Need a little education on air hoses

Thin, light, flexible is best. Some of the "better" hose is overkill. I find the yellow coiled stuff to be a PITA as it gets twisted in itself.

Get a good quality 1/4" 25' rubber hose. You will use this for almost everything. It is light and flexible and easy to move around. You will find that it is harder to find 1/4" than the standard 3/8", but it is worth it.

Next, get 1 or even 2 of the cheap 50' orange hoses they sell at HD or Lowes. Use the 1/4" in the shop, and when you need to reach outside or farther, put one or both of the cheap hoses on the compressor, then stick your 1/4" on at the business end if you are going to be working for awhile. You get the length AND the flexibility.

I often use more than one pneumatic tool at the same time, so I put a splitter at the compressor and I have 2 of the 1/4" lines that I can plug in and have both tools available at all times, without having to unplug and plug in tools. If you are going to be doing this farther away, put the splitter in the end of the orange hose and you can have the same multi-tool setup.

Have more than one so I don't have to lug the compressor around (it isn't too portable). I have a 15' which I use most of the time in the garshop. I also have 2 50' hoses. One of these gets me to the driveway for the cars & neighborhood bicycles. Connecting all of them together lets me run a nailer anywhere around the house.

If your shop gets really cold in the winter you should take that into account in deciding what type of hose to get.

Art

We work in new homes and normally have 1/4" x 50 footers hooked up. If you don't need 50' just cut them in half and get a couple of connectors.

We try about everything we see just to see if there is something better. We've pretty much settled on using 1/4" Speedair rubber hoses from Grainger. They are relatively inexpensive (I think we paid $22 for 50') and we have a Grainger locally so we just go pick them up. We find that the rubber hoses are supple enough to lay down. Since we walk over them all day they need to lay down. Some of the other rubber hoses we've tried seem to turn hard after a year or two.

We've tried the orange plastic hoses and they stay a little too stiff to suit me. Our nail salesman had some cool looking blue plastic hoses that you could see through. They were very lightweight. You could hardly tell they were hooked to your gun but they would not lay down at all. If you could hang them from the ceiling they might be okay but you couldn't walk over them. We also tried a red vinyl coated hose that wasn't too bad. They were heavy enough to lay down and the only problem was that the vinyl would crack at the fittings after some time. We would just cut the cracked end off and crimp the fitting on again.

Mike O.

This may sound like heresy, but let me suggest the following:

Go to someplace like Home Depot and buy the lowest cost 3/8" x 50 ft air hose on the shelf.

Yes, 50 ft is not a typo.

BTW, If you spend $15.00, you spent too much.

After using that hose for 6 months, you will have some very definite opinions about what kind of air hose works best for you.

Lew

I agree with Lew on this one. Seems to me that any of them will get the job done for an occasional user, and if it turns out you are a more than occasional user then you will quickly learn what best fits your needs.

For my needs, the clear blue reinforced hose works best, and I think my coil is 50'. I wanted something that was decently cheap, wouldn't mark up a wall if I get clumsy, and would coil quickly. There were probably ten other choices, but didn't want to spend too long thinking about it.

Andrew

I got a 50' rubber hose that has served for 30 years. I don't know how many of the plastic hoses will last that long. I alos have a coouple shorter hoses to get greater length when needed. 25' sounds shourt to me.

Dick

My $.25 . . . I have 3 of the 50' red rubber hoses, and one blue plastic one from HD. I have a fitting plumbed to the outside near the driveway so I can plug a hose in, rather than run it through a hole in the wall. The blue one from HD, after being left plugged in, started swelling like a bad sausage. Apparently the inner liner is not air tight, and some leaks out under the outer cover. This has never occurred with any of the rubber hoses. I also have to agree with the other posts, that the rubber hoses lay down much better, the plastic doesn't uncoil or lay down as nicely, is a little stiffer to work with(except on a very warm sunny day). My personal opinion, FWIW, is go with the good rubber hoses.

Still cannot figure out what all the various material types are but I really like the idea to buy an inexpensive one and go from there. Kind of common-sense. Thanks guys ...

Get two. Some big chunky rubber and canvas stuff that is long enough to reach "anywhere" (onto the driveway too, if that's what you need). You can semi-permanently attach this to the ceiling to run it closer to the bench if convenient. Then a short length of something light and flexible, even if it's damage-prone. Compressors are expensive, hose is cheap - it's worth putting some time and effort in at this point to get convenience in the future.

Avoid the coiled stuff - it's too springy and it'll pull tools across the bench and knock things over.

On Thu, 21 Apr 2005 04:33:22 GMT, the inscrutable Lew Hodgett spake:

That's right, Lew, and once you have bought one, you'll NEVER again buy another cheapass hose. They don't lay down, won't roll up, and are stiffer than a puritan woman on her wedding night. DAMHIKT.

The blue plastic hoses from HF are just downright tormentatious. I'm keeping these two 50-footers for OUTSIDE use.

========================================================= What doesn't kill you +

I've got a 25' 3/8" hose on a reel, with 1/2" copper pipe leading to it. I made the mistake of buying a 1/4" coiled hose to extend it's reach. There's very little air volume for most tools, coming out of that coiled hose. It's fine to pump up a bike tire, but not enough to run a die grinder and other high air volume tools. as another poster mentioned, the coiled hose is a PITA; it will knock stuff of counters/tables if you stretch it across them. A well placed reel is the most convenient way to store the hose, IMHO.

Dave

DIYGUY wrote:

I suspect I am more familiar with this topic than you are -- and I had=20 _no_ problem whatsoever.

However, I have not used that hose. Is it really that bad?

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=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

--=20 Will R. Jewel Boxes and Wood Art

I have to agree with the 3/8" advice. I didn't realize the difference was so significant until I changed from 1/4" for a sprayer I was using. The sprayer needs at least 7 cfm and the 1/4" just wouldn't quite do it.

Max D.

Just a note on air hose use:

Rubber, heavy, durable somewhat stiff. PCV, lighter, prone to snags, pinches and punctures. Pre-coiled - PITA - short ones can be convenient.

My new favorite: Do a search for PUR-hose. I am now a confirmed believer.

Dave

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you used puritan oil instead of mazola?

On Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:24:48 -0000, the inscrutable snipped-for-privacy@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) spake:

Hayell, that warn't no Crisco Party, neighbor.

========================================================= What doesn't kill you +