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Here is his reply which I hope you find constructive
Organ builders go to a lot of trouble to minimise the blower noise. Even so, it is not difficult to tell whether the organ blower in a church is on. Blame the ears, which have a range of around 125dB. Organ blower designers take the following measures: Carefully balance the fan and motor to minimise vibration. Suspend the Motor-Fan assembly from a metal frame, using springs (the spring blower-mass resonant frequency is set to be well away from the fan rotation frequency). Place the assembly in a box made from thick plywood, lined with thick felt, and sitting on "acoustic feet". Use plain bearings lubricated with light machine oil. Acoustically decouple the Motor-Fan assembly from the distribution ducts, using corrugated couplings. Place the Bowerr on a solid floor to avoid a "soundboard effect".
As you can see, there is a lot of design work in these systems. I play the organ, and would find a noisy blower irritating. Don't buy one without hearing it run.
I would wait for an organ blower to come up on eBay. Alternatively, a web search for "redundant church organs" may turn something up.
The main suppliers of organ blowers are: Watkins and Watson, British Organ Blowers (BOB), and Discus.
You can pass my contact details to your correspondent if you wish.
Hope this helps.
Hope all is well with you and yours. All OK here.
Best wishes,
Keith.
Feel free to PM me if you would like Keith's email addy to discuss anything directly.[/quote]
Many thanks to you and Keith.
Keith is talking in terms of "doing it properly", I am trying to do it on the cheap, having already spent more than I ought to on the project.
Having watched organs, and parts thereof on ebay for some years, blowers don't turn up very often, and a proper organ blower would be overkill for the small ( 3 1/2 octave, 2 rank) organ I am building anyway.
I need to decide whether to take a gamble on a bouncy castle blower or similar, or stick with my original plan of foot blowing.
Many thanks,
Rob