Can guns vs. Air / Water guns

[mountainman]

Simple breakdowns. SMi fan guns cost. $25,000 - $35,000. Times 200 = $6,000,0000.00 $30,000 dollar gun stuck on a pole.
Can a resort with 250 fan guns run all at once? Cost of power and power restrictions?
HKD guns. $2,500. - $3,500 times 200 = $600,000.00 Low E Rangers can be made up with portable stands.
Tower guns miminal maintanace. Nozzels, gaskets. Air to run 200 HKD's 20,000 cfm plus or minus. Can a air water system run 200 guns? Based on air / water resources. Just throwing out some numbers here and some questions.
Cost of eletric air compressors?
Cost of diesel fuel?
Difference in prices of snowmaking equipment. $6,000,000.00 Fan guns.
$600,000.00 Air / Water HKD's
$5,400,000.00 Difference
Again throwing it out there pros and cons.
Even the cost of diesel fuel snowmaking is still possibe with out a high power demand.
Running lifts in day time increases power demand possibly limiting snowmaking production with all electric. Yes diesel will cost alot but if you don,t have snow making is not much fun to ski or ride.

[tcharron]

200,000 gallons diesel fuel per year less.

[Marc]

The air emission control system in our Large Burn Lab runs at 200,000 cfm during a large scale test. Not a tremendous amount of pressure though.

That was totally off topic.

[mondeo]

Originally Posted by tcharron

200,000 gallons diesel fuel per year less.

But many MW-hr per year more.

Fan guns are more efficient, but due to more efficient energy delivery, not because they don't use energy at all. Might be a 50% reduction, I'd guess.

[deadheadskier]

You know, there's this little ski area I worked at in Maryland called Wisp. They had a type of snowgun that was somewhat in between the big honking fan guns Mt. Snow uses and a can gun. Those suckers pumped out a ton of snow; more than any kind of gun I've ever witnessed.

Anyone familiar with the area and the type of gun they use?

[mondeo]

Originally Posted by Marc

The air emission control system in our Large Burn Lab runs at 200,000 cfm during a large scale test. Not a tremendous amount of pressure though.

That was totally off topic.

One of these engines will do around 2,000,000 cfm. Only gets to around 570 PSI, though.



Still off-topic.

[kingslug]

Originally Posted by tcharron

200,000 gallons diesel fuel per year less.

Which costs around a million, million two. And maintenance on those air comps ain't cheap either.

[mountainman]

Originally Posted by deadheadskier

You know, there's this little ski area I worked at in Maryland called Wisp. They had a type of snowgun that was somewhat in between the big honking fan guns Mt. Snow uses and a can gun. Those suckers pumped out a ton of snow; more than any kind of gun I've ever witnessed.

Anyone familiar with the area and the type of gun they use?

One of the nicest snowmaking system put together on the east coast. Fully automated? Can not disagree with you at all. Have they found a new Mt. Manager yet. I'm interested.

[millerm277]

Originally Posted by deadheadskier

You know, there's this little ski area I worked at in Maryland called Wisp. They had a type of snowgun that was somewhat in between the big honking fan guns Mt. Snow uses and a can gun. Those suckers pumped out a ton of snow; more than any kind of gun I've ever witnessed.

Anyone familiar with the area and the type of gun they use?

SMI Viking's. See the article here Haven't seen them at too many areas, Sno Mtn, PA has a few as well I think.

[drjeff]

Originally Posted by millerm277

SMI Viking's. See the article here Haven't seen them at too many areas, Sno Mtn, PA has a few as well I think.

Mount Snow actually has that same SMI mix too. The Viking's basically look like a traditional air/water pole mounted gun, except that they have their own on board air compressor, thus making them operational of tradional diesel air compressor air. The pic below is a close up of the head of the viking tower



and here's a bunch of them set up



Then as mentioned in the article, Wisp also installed the SMI Superpolecats, of which Mount Snow will now be sporting 250 or so. The pic below was actuall taken at Wisp



and there more commonly seen Mount Snow forms



and



and Mount Snow even has a couple of the smaller kid polecats too (except in black instead of red )