Budget Air Dryer

G

Grabbit

I only plan on painting 1-2 completes and I'm having a hard time working out a cost effective way to dry the air coming off my compressor. I plan to run PEX up the wall and across to the other side of my garage but I don't think I can afford or necessarily want to run a bunch of copper or steel tubes to condense the water in the air. I know the metal will cool better but its spendy. This brought me to another idea, maybe a temporary air dryer?....... What about submersing a 50ft HF air hose or even pex in a plastic trash can filled with ice water? I could run a trap or maybe one vertical pipe after that to drain any water out. I broke the budget on the air compressor and now my other expenditures have to go through the front office. :) Do you think this will work? I also plan on running a filters and a desiccant snake.
 
The fundamental problem with plastic or PEX pipe is its thermal conductivity. Here are the ratings for various tubing materials, measured in Watts per meter in Kelvin degrees:

Thermal Conductivity of Tubing Materials

Piping...........Material.......................................W/mK
CPVC.............Chlorinated Polyvinyl Chloride.................0.14
PVC...............Polyvinyl Chloride................................0.19
PE.................Polyethelene.....................................0.38
PEX...............Cross-linked High-density Polyethylene....0.51
Steel.............Carbon Steel.....................................54
Copper..........Copper............................................401

Any of the plastic pipe, even PEX is a better insulator than conductor. The copper is so much more effective that you could get by using less pipe. Lowe's sells 10-foot lengths of 1/2" rigid copper pipe for $14.98 (Type L -rated at 1242 psi) and $10.57 (Type M -rated at 850 psi). Think of it like this -- two sprayable quarts of epoxy is going to cost you about $70. Water in your air lines can turn that epoxy into a mess of fisheyes or bubbles. $70 for 40-feet of copper and fittings can prevent that from happening.

I saved some money by using galvanized pipe in my amateur home system. It was discussed in this thread, starting on page 9: http://www.spiuserforum.com/showthread.php?1537-epoxy-arg-!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/page9
 
Got a refrigerator in your shop? A coil of copper tubing inside the fridge would do a nice job of condensing any moisture...watch out for Freon passages when drilling any holes..
 
Well after trying different water removal methods I gave up and took the plunge on the Harbor Fright refrigerated air dryer. Had lots of good feed back on the unit here and other places online. Just completed a complete paint job on a '65 Malibu SS and it worked flawlessly, and that was under some pretty high outside air temperature and humidity conditions. It might seem expensive, but it doesn't take up much space and there's very minimal maintenance (just keep the coil clean). 20% off coupons are pretty easy to come by so it helps takes a bit out of the price. Since it was the first time using it, I had one of those orange motorguad filters at the gun. The dryer works so well, after two days of spraying, the purple descant was still purple when I was done (turns pink when it's saturated with moisture).

http://www.harborfreight.com/compressed-air-dryer-40211.html


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i have a plastic barrel with a pvc coil in it . filled with well water and setting in the back of the shop. i use it to cool the air to my blasting hood. when we git the compressor moved it will plumb underground to the shop in pvc then into a moisture trap .
 
Love the advice in the owners manual: "Note to professional installer: The shut-offs (not included) for both the air inlet and air
outlet, must be plumbed below the horizontal piping containing the bypass valve. See FIGURE
1."

Umm if you were a professional installer you would not need to be told this stuff because you learned it during your pipefitter apprenticeship, ROFLOL.

Better wording would have been" for all the non professional types The shut-offs (not included) for both the air inlet and air
outlet, must be plumbed below the horizontal piping containing the bypass valve. See FIGURE 1"
 
Man $400 is cheap for a refrigerated air dryer but waaaay beyond my budget. I do have an old 50s GE fridge in the garage that is my beer frisge, I would hate to hack it up. Can anyone chime in with experience on a copper coil in a fridge?
 
if you use a coil in a barrel you have to have to have a drain in the bottom or you will have a coil full of water. when blasting in summer i dump a couple bags of ice into it .
 
Arrowhead;37697 said:
Well after trying different water removal methods I gave up and took the plunge on the Harbor Fright refrigerated air dryer.
Click to expand...

What other removal methods did you try? I just got a line on a Hankison air dryer for cheap, waiting to hear back from the guy.

Honestly at this point the copper lines with some traps seems to have the best bang for the buck.
 
Shines method works super well I used it until I came across a cheap mechanical dryer, I still run from the pump head thru 50' of copper outside under the eave then into the tanks the to the dryer. I found my dryer on eBay, it was a steal, check out the la-man dryers, they work very well.
 
Grabbit;37728 said:
What other removal methods did you try?
Click to expand...

Honestly not that many, mostly cheap solutions that didn't work very well, or only during the winter months when the air was dry so it didn't take much to remove any moisture. Yea, the dryer is an expensive solution but minimal maintenance and I don't have to remember to do anything but turn it on. When your spraying thousands of dollars worth of primers, colors and clear on one project, it's cheap insurance. There have been plenty of things I spent a lot of money on in the past that I regretted but this wasn't one of them.
 
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