8:45, that is why we dry fit before adding glue. Swivels are always necessary, where swivels aren’t used people ruin their hoses faster… Great video and work.
You know, it occurs to me that if you fitted another barb just after the air inlet and attached that to a pressure washer detergent bottle, the pressure from the air would suck the detergent up thehose into the resevoir, therefore you could make bigger batches, simply using a bigger bottle.
Great stiff! 👍 I made some anti rodent tubes with PVC that have a 1 1/2” threaded PVC connection. I always used teflon tape but after a couple of uses the threads still wanted to gall/bind. It amazes me how much force it takes to break it free when this happens. I still use teflon tape but found putting some paste wax on the threads keeps them from binding and makes for an even better seal. The tape last longer too. I have been using a few of these for several years being opened and closed several times each year and they never bind up and seal tightly without having to over tighten.
Thank you, Greg. This foam generator made my best foam yet! I've got some more aircrete projects in mind now that I'm happy with the foam and more comfortable with the process. Thank you for watching.
On somehthing like this, primer is not needed so much, but when you do plumbing under pressure, primer is essential!!! especially on the printed labels or if you are using dirty pipe or old pipe that has been laying around outside. (or is existing plumbing exposed to elements.) Oxidized PVC glues VERY poorly and the primer will make it much more "agreeable" to glueing. For instance, If I built this, it will be from leftover waste pieces from other projects that have been stored outside behind my shed, so I would HAVE to use primer for a good glue joint. I also read below that someone likes to sand it, also good, but you can get away with just cleaning it real good with primer - your preference. If you're going to sand it, use the roll strips of sandpaper, so you can "saw" it round and round like a shoe shine
Worked great! We made it today. A couple of things: yes, the brand of soap matters a lot. Your generator should be at 90 psi and it took literally 2 Lowe’s and 2 Home Depot’s to find all the parts that with the price increases ran like $70+ in total…but still totally worth it since I’ve been dreaming of several aircrete projects and just needed a gun. Thank you so much for sharing your plans! One small thing, the parts list is missing the 2” T. Gun works great!
Are you telling me that the situation is as bad as in Panama with driving around for parts? ;-) I’m still thinking if I should build a 20ft long foam gun….. ;-p
I'm new to aircrete for building safe places for the coming CLIMATE CHAOS. Really love your ❤ and ingenuity and openness to share. How about using air stones verses the steel wool?
A secret to taking the lip off the inside of your fittings, use an electricians step down bit, they make them in small to large sizes up to 2 in. Using the step down bit will also allow you to not only take the lip off, but widen it enough you can use a rubber seal gasket if you choose. Using the rubber o-ring allows for quick disassembly, as well as airtight and no leaks.
@@GreenShortzDIY Una consulta al inicio haz colocado 1 T para entrada del Aire y del otro Lado queda Abierta Porque no se ve si la tapas Saludos desde Costa Rica 🇨🇷 🇨🇷 Pura Vida Gracias
Nice design, I really like it. I think it was just fine with the additional air holes though. All you probably needed to do is open the Valve half way if you wanted the foam to come out slower. It actually makes it more versatile so you can pump foam out in a hurry if needed.
@@noranoack7239 Una Pregunta en la T donde pone la entrada de Aire del Compresor al otro lado q pone No hablo Inglés Gracias Si me puedes ayudar.. 🙏🙏🙏
Lleva un tapón. La idea es que la manga de aire no sea lo que aguante el peso una vez colocada en el piso. Y un codo no es tan estable como una T con un tapón.
Wow, I didn't know folks built batch style foam generators... I like the continuous feed for larger quantities. Thanks for posting. I guess this for folks who don't need much foam.
Great vid Tom, going good. This air-crete challenge is a menace, but one you will crack and not the air-crete, that i am sure of. 😅.. Hows are the veggies coming along? Hope you'll are well. Hi from Holland
Hello! I’m getting close on the aircrete method. Hope you are well. Good to see you. Greenhouse veggies are almost done for the season. Warm weather veggies planted. Well, some of them.
The fittings have release agent on them , you should use pipe cleaner on all fitting connections. You bought the light bodied clear glue, you would probably like the orange medium body glue better. You get much more working time with the orange glue
I'm super-excited about your design!! Awesome. DIY foam. I have an air pump from my sister's flat tire that I fixed in 20 below F. northern Midwest weather two winters ago!! $30 I thought we were supposed to pay $350 for a foaming agent device? hahaha. thanks
@13:30, make sure you CLOSE the ball valve before glueing. Maybe you can get lucky, and the glue won't get into the valve mechanism, but best practice is to close the valve before glueing. Before I knew that, I made some joints with ball valves that I couldn't turn all the way off because they got glue in them!
