January 29, 2025 - Reading time: 5 minutes

You've probably seen some small pipes on some terraces in bars or similar (especially in summer, of course) that spray a thin layer of water, and that help to cool the environment. The idea is cool, and it's something that's not expensive to prepare if you want to set something up on your terraces, pools or wherever you like.

First of all, I'm going to tell you the basics of the matter, then I'll explain how to "automate" it without the need for home automation and, finally, how you can make it as pro as possible, and link it to your home automation center.

How does a terrace nebulizer work?

It's really simple. First of all, you need a tap, which is where the water is going to be taken from. If you don't want to use a tap exclusively for this, there are splitters for sale, with which you can connect other things to that socket (like a hose).

A nebulizer is simply a rubber tube that has small heads that spray water under pressure through a very small hole. It's like when you try to plug the tip of a hose with a finger, and a very thin stream of water forms. The mechanism is the same. There's no more mystery: this tube is connected to the tap, and the stream of water will come out through the holes when we open the tap.

I have the following one, and it works well for me. There are some kits that come with the tube and you make the holes with tools, but I didn't bother. I bought this one already made, and that's it.

Buy patio mist maker on Aliexpress

Timer for mist maker

With the above you would have everything, you simply open the tap and close it when you want this to work. If you want something more advanced, without going into home automation issues, you can add a programmer, so that the mist maker is activated every X time. For example, if you are going to be in the patio/pool for several hours, you won't want this to be permanently running. With this timer you configure it to turn on and off at intervals and it works like a charm. I'll leave you two different timers, on Aliexpress and Amazon:

Buy timer for nebulizer on Amazon

Buy timer for nebulizer on Aliexpress

Zigbee irrigation programmer

And this is already going over the top. If you come here with home automation in mind, you can automate the nebulizer in a very simple way. To do this, I have used a Zigbee irrigation programmer, and I can activate and deactivate it from my Home Assistant. It is simply a timer like the one I mentioned before, but which connects via Zigbee to your system.

Specifically, I have bought the Sonoff one. You add it to your Zigbee network, and little else, it is already messing with automations, or simply, turning it on and off from your mobile phone at will.

Buy Sonoff irrigation programmer on Amazon

Buy Sonoff irrigation programmer on Aliexpress

And that's it, it's that easy! Do you have any questions? If you want me to go into more detail, leave me a comment and we'll see ;)