Dust Collection System #1: Dust Collection Duct Work

I’ve been working on putting together a dust collection system for my garage/workshop. I couldnt turn down the great deal on the Harbor Freight 2 HP dust collector and then of course since I saved so much I just had to make up for it by throwing on a Wynn cartridge filter.

I was having a hard time deciding on 6”, 5” or 4” duct for the ducting system. The HF dust collector has a 5” Impeller plate opening so going with 6” didnt seem to make sense as the system would be constrained by where it necks down to that 5” opening and going with 4” seemed too small for main lines. I had finally decided that 5” would make the most sense and started researching the best place to buy metal ducting.

After a lot research I finally came across Penn State Industries. The prices quoted on their website are lower than anyone else I checked, but even better, if you just email them the list of what you want, they come back with a quote that is substantially lower than what the internet pricing shows. Then they ended up invoicing me at price that was even lower than that. Total internet cost from a couple of others for what I wanted was approx. $1200. Internet cost from Penn was approx. $1000 but they ended up invoicing me $688 plus freight. Best of all, they only charged me $79 to ship all the stuff from Philly to my house in OC Cali which is actually cheaper than the sales tax I would have paid if I bought it local (and dont get me started on Cali taxes). Last, they will also take a look at your plans and make suggestions.

The above pricing was for 6” ducting with reducers down to 4” and 4” blast gates for each machine connection. The reason I ended up with 6” was that when I mentioned my dilema in deciding what size ducting to use, the casual answer was, why dont you go 6” and just change the impeller plate? “Huh? You can do that?” was my response. The answer is yes, they have a 14” impeller plate that fits the HF dust collector and has a 6” inlet opening. Cost is a whopping $15. It isnt a slam dunk because it does require drilling new mounting holes since the new impeller plate is slightly larger than the old one but not a major deal. Oh and for those who are very anal, the impeller plate color is red instead of the HF green but what the heck, I kind of like the two tone look.

Ok, now the next step is to try and put the whole thing together.

Jeff

-- Jeff, SoCal