Dust Collection - use of flex hose


Marcus Hand

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Last year I bought a used Powermatic dust collector (it is the 3HP dual cannister one). I hooked it into my existing 4 inch PVC pipe system to get it up and running. It has been ok, but as you can imagine, not great. I’ve just gotten around to upgrading to 6 inch pipe.

I’m trying to avoid using flex hose as much as possible. Ideally, I will only need to use it at the very end of each run, when I connect to the machines. The problem is that the footprint of the DC is already pretty big and if I run hard pipe right up to the DC, it makes the footprint even bigger. What I would like to do is run hard pipe down the wall and then have about a 2-3 foot section of flex hose that connects the pipe to the DC.

How bad will this hurt the DC performance? Should I just figure out a way to run the pipe all the way to the DC?

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I would be more concerned about the hard right angle it sounds like you will take.  If the flex is to be used as a long sweep elbow between horizontal and vertical, I would say that would be better than a rigid "L".  As usual, a picture will get you better responses since we don't have to guess.

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According to this 1 foot of flex hose is equal to about 6 feet of solid hose. an s curve with sweeping bends using 2 45s would be about the same resistance as 5 feet of flex hose. This was done using the default numbers in the spread sheet linked below and modifying the 6" flex. If you'd like to get something more accurate the higher the total loss number the worse off. Don't worry so much about the exact numbers but more compare different parts.

More information can be had on that site than is available any where else.

http://billpentz.com/woodworking/cyclone/staticcalc.xls

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I can get bogged down with over analysis easily enough but the 6" flex at the dust collector is not the place to go numbers crazy.   Make the installation workshop friendly.   The 4" connections to the tools will have much more impact, try to optimize as much as you can there.  

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