Received great comments on haning the air filter unit..now on to the next question - compressor lines
Have small (8 gallon, 120 PSI rated) compressor, would like to run an airline up the wall, and overhead to the center of my garage, connection to a reel mounted on the ceiling (11'). Total length of run from compressor to the reel is around 30' or so. The reel itslef has
25' of hose, so total run end to end, at most, would be 50'-60'.
Know the compressor is small, so is my budget, does it have enough "oomph" to produce/maintain pressure at max run - 60 feet?
How much pressure do your tools require? If all you are using the compressor for is to blow off dust then you will have no issues. Pressure and volume make tools work. A dust nozzle requires some pressure and some volume. Painting a car with a spray gun might require a lot of volume and modest pressure like 50 psi. Running a dual action sander might require a lot of volume. Maybe 5 cfm at 90+ psi. Some cheap tools require a lot of air and sometimes expensive tools require less air.
Every fitting and every turn reduces the volume and pressure a little bit. Undersized pipe causes problems.
The answer to your question depends on lots of things:
-Pumping rate of compressor at 120 psi
-ID of hose
-ID of the line you will run to it.
-How much air flow you need at the end of the hose.
-Pressure you need at the end of the hose.
----and probably a half dozen other things I forgot.
The pumping rate is key. You could have a 120 psi compressor that supplies 1 cu ft per minute or it could supply 10 cfm. I think you'd want at least 4 to 6 cfm at 120 psi.
Okay, so the compressor is "rated at 120 psi". What are the on and off pressures set at? If I was thinking "120 psi" I'd want a system that turned on at 120 psi and off at something higher, like 140 psi, so I'd actually HAVE 120 to use. If that is true, and if the highest pressure you need is, let's say 90 psi, you have some "room" for a pressure drop along the system.
If you need more volume at pressure than your compressor can supply, although you said you can't afford a bigger compressor, you might get bigger receiving tank. If you do this, make sure it's rated for the pressure you intend to use. This way you'd get a longer duty cycle between "waits" for the compressor to catch up. ----Again, depends a LOT on what you want to do.
You need to identify the tools that you want to use.
With 3/8" hose and 1/2" lines to the reel, you'll have no problems with impact tools, but it might be touch and go with a high powered grinder running in more or less continuous mode.
The HP of the compressor has nothing to do with having enough "oomph" to move air that far. 1/2 HP or 30 HP it just depends on how much air you want at the other end of the line, then size the line diameter accordingly. In your case 1/2" plumbing copper will do, 1/2" black pipe too. On the cheap, a
1/2 air hose from Harbor Freight would probably do fine too.
The length of the hose could be 1000 feet and would not affect pressure. Volume/flow could be affected however. As long as you are only using the air to blow dust, fill tires or operate nail guns you should be able to run just about any length that you want.
I did the research and ran the calculations just a couple of weeks ago because I ran an air line about 100 feet from my shop to the center of my garage ceiling. Pressure is the same everywhere in the system until the air starts flowing. Then the friction of the air moving along the sides of the pipe reduces the pressure a little for each inch it travels. The pressure drop from all those inches adds up and the total pressure drop depends on flow rate and pipe size and pipe length. If you'll use 1/2" pipe on a run of less than 100 feet, the pressure drop is negligible at the flow rates your compressor can maintain. In other words you'll get the same performance at the end of the line that you would get if you hooked directly to the compressor. In fact, 100 feet of 1/2" pipe will add about 1 gallon of capacity to your tank - not that you'll notice. PVC pipe is out because it shatters when it fails, but you can use polypropylene or polyethylene water pipe. It's usually black, and comes in a roll.
DonkeyHody "Every man is my superior in that I can learn from him." - Thomas Carlyle
forgot to mention that the compressor only has a 1/4" nip, so does that mean having a 1/2" main run buys me anything, given I will have to have a reducer at the compressor itself, or does it matter?
3/4" is way overkill for a home shop with less than 100 foot run. 1/2" pipe will flow any hand tool most of us have laying around. Do some research online and see what the CFM ratings are at different lengths. The last chart I saw gave 1/2" pipe, at 100 feet of length, 54 CFM at 100 PSI, probably good enough! Years back in a shop I had I ran 1/2" black pipe. I put a pressure gauge at the end of the run, where the most work was. No tool I owned at the time would even make the gauge pointer wiggle when the tool was run. Greg
What does "floating my boat" have to do with realistic air line sizing?? I was jut stating the fact that 3/4" is over kill, which it is. The OP is looking for a budget way to run air lines in his shop, why go 3/4" when 1/2" is oversized to begin with? I guess if 3/4" is better, than 2" is way better yet? Where does it stop? Greg
The 1/2" main buys you a lot. Many people assume that if one part of the pipe is small, then the rest of it might as well be small too because only so much air can get through the small part anyway. Their thinking is erroneous.
The air can move through a very short section of small pipe at great speed. But every inch that it moves along at great speed slows it down a little from friction against the walls. If the whole length is small, the friction losses for all those inches add up and the air will move much slower.
However, if the pipe is big enough, the air inside is just loafing along, not moving fast enough for the friction along the sides to be significant. Then, the friction losses for the long section of big pipe become insignificant, so you only have a few inches where it's moving really fast. You can live with the friction losses for a few inches.
By the way, if you remember (A=PI R Square), the 1/2" pipe is really FOUR times larger in volume than the same length of 1/4" pipe. Therefore, the air is moving at least four times as fast in the 1/4" pipe as it is in the 1/2" pipe. In fact you get an additional advantage from the bigger pipe because the air at the center of the pipe can go faster than the air around the edges. The value of this phenomenon increases with pipe size. Maybe more than you really wanted to know, but some of this is counter-intuitive.
DonkeyHody "Even an old blind hog finds an acorn every now and then."
Realistic depends on use. We have 6" in our shop. Three large tanks too.
The larger line also acts as a reservoir of air so there are advantages under some circumstances. Doesn't make a difference for a couple of taps on a brad nailer, it will with an air wrench.
forgot to mention that the compressor only has a 1/4" nip, so does that mean having a 1/2" main run buys me anything, given I will have to have a reducer at the compressor itself, or does it matter?
Yeah, that smaller nipple restricts the flow. Larger pope/hose on the other side will only give you a split second more volume. The 1/2" on the other side will not add but it will certainly help to not be as restrictive as 1/4" pipe would be.
Looking back at all the posts so far, and the fact thay you say your output is , "1/4" nip", (I assume that means a 1/4" pipe fitting), I suggest that before you install all that pipe, you make darned sure that the compressor will handle all the tools you intend to run from it in the future, right from the tank. I say this because that 1/4" outlet makes me think that the compressor setup may not be very powerful; ie: it may only deliver 1 or 2 cfm at rated pressure.
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