Hi You all, I’m a new snow maker in southeastern NC. Snowguns.com is a great website!!! I have been reviewing the posts on this site and have found a lot of very useful information. From suggestions here I have made my first snow gun. It’s a T gun that I made from parts I had in the garage. Photo attached. It has gate valves for the air and water and check valves on each end, and a water hose for the airline. Also has quick change nozzles. Any comments or suggestions for improvements?

I have been testing the gun and have a concern regarding the water pressure. I have a well system. The pressure ranges from 37 to 52 psi. I have the air at ~42 psi. When the water pressure is at the lower end, I get only air (and the water pump does not kick in); at the higher end I had only water so I metered the water flow down and am now getting a good mist when the water pressure is between 39 and 48 psi. It sputters at the upper end (I may add the rubber hose inside the air chamber to reduce ID). To resolve the low end water pressure I can leave another faucet on a trickle so the pump will kick in. Does anyone have any simple solutions to resolve the water pressure differential problem?

Maybe I should just go ahead and build a Hago gun. Looks like dultmeier.com, spray.com, mcmaster.com or patriot-supply.com would be a good source for the valves, psi gauge and nozzles.

Thanks…

Looks on for a start. Good job on reading and gathering info and asking questions once you have started and tried rather than just asking stupid questions! AWESOME!

Anyway down to business. You might want to consider a booster pump to get your water more constant. A cheap one from harbor freight is just fine. You might not get very good snow quality at only 42psi air so getting bothe air and water pressure up could help quite a bit. Other than that not no bad.

Looking really good! One of the few time's I've seen a newbie post up here using all the suggestions already addressed in the teegun thread. Gate valves, garden hoses, etc.

I do not recommend running a booster pump on a teegun without a rather complex recirculating pressure regulator because you can blow out the face seals and overload the motor when restricting water flow as low as a teegun runs.

If you can get snow to come out of it when your water pressure is on the high side, you are probably all ready to move on to a larger gun. External mix guns are nice and easy to run, but a pain in the arse to set up. An SM4 is the easiest to make, and also very easy to run if you use a needle valve instead of a ball valve for adjusting the nuc.

Thanks for your replies. I reduced the ID of the air tube to ~ 1/8”. It makes a difference. Now I get very minimal sputtering at the upper end of the water PSI. I’ll still have to let another faucet trickle in order for the pump to kick on. I’ll try it out tomorrow night.

I liked the Hago gun because it is an external mix compared to the SM4 external gun. They both look simple to construct. (Needle valve suggestion noted, thanks.) Are there any major differences between the 2 regarding ease of operation and/or amount of snow produced? I’m leaning towards the external mix gun.

Internal mix guns are much easier to make the only advantage to external mix is there is no possible way water can get in your compressor. They both make the same amount of snow.

You might want to try a VW gun- plans are in the Combo Guns forum. Water pressure doesn't matter as much because it actually sucks in water, instead of letting it flow in.

What part of NC are you from?

quote:

Originally posted by Pebbles:
You might want to try a VW gun- plans are in the Combo Guns forum. Water pressure doesn't matter as much because it actually sucks in water, instead of letting it flow in.

What part of NC are you from?

No need to bump an 8 month old thread in the newbies section... I'm sure he's already moved on from a teegun by now.

And FYI a VW gun makes the same snow as a teegun. It's still an air/water gun with no bulk. It'd be completely pointless.

Oops. Didn't see the date, sorry about that.

For the record, I recommended the VW gun because it wasn't as sensitive to water pressure, not because it makes any "better" snow.