Welcome haunters! Every week we share a look behind one home haunter’s inspirational build and how it came together.
Let’s dig into this week’s build!
Vito and his wife own a tile and stone business in Chatsworth, California, but the majority of their business is conducted online.
As a kid in the 70s, Vito’s always loved decorating his parent’s house for all the holidays and building props. He’s been doing it ever since always fascinated by how things worked. He took apart every single toy that moved, talked, or made noise to understand what made it tick.
Fast forward to this year, he wanted to create a creepy swamp in the front yard of his house for Halloween. After several attempts and failures, he finally came up with a way to bring his vision to life – a laser fog effect!
Keep reading for details. You can follow him on TikTok or YouTube for other builds and details about this haunt!
Inside Vito’s Build
Build Details:
After trying different combinations, he finally achieved the results he was looking for.
He used a combination of a 55-gallon Home Depot tote filled with water and a 12-head pond mister that adds moisture to the fog. Then the fog is piped into an icebox that is filled with frozen bottles of water that cools down the fog. The combination of moisture and cooling helps to keep the fog low to the ground.
Then the fog travels up and over the wall from his backyard through approximately 30 feet of 3” pipe. He cut a slit into it with a circular saw making two passes to get the proper width to help the fog roll out evenly. Make sure to leave about 6 inches from end to end of the pipe that the slit is cut into. If the slit is cut all the way to the ends, the pipe will collapse, blocking the fog from coming out, and it will not stay together when it’s joined to the other pipes. This was a hard-won lesson after having to trash his first piece of pipe. Another tip, use the writing on the pipe for your cut line.
He also experimented with different mixtures of fog juice and came up with the recipe he currently uses – 25% vegetable glycerin to 75% distilled water. This recipe only costs approximately $10 per gallon to make which is about a quarter of the price of the store-bought brands.
Build Items:
55-Gallon Home Depot tote
Great Stuff Spray Foam – for sealing gaps and attaching styrofoam pieces
Ice Chest
3” Toilet Flanges
3” Pipe, Connectors, Elbows, etc. – based on your layout
12-Head Pond Mister
Fog Machine
Stainless Steel Nuts, Bolts, and Washers
100% Silicone – to keep everything watertight and the fog from escaping
Weatherstripping – to run along the top of the tote and ice chest
Ratchet tiedown straps – to keep the lids pressed down. This helps with fog escaping
Q&A
What inspired the build?
I just wanted to add a new effect to my display.
What techniques and products were used?
I used a combination of a pond mister and an icebox chiller. Most people use only one or the other.
What was the trickiest part of the build? How’d you solve it?
Figuring out the best way to get the fog to flow out of the pipe evenly. Most people will just drill holes in the pipe, but I found that cutting the slit along the pipe allows the fog to roll out evenly.
What would you do differently?
Last year I ran the pipe behind the plants when they were smaller. This year I moved the pipe in front of the plants because they grew larger and they were blocking the fog.
SHOW US YOURS!
Thanks for reading about this week’s build! If you’ve built something or know someone we should include in a future release, email us at hey@hauntmakers.xyz.