Hey Blevy first off welcome. Please stop in the new member forum and introduce yourself. We love to meet new members. Second, could you clarify if you have a chemical fogger already? I'm guessing the answer is no. What you need to do is
build your own dry ice fogger.
The basic idea is you have a sealed container capable of holding boiling or nearly boiling hot water. You need a way to pour the hot water into the container and also
drop in the dry ice when you are ready for the
effect. You also need a way for the dry ice
fog to exit.
An old cooler seems like an excellent choice for your container. If you do use a cooler seal up the drain valve really well with silicone. You don't want that thing leaking boiling water on
stage. Open the valve squirt it full of silicone. Close the valve and just bury the
inlet on the inside with tons of the stuff so there's no way the water's getting in there. Seal around the outside of the closed valve with silcone as well. Just find the small tube of "Silicone 2" at your local hardware store with the caulking and glues. The lid works great to keep it sealed but as an easy way to get in and
drop the ice.
Now your way out. Get yourself some sort of flexible hose tubing. Something at least 2" in diameter... preferably 3" or 4" Home Depot again should be perfect. You need to cut a hole in the cooler ABOVE THE WATER
LINE for this hose to come out. I would think about maybe getting a short solid piece of
PVC pipe to use as the actual exit then have it turn into a flexible hose. You could actually do it all with solid
PVC if that works for you. Depending on your setup you could just have 2' section of
PVC sticking out the end and
call it good. Your exit pipe needs to be well above the water
line so that when you put the ice in and the water
level rises you don't
spill. Seal the area around your
PVC/hose with more "Silicone 2". It'll dry pretty solid and hold it in place just fine.
Finally you need some sort of fan to blow the stuff out. You need to be careful about water and electricity here. I would get a 3" or 4"
PVC Pipe 90 degree elbow and another
foot or two of pipe. Cut a hole in the other end of the cooler again WELL ABOVE THE WATER
LINE. Shove the elbow in the hole and
point it up. Mount your other section on top of that. Mount a small
desk fan to the top of your tube. It pushes the air down the tube across the water and out the other side. Make sure the upright extension tube and fan are out of the way so you can
drop the dry ice in.
When it comes to putting the dry ice in, DON'T TOUCH IT!! Wear heavy leather gloves, kitchen oven mits, or welding gloves. It will probably come in large
flat chunks that are about 1"-2" thick. PUT ON
SAFETY GOGGLES and use a hammer to break it into pieces that are about 2x2... nice big over sized ice cubes. I always wear long sleeves as well. You do not want this stuff touching your skin! DO NOT PULVERIZE IT INTO TINY BITS... it will flash to gas too fast. IF you leave it one large piece it may
dissolve slowly and sort of fizzle.
Finally purchasing. If you are under 18 you probably won't be allowed to buy it. I get it from my local grocery store meat market. Need help finding it in your area, try
this website.
Dry ice isn't cheap but you need to buy several pounds to experiment. If you put too much dry ice into your machine you may freeze the water before it has a chance to do the
effect. Same is true for if your water isn't hot enough. You need to experiment to get the
effect just right. If you want to use it more than once in a show, be sure to dump out the old water and replace it with more hot water. Have a couple of giant
catering style coffee pots running back
stage.
Good luck. Be CAREFUL. You can get some nasty painful cold burns from the stuff. The
fog itself can be dangerous as well. While it's not a big deal to breathe a little carbon dioxide, it is cold and heavier than normal air, thus it sinks and displaces the oxygen rich normal air around it. An actor who lays down in a
fog might never get up again. Also make sure your
orchestra pit doesn't fill with
fog.