Since my kids are getting a little older now, I'm starting to get back into the garage and am doing some pre-planning for an overall shop and dust collection layout. I'm looking at the good old HF 2HP unit, with some mods, a Thien separator and 4 inch pipe. I don't want to make this about what works best and what doesn't. I've been on Pentz's site, read till I'm dizzy and understand that in a perfect world (read: unlimited budget), I'd have a cyclone and 6 inch pipe...someday, just not now.
My question is more to the setup/location of the unit. It seems as though everyone jams their DC in the corner of their shop, out of sight, and has runs (sometimes long runs) to their machines. With a powerful cyclone this isn't an issue but with a less "competent" HF collector, your effectiveness must get pretty bad as you move down the run.
In my shop/DC planning I've got a 2 car garage and am looking at a 20-25' wall to set up the bulk of my power tools on. Running pipe, from a corner-placed DC doesn't leave a lot of suck towards the end of the line. I had a thought to liberate the HF unit from it's corner location and just set up the collector smack dab in the middle of the wall. I could use the wye at the input to send half the 4 inch going left, half going right and blast gates at the wye to open or close depending on which side I'm sucking from. This would also put it closer to any floor tools you're running flex hose from.
Instead of asking the DC to pull through 20 feet (max), the most it would have would be 10 (on each side), which seems much more manageable and effective for the smaller unit. I know that the cylcones have a left or right handed setup so they have to be in a corner. Other than because they want it out of sight, is there any reason why people don't place a smaller unit in the middle of a wall instead of the corner? Just wondering if I'm missing something in my logic or if it's just because that's the way it's always been done. Thanks for the input and sorry to be so longwinded :roll:
My question is more to the setup/location of the unit. It seems as though everyone jams their DC in the corner of their shop, out of sight, and has runs (sometimes long runs) to their machines. With a powerful cyclone this isn't an issue but with a less "competent" HF collector, your effectiveness must get pretty bad as you move down the run.
In my shop/DC planning I've got a 2 car garage and am looking at a 20-25' wall to set up the bulk of my power tools on. Running pipe, from a corner-placed DC doesn't leave a lot of suck towards the end of the line. I had a thought to liberate the HF unit from it's corner location and just set up the collector smack dab in the middle of the wall. I could use the wye at the input to send half the 4 inch going left, half going right and blast gates at the wye to open or close depending on which side I'm sucking from. This would also put it closer to any floor tools you're running flex hose from.
Instead of asking the DC to pull through 20 feet (max), the most it would have would be 10 (on each side), which seems much more manageable and effective for the smaller unit. I know that the cylcones have a left or right handed setup so they have to be in a corner. Other than because they want it out of sight, is there any reason why people don't place a smaller unit in the middle of a wall instead of the corner? Just wondering if I'm missing something in my logic or if it's just because that's the way it's always been done. Thanks for the input and sorry to be so longwinded :roll:
