Fake fire from steam and lights?

July 3, 2006 5:45 PM

Is it possible to create a steam-based fake fire , like the one seen here, at home using a steamer and lighting?

I don't have the money available to rent a $500/day smoke or steam-based theatrical fire effects, but the concept looks pretty straightforward from what I can see. Orange lighting and steam. But that's just what I'm gleaning from the images. Has anybody used one of these before? Is there something missing that I can't see?

posted by destro to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

You need a whopping amount of steam, which will generally require a boiler and steam drain/water return line. From the FauxFire_FAQ.pdf file, for "flames" 3 feet tall, you need 9 pounds of steam per hour, per linear foot of display. That's a fair amount of heat energy, a bunch of moisture to cool, condense, and pipe some where as recovered feed water, etc. Definitely not the thing to do in any reasonably sized home or apartment. Huge load on air conditioning, all kinds of condensation on walls and furniture, etc.

Think leaving the hottest, biggest shower you've ever had running constantly the whole time you are making your "fire." Now multiply that by about 27 for the amount of steam at the densities needed to make this work for a 3 foot wide "flame." Moreover, as a theatrical effect, you need to be back from the effect, and be looking up or level into it, probably by many feet, to make it all convincing. The density of "fog" droplets the steam is offering is the only reflective device for the electric light, which is why they offer the option of theatrical smoke, for facilities which allow that still.
posted by paulsc at 7:44 PM on July 3, 2006

Response by poster: wouldn't need to be 3 feet tall. 6 inches of flame might be fine, and I'm curious about if a room steamer might fit the bill if the output is spread thin.

I'm more worried about is if there's something else to the display. is it just steam and light? or is there something else going on there?
posted by destro at 8:23 PM on July 3, 2006

From the FAQ, it's either steam and light (through a proprietary diffuser in the fitting sections) or theatrical smoke and light. You need a very dense mist or fog to make realistic "flames" and "smoke" above. 6 inch high flames don't seem to be within the scale of this kind of generator. The physics of steam don't scale well.

I think the average home room steamer and a small color wheel type floodlight would look like, well, a room steamer with a floodlight flickering on it. The density of the "fog" emitted by typical "cold" steamers for the home is nowhere near what would be needed to refract an appreciable portion of the incident light. That's why FauxFire is recommending all that steam. Do you know anything about steam? Wet steam, dry steam, etc.? Steam delivered the way they want is both energetic, and wet...
posted by paulsc at 8:53 PM on July 3, 2006

I might suggest CO-2 fog -- except it moves the wrong direction! (Down instead of up.)

Another point here is that the effects depicted on the site are meant to be seen in a theatrical setting, i.e., from a distance of 10 yards or more. Even the elaborate steam and light (or fog and light) effects shown on the site might look rather paltry and artificial up close.
posted by La Cieca at 11:14 PM on July 3, 2006

Response by poster: i'm using this for a theatrical setting, so there is some distance.
posted by destro at 1:01 PM on July 5, 2006