just use like shampoo and heavily diluted with water to get the effect the professional snow floods tend to be basically a surface and like sodium laureth sulfate mixed with water of a tiny percentage just to create an ultra pure clean detergent for the form and inside these things which are incredibly noisy is a vacuum cleaner type blower here and let's just take this off completely this comes out and it's a standard blower 600 watt blower that you'd probably find in a vacuum cleaner and standard universal motor with the commutator and the brushes and they're from that quite noisy but it's needed it it really needs the airflow instead of a sucking like a vacuum cleaner this one blows and really that's all that's in it it's blowing into this chamber with some of the air going in the middle and into the sock and you can see that pipe just ends and thin air in there and the detergents pumped under and what happens there is that the liquid is blue and inside against the outside of the fabric and anywhere the ears basically flowing through the fabric the path of least resistance is where the liquid will be character and it then continues to push the liquid through the fabric forming a dense form on the surface and then all these holes around the outside are also blowing it out there's also a balance to be bet and when the foam has grown out certain level the outer Airstream catches the foam and it blows it out as ten little pellets of form so really a vacuum cleaner motor a little saw node pump although some of them use our venturi effect they just actually carry the liquid up without a pump and and the sock and that is how a snow machine works

okay Thomas from the crazy Christmas crew here today I'm going to show you my version of the snow machine which basically I hide mine up in the roof inside that box and got a fireplace here that's kind of the chimney and that's where this snow comes out kind of gives it the feeling like it's also smoke coming out some of the components I use I've got a fan here this is to basically deliver the foam off the roof if you don't have any kind of fan or blower mechanism you're not going to get any distance off and there's going to kind of dribble out and you're not gonna get them out there I use the last go fans they're great because you got some outlets on the side so you got multiple components that you got to do helps out a great deal or the foam portion of the snow machine I use a Aerobed air mattress pump it's got a one-inch discharge which gets a lot of lot of flow a lot of air I found to make the foam portion of the snow machine you need a good volume air pump if you don't have anything that's strong you're not gonna get the production of bubbles and they won't be they'll come out in larger pieces good volume air pump makes it come out in smaller chunks which makes it look more like snow what I use for volume I've got just a mr. mr. bubbles bubble machine this I put up there also so you got two two parts you got a foam that breaks off in little chunks and then also I've got a high value in bubble machine which I set the bubbles makes for a pretty good display some of the other stuff we got here we've got pumps now you can vary on this this is a standard pump I'm in the pool industry so I get these you know come across them all the time it's basically just a duh you can use them you know something like for a pond pump or some kind of pump but you need something to deliver the foam solution up to your your phone machine snow machine so don't need some kind of delivery method to get your snow or your your soap solution up to wherever you're going to do it and of course other components as I get them all put together I'll show you what we do this is gonna come up from the bottom and hides down underneath the shelf here comes up goes out to this little manifold I've made we cut a slit inside this manifold wrapped it with tulle and then this is the supply line that's going to supply the soap as the soap comes up and the air comes up it's going to create foam here down below we'll have the fan and it's going to push come along pick it up and distribute out into the yard the bubble machine base with the beach system is for delivering foam here fans down below here picking up the phone distributing it the yard the bubble machine right above it you can put the bubbles out here pick it up in the flow and we're gonna put the volume of foam in the yard to the foam machine and also we need an extra plate full of course we are on the rooftop so I don't want to climb up here every 20 minutes when it needs more solution so my solution to the solution problem the pumps got tubing that's going to run down and I put buckets down at the bottom and put the solution up makes it easy to constant keep the pole whatever we're running the show a lot we can fill the buckets as need it and I'll get a video once I get all the solutions set up okay that's some mobile solution going here now I got the foam just about all the way up here now and but we kind of see the production coming off it's kind of windy today but