Hi guys
My name is Jonas (yeah I know, like the song) and I'm new to snow making. I'm from the north of Mexico (Durango) and I have a project for a snow recreational center. I know it might sound crazy, its like snow in hell, but during the winter, specially in the north we get quite low temperatures so I think the project is feasible. We are looking at establishing a slope of around 200 meters long. The temperatures during the winter are around 10 degrees centigrade during the day and from 0 to -5 during the evening, night and early morning. I've been doing some research and I think the HKD super blizzard would be a good option for the project. We have some Government support, however the budget is still limited so we are looking for the best option for the best price. Please let me know what you think of the projects and I wold really appreciate any suggestions regarding snow making machinery or design of the snow making system. Actually any opinion or question would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Jonas

(attached is a picture of how the place looks like in the summer)

Hola mae, buenas de nueva york.

This sounds like a pretty fun project to undertake. If you seriously have the temperatures i see it being possible. I am currently living in Costa Rica and there are some mountains here near the equator that get down to about 0-5 degrees Celsius at night so I believe you do get pretty cold all the way up there as well. If you take a look around the forums you can find some posts about buying from Ski Resort Boneyards. This is often used and retired snowguns. You can find this by clicking the find button and looking around.

The other issue is power supply. The pumps and compressors needed to run this type of equipment generally need 3 phase power which can be hard to get and quite expensive. That could be something you would want to work out with the power company before buying any equipment.

I am sure some of the more experienced guys might be able to help some more.

Que tengas muchas suerte!
Dan

if you dont mind me asking what is your budget for this project. Another member of this site has just taken on a similar task with a budget of around 20 grand I believe. The earth work will cost a considerable amount looking at all the work that has to be done. As far as snowmaking goes a super blizzard would work but when you are making snow at the top of your hill you will still need a large water pump to get the water to the trailer of the hdk blizzard. You will also need a snowcat to push the snow around unless you have other equipment you could use to groom the snow.

Well today I got an email from HKD and I think buying the super blizzard is going to be not possible unless we get a loan. Right now our budget is around 10grand just to get snow making machinery, as earthwork and other facilities would be government founded. I've been looking at the other sections in the forum and found them very useful. Do you think is possible to build our own system of Sm4's to cover the surface of the slope? (around 2500 square meters)

The place where we plan to develop is far away from main cities so I think we would have to power our system with gasoline generators...

With the size of the mountains that you have, I think that you are going to need to be looking at commercial snowmaking systems. The SM4 designs we are building would not be able to the area you are looking to cover.

Just to give you some perspective ( and I like math ):

2500 square meters = 26,909 square feet.

1 cubic foot of snow is ROUGHLY 3 gallons of water.

To cover your area with just 1 foot of snow would require 80,727 gallons of water.

If you used just 1 SM4 that could pump 5 GPM, it would take you 270 hours to go through that much water. That's over 11 straight DAYS of snow-making, 24 hours a day. If you actually wanted to use SM4's and make it all in one night ( say, 8 hours ), you'd need to pump 168 gallons per minute, and that would require 34 5GPM SM4's.

And even though I'm sitting here dreaming of how fantastic it would be to see 34 home guns blazing away, it's just silly and completely impractical. And this isn't even factoring in your budget, which wouldn't cover the cost of parts ( plumbing, nozzles, hoses, adapters, pumps, air compressor(s), etc. ).

Your only true option is going to be run a used gun, and I don't know where you're going to be able to get one that has the capabilities you need for $10,000. And once you get said gun, you still need to handle getting the water & electricity for it, which will most likely cost a very pretty penny.

But heck, who knows, maybe your government will bail you out

Assuming SnowMachine's math is correct, I'd go with 3 or 4 guns (which I've seen done here a few times by a few of our more zealous members...you know who you are!) that could cut your snow making time down to 3-4 days. Now, this all assumes that you get 3-4 days of below freezing temps

However, it all starts with one gun. Give it try and see what your constraints are (gas, water, weather, $, patience) and go from there.

Do you have a close up picture of the run you're thinking about using? Does it face away from sun during your winter? This can be a huge factor in terms of melting. Here in central USA our smaller "resorts" generally face the east and or north to avoid the warm mid/late day sun.