Medusa

The four- (maybe five-) hosed smoke machine rig.

Made this experimental smoke machine rig to possibly use in CLP's 2006 presentation of Rocky Horror Show. I'm sure others have built similar rigs, but I wanted to give it a shot to see how well it would work. Suprisingly, it worked even better than I'd expected it to.

Medusa is a 4-way garden hose splitter (roughly $15 at Lowe's) and several 15' remnant garden hoses ($4 each) -- the black hose is a 15' segment of premium rubber hose ($16 for a 50' hose. If you crimp your own ends, you can make several shorter runs out of the premium hose. It lays much better, and doesn't crimp as easily as the regular garden hose does. Plus it's black, so it's cooler.) Some scrap 2x4 and furring strip forms the rig that holds the smoke intake hose in place in front of (NOT attached to) the smoke machine's nozzle. The splitter has 4 valves that can be operated independently. The green cap is removable and you can screw another hose onto it, but I didn't want to push it.

Smoke machine in the Medusa rig. The rig is not physically attached to the smoke machine, it just holds the intake hose in place in front of the smoke machine nozzle.	Opposite site, showing the splitter mounted to the side of the rig.
Splitter before mounting.	(A little blurry, sorry.) Close-up showing that the intake hose doesn't connect to the nozzle. Velcro help to keep the intake hose in place.

The really neat thing is -- and I know I sound like a broken record here -- that the intake hose doesn't actually connect to the smoke machine's nozzle -- the nozzle shoots the smoke out with enough pressure and at a fine enough stream that it doesn't start to expand until it's a good way into the intake!! When the intake hose is properly aligned with the nozzle, there's not even any smoke escaping from the gap between the two.

Smoke launched vertically from a few feet off the floor Video (10 seconds)	Smoke launched vertically from a few feet off the floor
Smoke launched horizontally at floor level Video (30 seconds)	Smoke launched horizontally at floor level

15 feet is the longest run of hose I tried. At 15 feet, it's about a 5-count from the time you hit the smoke machine's trigger until you get smoke out of the hoses. Once primed, though, subsequent trigger presses are instantaneous. You may be able to eek a few more feet out of a run, but I wouldn't push it.

If you deliver smoke from the hoses on the floor, you get a nice fog that creeps and swirls and stays close to the floor for a good long while. (I suspect it's because it's cooler by the floor. Less Brownian motion or something.) If you deliver the smoke up, you get some decent plumes of smoke.

Smoke output out of any one hose doesn't gush like a geyser -- after all, you are splitting your output 4 ways -- but it does offer you some control, flexibilty and precision in your smoke placement.