Finding the Perfect Dust Collection Hose For Your Workshop
The best dust collection hose for most home shops is flexible clear PVC hose in 4-inch diameter: it resists clogs, lets you see blockages, and connects to standard fittings. Use smooth-wall PVC pipe for long straight runs and keep flexible hose short, because its ridged interior cuts airflow noticeably.
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Dust Collection
Dust collection can be a surprisingly complicated area of woodworking. Sucking up the dust is imperative in keeping your workshop clean and ensuring that you clear the space of debris, which may be a tripping hazard or fire hazard.
Dust collecting is all about designing a system that works to make clean-up convenient and efficient. Of course, the dust collector itself is important, but that’s just one part of an overall system. Many use hosing to extend their dust collector’s reach and make cleaning multiple areas a breeze. In this article, we’re focused on the hose and duct system.
Why Is Hosing Important?
A dust collection system is really just the sum of its parts. Of course, it starts with the dust collector itself. We’ve written about dust collectors more extensively in other articles, and it makes up the backbone of your dust collection system. The dust collector determines how much power and suction will work to clean up the dust and debris.
letsFix PVC Pipe 1″
Additionally, the collectors store the dust using various filters, bags, and separation systems. It’s a bit much to get into all the ins and outs of these machines here, but just know that any dust collecting system starts with buying the right dust collector for your shop.
But this article is about hosing! So let’s get right into it. Hosing is the part of your dust collection system, which extends the range of your dust collector. Attaching a hose allows you to reach various parts of your workshop with ease. The overall system can get pretty extensive.
Some woodshops use a single portable dust collector that they can move around the shop, using the hose to suck up dust and debris where it’s needed. However, other more extensive setups utilize hosing to create systems of ducts. These ducts allow you to reach different hoses all-around your workshop to different areas or machines. This makes cleaning a breeze. Each area has its own cleaning hose, which you can use whenever you need to.
Of course, creating this system is another story. Finding the proper hosing is important but understanding how the hosing works and setting it up correctly is just as important.
Next, we’ll explain the different types of hoses and how they all work together to create an easy, efficient, and powerful dust collecting system.
Three Types of Hose
Designing an effective dust collection system that reaches all areas of your workshop takes proper planning. You need to consider where you need to collect dust and extend the ducts to these areas. Also, consider that more ducts attached to the dust collector mean more suction is potentially lost (although we will explain ways to minimize this loss).
Metal “Hoses”
The first type of “hosing” for ductwork is not much of a hose but serves the same purpose. Metal piping is the ultimate material for minimizing suction loss along the length of the tube. Its rigid and air-tight nature means minimal suction is lost, and you can extend a tube far away from the dust collector itself.
SELLERS360 3Way 1 inch PVC Fitting Elbow
Of course, there are a few important tradeoffs with this piping. Firstly, it’s costly. It’s probably the most expensive option. Second, it’s inflexible. It’s basically only good for reaching in straight lines. If you need to go around corners or attach it right up on a machine, you’ll need elbows and joints.
Flexible Plastic Hosing
Flexible hosing is built in an “accordion” style to be extended, bent, and flexed. If you need hosing to reach around corners and attach to machines, this is the type of hosing that you’ll need.
The main tradeoff with this type of hosing is that it loses the most suction across the tubing length. The twists and turns and the extra surface area on the interior of the pipe mean that it won’t hold the same power throughout. You should really only use this material in areas where you need flexibility.
PVC Piping
Last but not least, PVC piping. PVC piping carries many of the benefits of metal piping, but it’s a lot less expensive! It doesn’t carry suction quite as well, but it’s close! Additionally, PVC piping is often very easy to fit together without any leaks.
Elbows and Gates
The hosing is important, but equally important are the components that fit the hosing together and allow you to create efficient ducts while minimizing suction lost and maximizing power along these ducts.
Woodstock W1142 4-Inch Aluminum Blastgate
First up are the elbows. Elbows allow you to attach more than one hose to the duct system. Additionally, they also allow for bends and turns within the ducts. Elbows are crucial if you want to create a duct system that reaches various areas of your workshop.
The key consideration here is that each elbow represents a loss of suction. The more areas the dust collector needs to pull the air through, the less power it can provide to each hose. Additionally, the tighter the corner, the more suction is lost. For example, a 90-degree turn loses more suction than a 45-degree turn.
Blast gates are very important as well. These fit around the joints in your duct system and allow you to close off certain ducts if you aren’t using them. This allows you to maximize the suction on the hoses that are in use.
Putting It All Together
Now that we have covered the main fittings and types of hoses you will require for a home dust collecting system; you need to put it all together. The key to building an effective system is to consider one important tradeoff – convenience vs. power.
The more hoses, joints, and length that you add to your duct system, the more suction that will be inevitably lost along the line. You can compensate for this difference with a more powerful dust collector or some of the suction-saving tips we’ve mentioned above, but it all needs to be planned to consider your overall needs.
You need to build a system that allows you to clean your workshop with ease but doesn’t compromise the quality of the actual clean (i.e., how much dust actually gets sucked up). It’s a delicate balance, but it’s achievable by paying close attention to all the parts involved.