Originally Posted by
Jim Becker
Steve, don't mix up "optimal" with "usable". Even if you have to compromise the duct path a little to fit the machine in your shop, a decent cyclone will still benefit you. With a little creativity in location you may still be able to straighten that last few feet up a little, too. I'm only able to partially picture in my mine how your joists and beams run, but when the time comes, I'm happy to help you with things.
Alternatively...you can buy our house and my shop when the time comes.
We're looking for what comes next "as we speak". LOL
Ha ha! Do all the tools that are currently in your shop come with it, you know, thrown in for free? Ha ha! Actually, the plan is for us to eventually move to an old farm house on my in-laws' property (on Burnt House Hill road, btw). There's a house, a large barn, and a nice garage, all of which were completely remodeled recently. However, we would want to keep our cars in that garage, so plans were already drawn up to build a shop next to the garage. That shop would have a floor plan of ~17x33, which in all reality isn't much larger than the shop side of my basement. However, it would not only be at ground level but also have a higher ceiling, no HVAC equipment in the middle of it, and have a small offset section that would perfectly fit a nice dust collector. It also wouldn't need to store all the extra "stuff" that's otherwise taking up space in my current basement. Of course we don't know when we're going to move there, but since it won't be anytime soon (maybe 10 years or so), no work has started on the shop itself. In the meantime, I'm jammed into my basement.
My current shop is ~16x22, with the joists running parallel to the 16' wall. The bottom of the joists are ~93" from the floor, so I do have some room above that to squeeze in the motor of a larger cyclone. However, about half of that ceiling space has HVAC ducts (returns, mostly), and of course there's a good bit of wiring and lighting in the open areas (all lights are standard LED bulbs, not tubes). My DC is currently located in the middle of a 22' wall; it's mounted to the wall with 5" piping coming out of the SDD perpendicular to that wall, with one route going up and one going down. The up route goes along an amazingly open joist and then down the other side to a hose. The down route goes into my table saw that sits directly next to the DC (that is, the right side of the saw is basically up against the DC "area").
For future DC placement I have two ideas in mind. The first is to put it where the DC is right now. I would almost certainly have to shorten the lumber rack that hangs next to the DC, but that's not a big deal. In this scenario I'm thinking I would have the inlet run parallel to the wall with the piping bending upwards and then rotating parallel to the joists; I could then run lines from there (including a drop back down for the saw and hopefully an overarm pickup). The other option I'm thinking of is putting the DC at the far end, past the lumber rack. That's effectively "outside" the shop proper, and would replace a shelving unit that currently sits in that location. However, there's more vertical space there thanks to less wiring in the way, and there's more room for the filter stack. However, it's further away from all tools, would get in the way slightly, and would require the piping and filters to block some access to part of the lumber rack (perhaps not that big of a deal). In that scenario I might have to consider a more powerful DC, but that adds to the noise, and that location is under the foyer / dining room.
But... since we're not moving anytime soon, do I really need to "overbuy" now (or within the next year or so) or could I get away with a good system that would almost certainly work well for the space it's in? Then when we move I could always upgrade to something that would definitely work well in that larger space (and have a much easier time running ductwork!).
And there was trouble, taking place...