Shop Re-arranged Yet Again

[ssmith1627]

Took me a few weeks but finally got the new setup in place. I started out with some fairly long runs from my HF DC with 4" S&D pipe but it just didn't work for me with the bandsaw and planer at the end of the longest run.

In a 1 1/2 car garage type space there's just no easy way to arrange all this stuff. The best thing I came up with is the DC against one wall and all the major tools arranged in a semi-circle around it. Getting a setup where one tool doesn't interfere with the use of another is pretty tough. In order to rip anything longer than 8 feet on the table saw, I'd have to move the bandsaw. In order to bandsaw anything longer than about 4 feet, I'd have to open the garage door. Crosscutting a big sheet of plywood would be interesting.......but I plan to add a small outfeed table to the back of my BT3100 cabinet.

It's not pretty but so far it does work well.

http://ssmith1627.myphotoalbum.com/v...lbum01&page=11

Steve

[LarryG]

Steve, are you saying that with your previous layout the S&D runs were too long for the DC to work effectively?

Reason for asking is that I just laid in a stock of S&D pipe and fittings, in anticipation of plumbing my "new" shop. Others here have reported good success with the HF 2HP DC (what I have too) with S&D runs up to 40' (IIRC). Yours is the first negative report I've seen, if I'm reading you right.

How long were your longest branches? And how much of that was pipe and how much was hose?

[ejs1097]

Your shop is about 3 times the size of mine. Looks like you have it arranged pretty good. Nice job

[ssmith1627]

I would think it's a combination of the elbows required to get those long runs up to the ceiling and back down to the tool.

I had runs that were about 7 feet up to the ceiling......10-12 feet across......and then back down 5-6 feet to tool level and a few feet to the tool itself. So there might be 4 elbows in that and at least one Y to split out to different machines.

I never felt like I had enough air flow at the bandsaw -- that fine dust just didn't get collected. And the pipe for the planer simply clogged at that end of the run. It worked great for a while but it totally clogged up after a couple weeks of use.

My runs were more direct to the table saw because they didn't go up to the ceiling and across -- so they worked just fine. My run to the router table and floor sweep were about the same and had good results. It was that long run up to the ceiling, across and back down to the planer that was the biggest issue and I couldn't fix that without totally rearranging my shop.

With this new setup, I was face jointing some pieces of walnut over the weekend with very good results. I have an HF jointer which doesn't have perfect dust collection but I hardly had anything on the floor beneath the machine. I won't enjoy that one hose that runs very near my bandsaw but other than that, I think this is the best setup I can get with the space I have right now.

Steve

[ironhat]

At the risk of repeating myself, yet again, Steve's comments on the long runs plus the elbows and drops is why I based my design as I did. I kept the runs just high enough off the floor to be level with my HF DC inlet. I did subsequently add a separator but it's a gentle climb. The down side is that for a tool like the TS, which sits in the middle of the shop, the hose is always a safety issue. Since I have the saw toward the back of a narrow (14') shop I'm not back that way very much anyway.