Ki ora (hello) from Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud (New Zealand) Your tutorial was great, nothing pretentious, I have been known to measure twice and cut 4 times... I was checking this out as I want to make some concrete pots etc and boy are they heavy lifting. So I thought hey what about aircrete? I looked at foam generators from new and though heack no I am not paying that, a quick google search and here it is. I will check out you other posts, hopefully the air create process will be there. Nga mihinui, (many thanks) Paul Cronin.
9 minutes in, if you're quick enough, could have used the smaller piece to knock the fluted piece back halfway through the fitting again for more room to fit the smaller one. I also think it's to complicated, what's wrong with a siphon system, like a paint sprayer before the mixing tube of stainless wool? 18:20 - the teflon also gives it some lube making it easier to turn, plastic on plastic has a huge amount of friction.
I would just sand the inside of the through fitting a little more and dry fit the pipe before gluing together which is always a good idea... also have a hammer ready to add a little persuasion if necessary...
Thank you, John. You could always just lengthen the side pipe to increase volume. I think it would be difficult to keep the mix consistent using a venturi. I think the pressures on this generator fluctuate a bit. Thank you for watching.
An exact ratio has been a bit elusive for me. I think the best results have been with 1 part portland to 2 parts foam. But, it was very helpful to seal off the top of the forms with a plastic sheet. Keeping air away from the aerated mix really helped keep it from slumping. Thanks for watching.
I’m looking forward to building your franken foamer, you just earned a new subscriber. I was in the Army National Guard and did a 2-week deployment to Korea in the summer of 1988. I was in Yongsan, and visited the DMZ - was in that same building, but in military garb.
Thank you for your service to our nation and the world. If you haven’t purchased the plans yet, let me send them to you as a gift. Send your email to tom at greenshortz. com.
Yes. The plans are available as a PDF. Follow the plans link in the description. It will take you my store. Purchase will get you a download link. Thank you.
So far this is the simplest and effective foam generator design I've seen. I'm about to build my first one and this design is the one I'm going to use. And you just gained one more subscriber :)
When gluing pvc or abs to get a longer set time you need to put lots of glue on both sides and have a rubber malot to give it a little bit more persuasion I've been planning on making a methane gas digester and I've been thinking of using a similar idea on. my outlets of my digester same problem just a bigger fitting I'm also looking at doing some aircreat next summer thanks for the excellent video by the way what's the difference between the stainless steel you buy and the stainless steel scrubbers the loony store
thanks for the wasted few minutes.....if you are going to make mistakes and still edit a video and still want to show everyone Announce that at the beginnning, so those that want to watch mistakes will watch the whole begining... just saying that this is an akward way of headlining a video. cool that you want to share but you know what I mean right?
hey. ive followed your franken foam instructions and the water leaks out. I have to tilt it. is that usual? and when the generator comes on it shoots foam for 1 second then sputters out.... how to increase the pressure on a metabo hpt... ? by the time i pour in a new 16 oz, the last batch is deflated
I do put my foam generator on a tilt, hanging on the edge of the bucket at the high end, and sitting on the ground on the other end. On the sputtering foam, your air pressure is shooting through the foam generator in one blast. I’ve had this issue early in my experimentation on this design. You can help this by adding more of the stainless steel mesh. Another way to help is releasing the air pressure more slowly. More mesh will help with creating thicker foam. That is the issue you gave with the foam deflating. If you need to make a larger amount of foam, make the tank portion of the generator bigger, so it can hold more liquid per batch. Hope this helps. Thank you for watching.
The cement aerated by the foam hardens. The foam holds up long enough to support the air pockets. The foam generators on Amazon are generally for cleaning.
I usually mix up about 1/4 of a 5-gallon bucket of cement and then add about 8 inches of foam to that. It fluffs up to about 1/3 of the bucket worth of aircrete. But, it only uses about half of the liquid in the foam generator. So I can do another batch of cement for one fill of Frankenfoam. Thank you for watching.
felicidades por la información compartida, una pregunta este cañon aque compresor se debe de conectar, caracteristicas del compresor por favor si no es mucha molestia.
Creo que un compresor de este tamaño funcionará. El mío es más grande, pero debería proporcionar suficiente presión para el generador de espuma del tamaño que fabriqué. amzn.to/3CUTHHe Gracias por ver.
Hi Leon. I think the smallest pancake compressor would be fine for aircrete. You may want a bigger compressor if you want to do more with it. 40-60 PSI is enough. Start on the low end. It’s a cool process. Have fun. Thank you for watching.
I'm mostly done with mine, just made a couple alterations. There is one small mistake in the video and description. The galvanized fitting is to go from 3/4" to 1/4" not 1/2" right?
Good catch, Keith. I’ll have to check. It depends on the airline fitting, but I can’t remember which it was at the moment. Thank you. Send photos when you are done. I’d love to see it. Thank you for watching.
