@PopularMechanics _ March 2019 43A
B
ter day, it’s a short trip from total
ignorance to contemplating the finer
points of nucleation nozzles and the
Joule-Thomson effect—which is,
of course, when a compressed gas
is allowed to rapidly expand, thus
causing a cooling effect. Then you’ll
a lso want to st udy up on meteorolog y
(specifically, the concept of wet-bulb
temperature) and continuous-use
versus oil-free air compressors.
My research leads me to Connect-
icut-based Snow At Home, which
manufactures residential-size snow-
makers and seems to have a lot of
experience sussing out what works
and what doesn’t. They’ll sell you
just the nozzles for $69, but a com-
plete package—a SnoPro snowmaker,
Ingersoll Rand air compressor, and
1.3-gallon-per-minute electric pres-sure washer—costs $948. But hey, I
needed a new air compressor and a
pressure washer anyway, right?
The SnoPro, Snow At Home’s
smallest snowmaker, can produce
46 cubic feet of snow per hour. The
next model up, the SG6 Xstream,
can crank out 80 cubic feet per hour.
That’s enough to cover a 50-by-
25-foot area in six inches of snow
over eight hours. It costs $698 before
you add the larger compressor and
pump. Ah, decisions.
Not long ago, I was on the fence
about this whole idea. A snow gun is a
ludicrous thing to purchase. But then
I thought, When I’m old and wizened,
looking back on my life, am I going
to regret buying a snowmaker? Hell
no. That is a completely excellent
thing to buy. I spend enough moneyon responsible grown-up stuff like
life insurance and nose-hair trim-
mers. Maybe sometimes it’s okay to
buy a contraption that would be atop
the shopping list of an eight-year-old
who won the lottery.
And as long as you’re buying a
snowmaker, you may as well step up
to the SG6 Xstream. (Look, honey,
at least I didn’t go for the SG7.) To
furnish the SG6’s three nozzles with
high-pressure air and water, I procure
a 5.5-cubic-foot-per-minute Camp-
bell Hausfeld air compressor ($450)
and a Greenworks Pro 2.3-gallon-
per-minute electric pressure washer
($250). Now, I can inflate a truck tire
in about three seconds and blast mil-
dew off my deck from 50 paces. And
also make a whole lot of snow.
But for that, I have to wait for the
weather to get on my side, which ide-
ally means temperatures in the 20s
and low humidity. That’s for crisp,
dry snow. You can make wetter snow
at temperatures up to 39 degrees
Fahrenheit, if the humidity is low
enough. But 29 degrees is your max
for dry snow. And if it gets down to 20
degrees, humidity doesn’t even mat-
ter—you’re going to have nice snow.
In the meantime, I have another
challenge: My property doesn’t have
much in the way of elevation. There’s
a banking next to the driveway, but
the drop might be four or five feet.
And if you’ve got a sweet snowmaker,
you want a more serious sledding run
than that. So I build a ramp. My ambi-
tions begin with something modest,
a small skate-park kicker, then pre-
dictably spiral out of control once I
start building.
By the time I’m done, the ramp is
so tall that the top of it actually has
a view. There are two distinct drop
angles—black-diamond steep for
the first eight feet, transitioning to a
more modest slope for the next eight
feet before leading onto the final drop
off the banking. Since I don’t really
know what I’m doing, I overbuild,
with 4 x 4 posts through-bolted to a
frame of 2 x 4s and double-layered
plywood for the floor. As an unfore-
seen bonus, I’ve now got a launch
platform for a zipline. The things I do
to get the kids off the iPad. I christen
my creation Mount Diablo, then walk
around saying things like, “Better get
your oxygen mask if you’re summit-
ing Diablo” and “The Sherpas refuseSome resorts goose
their warm-weather
snow production
with Snomax, an
additive that allows
flakes to form
around proteins.Paul Dana, seven,
rides a flying saucer
down Mount Diablo.
How a
Snowmaker
Works
A / To p
Two Nozzles
These spray high-
pressure mist that
coats the ice nuclei,
building up and
creating snowflakes.
B / Bottom Nozzle
In nature, snowflakes
form around fine dust
in the atmosphere.
With a snow gun, a
nucleation nozzle spits
minuscule flecks of
ice that become the
center around which
snowflakes form.