HF dust collector...will this work?

[Thomas Colson]

Presently, using a shop vac for dust collection on the planer, band saw, router, and table saw. Which sorta works. End of day clean up is using the leaf blower. I usually work with all 3 garage doors open and two high cfm fans going. Live in TN, there's only a few weeks in the winter where I can't work in there. Not conditioned, 40 feet long, 20 wide, 12 foot floor to rafters, no ceiling, just rafters and roof trusses, tin roof.

My problem is at the planer. Currently I'm on it all day (weekends), destroying my blades on 100 year old old growth reclaimed oak. Because I'm taking such small passes, I'm having to empty the vac literally every 10 minutes. There is a mountain of sawdust behind my shop. Not that the vac is doing that good of a job anyway.

I'm not looking for air purification. I generally wear a full face mask, and like I said, the two shop fans and the leaf blower do a good job sending mushroom clouds of dust to the neighbors ! My more immediate need is better dust and chip evacuation on the planer. So my thoughts are an un-modified HF 2 HP dust collector (no longer eligible for the 20% coupon), mounted on rafters above planer, a hose drop to the planer and band saw (next to each other), and a 4" pvc pipe about 25 feet over to saw/router, with another hose drop. Forget the filters and bags, I'll just straight pipe it outside which is where it's going now. I'd wire it into the light circuit, which is all LED, so still good on amps even at motor start up. No bends in the PVC. Been looking at chip separator doo hickeys, but floor space is a valuable commodity in my shop, and I'm just going for the cheapest and quickest way to get dust and chips directed outside that don't involve emptying things or wheeling space-hogging things around to each tool.

Is the HF 2 HP gonna work in this scenario? I realize that there's no way it runs at 2 HP, of 1500 CFM, but I'm also not rolling in the loot$$$ either.

[ChrisA Edwards]

It will work, but I think I'd go with either 6" Schedule 20 PVC pipe or at minimum 5" metal pipe.

I have a 1.5HP Jet, modified to be a two stage. I initially plumbed the system with the 6" PVC. When I moved house, I went with the 5".

I use it off all my tools. The tools that created the faster volume of chips, my 12" J/P and my Shopfox W1812 Moulder, my DC setup has no issues keeping up.

But you may need to plug the DC into a dedicated 20A circuit.

[Jim Dwight]

I have the 2hp HF DC on it's own 20A circuit. It goes through a super dust deputy and then goes outside. I use 5 inch metal pipe as far as possible but have to go to 4 inch flex or smaller to attach to the tool. I think it works well. My jointer planner attachment is at the end of the run and goes through a long piece of 4 inch flex. It still gets the vast majority of the dust and chips. I thus believe your setup will work.

[Thomas Colson]

Thanks. Good point on the 5 inch, do I convert to 4" and 2" right at the tool, or can I do it in the rafters at the start of the hose drop?

[ChrisA Edwards]

I have a Wye splitter at the end of my 5" main pipe. Each Wye has a 4"and a 2.5" blast gate. From there I go to the machine with either a 4" or 2.5" flexible hose or sometime both, i.e. my router table has a 4" dust port below and a 2.5" at the fence.

My 2.5" flex hose is 20' long. I also use it to vacuum the floor and tools of wood chips and saw dust from other operations.

Even with that length, it has no problem picking up wood debris.

[Chris Schoenthal]

I've had the HF for years and put a Wynn filter on it and it will work great for the suction that you need.
One thing to consider is the bag or drum size that the chips are going into. The HF bag is ~20x30 and will hold more than your shop vac, but it sounds like you will still be emptying it frequently and they aren't easy to empty.
Consider some sort of separator and larger drum. There are some for your shop vac and much larger for the DC. I have mine to a SuperDD with a 55 gal drum.

You also didn't say which planer you run. I have the DeWalt 735 and because of the incorporated blower, I just have a 4" hose and bag connected to it and not connected to the DC.

[Thomas Colson]

Jet 15", an older one, same Jet 14" bandsaw, both with 4" ports. Delta 36725 saw, and a woodpecker wonder fence on my Bosch 1617, which is surprisingly effective at directing 99$ of dust into the top-mounted port. If I was going to do anything different than in my OP, I'd add some sort of hood over the saw to deal with dust it throws at my face.

[Todd Mason-Darnell]

I've had the HF for years and put a Wynn filter on it and it will work great for the suction that you need.
One thing to consider is the bag or drum size that the chips are going into. The HF bag is ~20x30 and will hold more than your shop vac, but it sounds like you will still be emptying it frequently and they aren't easy to empty.
Consider some sort of separator and larger drum. There are some for your shop vac and much larger for the DC. I have mine to a SuperDD with a 55 gal drum.

You also didn't say which planer you run. I have the DeWalt 735 and because of the incorporated blower, I just have a 4" hose and bag connected to it and not connected to the DC.

What he said.

I have the HF as well. Emptying the bag is a major PIA. A great day in my shop is when I added a trash can with $35 "cyclone separator lid" on it (https://www.amazon.com/DCT-Cyclone-C...s%2C227&sr=8-6)

Made a significant improvement.

I have since upgraded to s Super Dust Deputy--another great day in the shop

[Keith Outten]

All of the DC pipe in my shop is thin wall 4" PVC drain pipe installed about eight feet off of the floor with drops at each machine. My 1.5hp Grizzly DC does a great job and no problems taking all of the chips away from my planer, CNC Router and edge saner which is the farthest away from the vac. No bags, no filters just blow it outside the shop wall outside.

I purchased a HF 2HP DC for the CNC Router at CNU and used the same setup. It worked great and still does to this day.

[William Hodge]

It's a good idea to leave the lights on one circuit, and put everything else on other circuits. If you trip a breaker, having the lights go out is a problem.

I run a little blower like that on a variety of machines. I put the blower next to the wall, with a 10' run of 6" metal pipe down to a trailer. locating the planer closer to the source and further from the outlet may change the ability of the blower to keep the exhaust pipe clear. My blower has pretty good suction, but the heavier sawdust and chips don't flyfar out the end of the pipe.

[Jamie Buxton]

I have a 2 1/2 horse cyclone, and my ducts are all standard HVAC snaplock. Snaplock is readily available, and affordable. Some woodworkers report that their cyclones have collapsed snaplock duct, but mine has been fine for fifteen years now. I think there's two reasons. First, I don't have a 3-hp sucker, so the maximum vacuum produced in my system is a bit lower. Second, and most important, I don't have blast gates that can be all closed off at the same time. That is, the sucker cannot pull a full vacuum. So my suggestion to the OP is to use snaplock, and no blast gates. Plug the duct on to your bandsaw or planer, and suck away.

[Richard Coers]

Build a tiny lean-to outside and put the dust collector out there.

[Thomas Colson]

Oh dear, walked into the shop just now, and there sits my 6 inch jointer. Forget to mention dust collection needs for that too. Poor little thing, hope it's not mad I forgot to mention it in OP!

[Jim Dwight]

I reduce to 4 inch after the blast gate. I spent a little more on 5 inch blast gates because they introduce a little restriction so I did not want 4 inch ones. 5 inchers probably leak more, however, due to the larger size. Hard to know what is best but I'm happy with my setup.