DIY Aircrete Foam Gun - Demystified

[Music] what's up YouTube I am John Graham and for several months now I have been obsessed with air Crete I'm sure you probably if you've gotten to me you've been through a dozen videos already but air Crete is where you basically take part in cement mix it with a little bit of water and you get a nice slurry and then you fold in what looks like shaving cream but it's foam and that foam is generated from dish soap now the reason you do that is because it increases the volume but it maintains the rigidity and it dries overnight you can work with it overnight and it cures in about 30 days and there's all kind of awesome things being made out of air Crete but you got to have an air cream foam generator so I started looking at all the different YouTube videos and there are a bunch and it just looked like a cumbersome mess every time I tried to figure out how to make one no no disparaging comments to those guys that have gone before me and succeeded I just couldn't get my head wrapped around it I'm not necessarily um the most engineering minded I don't think and so I wanted to try to figure out a way to create something that requires very little actual solving or cutting or drilling very little and everything was accessible and available at your Home Depot your Harbor Freight your Walmart Amazon of course and I think I've come up with it now it's not $40 it's not $30 it comes in at about $100 for all of this stuff and when you see the finished product you go that doesn't look like $100 kind of a deal but when you see the foam you'll go that's where the hundred bucks so let me kind of talk you through it there are three critical components we're already assuming you've got an air compressor okay and that air compressor has got a quick-connect on the end probably the female end of the Quicken if it doesn't then you can buy an adapter for that that's not a big deal but other than that the only thing you're gonna need is something to cut with namely you'll have to cut one piece of 2-inch PVC use a jigsaw or a handsaw you can also you're gonna need to cut some tubing pieces and I just used a pocketknife for that and you're gonna need to drill two holes that's it and you'll need a three quarter inch paddle bit like a hole saw I'll show you that hold on this thing right here three-quarter inch little bit goes in your drill that's it guys that's all you got to do and then you just go screw things together and glue things together so let's get to that point okay there are three important parts to this once you of course you've got your air compressor that's not I'm not counting that but the three important parts are the reservoir for your fluid which is about four five gallons you're gonna have about two cups of dish soap everybody online is recommending the seventh-generation dish soap and that's what I used and it worked great I'm gonna try something out differently here a little bit we'll see if it's any better but here is the secret weapon okay and all of these other things there's been a very pressurized container for your fluids you have to build or like one guy did a thing with a I can't think of the name of the valve is it called anyway it's a pressure reducing valve which is supposed to draw in fluid and I tried it and I couldn't make it work there's probably some good reasons why but I never could make that work so I thought I need to find a tank that I can use I don't have to build out of PVC because that just seems like it's gonna not hold enough and and all that kind of stuff and so here we go the aquitaine ER this is a camping water container if you just put water in it take it camping now here's the cool thing now pay no attention to the little hose doodad that I haven't this is the cool thing that aquitaine er has this cap on it okay now the idea is that you can unscrew this little nozzle and flip it on the other side and you can have a pouring spigot for when you're camping but that's not what we used it for same spicket same same cap with a Rainbird adapter Rain Bird stuff is cheap I think this cost 60 cents the little gray piece in there that's a 3/4 inch thread on one end and a barb on the other for a half inch or 3/8 inch hose right here and then a pipe clamp okay a little teflon tape and some sealant I'll show you in a minute beautiful on the other end we've taken just a little piece of vinyl tubing and let me say this is half inch inside diameter 3/4 inch outside diameter don't get the 5/8 outside diameter because it will crimp and it just it's you don't want to have to mess with that all right then right here I have a quarter inch to quarter inch brass coupler with a wire excuse me a hose clamp and we screw on a quick-connect for your air compressor okay so here's the other side right here we have a three-quarter inch of mount right here and a half inch inside diameter Barb and this is also Rainbird I think it's like 60 cents and the same same tubing a wire excuse me a hose clamp on this end we have a standard water hose repair kit where you simply take your your barbed in here shove it inside this tube with the hose clamp on here and I've got a quick-connect I'll explain that in a minute now in my little system here the Achilles heel is clearly this one hole that I drilled right there okay I'm going to show you some pictures of what it looks like when you get it it's got a little cap you've got a little nipple there and you've got to kind of cut that nipple off so and then take that drill bit I showed you drill that hole poke that in there and thread it carefully in with a whole lot of PVC tape and seal it and it works great but once this can get slow on fluid it's going to start to wobble and so you got to put some sort of a foundation on it so that it won't fall off so will fall off into the ground because you don't want that connection to get bumps and messed up okay so I'm put a whole lot of sealant on that here in a few minutes all right so here's what the tank looks like when a symbol pretty nifty in the spirit of full disclosure I blew up two of these tanks this is my third one the first one I blew up because I wasn't using a large enough exit for the water the fluid to go out I was using a tiny little hose that I got with him with a kit and it was too much resistance and the air overtook the amount the ability of the water to get out of the tank the second time was a similar reason I filled the thing all the way to the top and there was no room for air to compress it was just like boom and just blew up so do this only fill this thing up halfway I promise you you'll be standing there for a long time making foam before you have to put in more water but just don't put more than you know three or four gallons in this tank and it'll save you some grief part two of the amazing foam generator system here hoses now of course you've got the hose the air compressor hose that's already factory and I'll show you where that comes in a second but you've got to have two hoses to get the water the air into the tank and the fluid back out of the tank into the gun nothing complicated here the exit simple liter hose seven bucks at Walmart and I've got Quick Connect tips right here we'll talk more about that you'll see that in a second and then the air hose by a 10-foot run of this vinyl air hose again 3/4 exterior half-inch interior and you put two of these air compressor Quick Connect guys on there the threads are on here yeah that's fine you don't have to worry about it and put a couple of the pipe clamps on there there you go there's your hoses part three the foam gun itself now before I show you how the foam gun gets put together let me tell you what's inside it because really that's the important thing and it's so simple it's ridiculous scotch brite I think of there cold steel scrubbing pads stainless steel scrubbing pets this is not steel wool steel wool is what you sand with or or try to get rust off of things but this is a steel scrubbing pad and you can get these on Amazon a bunch at a time I bought mine at Ace Hardware but I have about I got three three packs and I got a valve I think it's a seven or eight of them in here okay now one problem we ran into was once we started the the pressure pushing those steel things to the end of the gun well it was clogging up the gun so what do we do now I saw a honey-do carpenter put a couple of links to chain that's a great idea I got an even better blended it whisk eighty eight cents at Walmart shoved this guy down inside and then put in your steel wool pieces that steel wool is not gonna get past this about it being bottom beautiful okay so I'm gonna actually take you inside Home Depot right now where I got all of the pieces and dry fit them together because I had already made mine and I didn't see the point of trying to make a new one buying all that crap so I just put it together in Home Depot without the glue I think you'll get the idea here's that so here are the pieces and parts this is a pre-configured 2 inch by 2 foot piece of pipe I'll show you the price tag on that 2 inch cap 2 inch flange with a threaded on one end and just glue on that side this is a reducer from a 2 inch threaded male to a one and a half inch on that side and this one and a half inch reducer down to or actually pushing down to 1/2 inch so you probably figure out how to put together the only thing you're gonna have to cut to the catch to the handle things you're gonna have to do is drill a hole right here so the phone can get out and chop off a tiny piece of this that's all you're gonna need just a little bit of this I'll show you that for a second then up here this is what I actually started with but had I known that this was available I could have saved about six bucks now explain that in a minute but really simple assembly kept here cement that cement this cement this that bad boy in there knock there cut off your piece of two inch we'll pretend I've cut this off but they won't know because I'll have to buy it goes right there and then this guy goes right here no again if I use this guy instead I would have saved a coupling when I went to my Y adapter I'll show you that in a second so why do we need the screw off adapter well you're gonna have to put the stuff in there and then you're probably gonna have to get this stuff out because that's not gonna last forever you know after you've used it for concrete you know make you foam a little while you're gonna want to replace your steel pads all right so that's why we have to spend a little bit more get the thready going let me just show you what I was talking about before so here we are on the water hose garden hose kind of adapters and doodads I'll and just to tell you what I was talking about earlier this is the piece that I used before okay connect it to my half-inch PVC pipe the critical component is the Y adapter all right but you'll notice they come in female on one end and two males on the other right what happens here and all because so you got to spend eight more bucks for a coupler they're really proud of these couplers but if I go with this [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] let's cruise right in no cupper needed ok so you've seen how the PVC pieces go together I've made my change right here from the female hose fitting to the male hose fitting to eliminate that coupler that saves we got seven bucks so here is my adjusted thing I've also added quick connectors everywhere there's a water hose connection because it just makes things easier to get off and on if you need to go carry the gun apart from everything else if you want to set it up and store it if you you know what if you need to get inside the chamber you don't have to take everything off and also it offers a little bit of a swivel to your hoses so that helps too alright so let's talk about the apparatus on the outside of the hose so our pressurized air comes in here and comes to a tee at the tee it goes to directions obviously and they both have valves one is for your fluid one is for your air pressure that's going to make the foam now there they are closed and you're gonna have to find a happy spot of how much pressure goes to each one and just about there is about right but it takes a little experiment all right [Music] I've got a quick-connect here for the air that feeds the tank and then this is a heart connect directly into the wine come into the back of the gun shoots air in there after it meets the water so again Quick Connect right here a mail mail mail T quarter-inch two valves Quick Connect on this end and a heart connect hose with hose clamp same tubing we've been using it comes to the back here and the Y now there's this Y you can find these at any store practically it's just a garden hose Y and these have closed valves now important don't leave the water one closed if you're pressurizing it okay make sure that you open this up but this is handy when you don't have pressure but you still have the water connected and you don't want it leaking all of your foot so you just close that there there's really never going to be a need to close that because this accomplishes that once the combination of the fluid and air comes in the back it shoots in here gets agitated by all the steel wall comes out here and makes foam as I mentioned you're only gonna have to drill one hole in that's right there you drill that hole through the cap because obviously the phone's got to get out and I had little brass fitting sitting around and I thought I'll just shove that thing on the end of it just for fun but you don't have to use that so that's it it's pretty simple I only had to chop off a tiny piece of half-inch PVC and drill a hole down here at the end for the foam to get out of the gun and I had to cut a couple of pieces of tubing and I had to drill that one hole in the tank that's it it's amazing I'm gonna seal some things up and then I'll be able to show you exactly how this thing works all right so here we go air compressor air hose feeds right there this one's going here the valve is currently shut off pay attention to that the valve is currently shut off valve is currently shut off air goes into the water tank right here okay again valve is currently shut off and then solution comes back out to back here so airs going now when you start this thing you're going to want to start with the fluid first get the fluid going that's when we have two of these valves start the fluid first open that Joker make sure that's open okay then add in your your air pressure let's let's see it do some stuff [Music] [Music] one other important thing to note it's a good idea to keep your tank above the grade of where your gun is if you've got a ladder something you can do to get that elevated it's gonna make it a lot easier to keep that pressure from building up too high and blow up your tank because don't be that that's just another 15 dollars you gotta go deal with all right have fun let's make some air creeks [Music] [Music] you

Channel: JonWasBored

Views: 71,918

Rating: 4.8554215 out of 5

Keywords: aircrete, DIY, foam gun, foam injector, concrete

Id: jBejawsN4p4

Length: 18min 10sec (1090 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2019