Hi. I followed this guide and yes the foam generator does generate foam but I ran into the same issue you seem to have stated in other videos but not this one, that of not being able to get the foam to the proper density. it always comes out around 30g/liter/quart instead of the 90-100g we are looking for for aircrete. Did you ever solve this problem or just move on and make aircrete with that density foam? I've only tested the foam by leaving it out and seeing how long it took to collapse and it was halfway collapsed in just an hour and a half. Regardless of if I used suave or drexel or set my compressor's psi between 90 and 30, the results were always the same.
Hi Christopher. My practice with aircrete has been less scientific. I've tried to get a consistent weight on the foam, but I tend to make smaller batches, so the weight is hard to measure. The real test for me, is if it supports the cement long enough for setting without slumping. I have had success with that. One thing that helped was to cover the filled form with a plastic sheet. The projects I have been making are smaller, so the final density isn't as much of a factor, at least in my mind. I'd say that with your hour and half collapse time, you'd have success keeping the concrete suspended long enough to set. Ultimately, I have to top trying to get the weight right and just try making some aircrete. I know you were looking for a different answer, but I hope this was helpful. Thank you for watching.
I'm going with Drexel fm 160 foaming agent. It's used for agricultural marking and stands up better than any soap product. Just ordered 2 gallons from Rural King as they had much better pricing than amazon. Will be using this to make styro aircrete. Appears to be much more tolerant and better insulating than aircrete based on the youtube videos from Stephen Williams. Also, check out this video from Aircrete Harry comparing the Drexel product with dishwashing liquids ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-S1ydXgWDU00.html
May I suggest making a diagram so one can have a big picture how it works first. Diagram is liked a map. Showing how is the street level detail. A map is better and that is all I need. Surprisingly very few Utubers know this. Thank you for sharing nevertheless. I have to go get the map first then comeback for the street level details!
Crazy question m but can you use this somehow to make your own foaming soap? Idk how long the foam stays foamy. Just a thought that came to me while watching this. I def want to build one! Thanks for the video.👍🏼
Question: If you only had need for a small amount of foam concrete, what would be wrong with mixing foam from shaving cream cans (purchased at a dollar store) with a cement slurry instead?
I imagine that if you do a test with a can and a handful of cement, mix and pour a little, let's say, into a shoe box adapting the proportion indicated in the video, it will give you a better idea and you will be able to test its resistance. That also gave me an idea.
Very nice build but only for small amount of foam, I am pouring 28"x28" column caps so the reservoir has to be really large in my case. Thanks for sharing.
I've used the Scotch Brite brand stainless pot scrubbers. They aren't as dense as the steel wool and the foam wasn;t as thick. However, the green mesh Scotch Brite pads should produce similar results to the steel wool. Thank you for watching.
Instead of Teflon tape which will come off after repeated removal and replacement of the cap onto the reservoir, pipe joint compound would be easier to use and probably just as effective without having to be replaced as frequently as Teflon tape.
13:21 i was going to say same about both sides when I first saw you fail to do so. I also believe, it is a good habit to pass brush twice over each surface alternating between part A & B: A, B, A, B careful to limit pooling and wipe away excess after fitting
@@GreenShortzDIY The really weird thing about it? If a store is selling the 20 tubes, they do not sell some times the fittings and connections for it. As a German, also living 14 years in Canada, I am used to go to Hornbach in Germany or Home Depot in Canada/USA to have everything in 10 minutes. In Panama City Panama it’s a whole day “hunting” to find what you need. I absolutely hate that city. Moved 1 1/2 West and got smarter after 3 years living in Panama. Go to the supply store online, order everything and wait 2 days until you can pick it up all together. It doesn’t help if there is an emergency like a water pipe leak. Then it’s hunting season again…..
Great info. Only comment would be….. 2 wraps of Teflon tape covering the first 4 threads is all you need. (I’m cheap). Also consider which direction you will be operating from right or left. Being a right handed operator, I like my air feed from the left rather than right. Great product!
I hope you will sell at Etsy or Ebay; AND may we have discounts? Simple and Effective. What we need in arts and crafts is a smallest air-crete about 20 inch like a toy? See cement projects on arts and crafts: table, chairs, maybe someday even the whole tiny home lego?
Quick tip for everyone to recycle fittings and redo mistakes. Put glue inside the pipe at the fitting and light the glue, once it's almost burnt out then get flat screwdriver and peel pipe from fitting then pliers and grab it and twist the soft hot pipe away from the fitting. Although the fitting will have some soot on it and or be slightly deformed at the start of manipulation separation point it's as good as ever for reuse. Another trick is to make a cut towards the fitting to allow the soft pipe to peel away easier. I'll upload the example this week :-)
