We’ve been slowly plugging away at our garage clean up effort. There are a couple projects I don’t think we mentioned yet that are post worthy. I just finished adding a compressed air system that allows me to relocate the 30 gallon compressor from the garage into the basement. I’m also adding an electrical outlet so I can move my battery chargers to the work bench. Granted, these aren’t terribly exciting projects, but if you’re not familiar with this stuff, you could probably learn a thing or two.
Let’s start with the air compressors. I have two of them. If you don’t know much about air compressors, we did a post on them a while back. I have a small, portable pancake compressor that’s perfect for nail guns and it’s size allows me to throw it in my car to work at friends’ or family’s houses. I usually keep that small compressor in the basement with the rest of my woodworking tools. The larger air compressor is more geared toward working on cars. Its large tank size means I can use it for impact wrenches to take off the lug nuts from tires, for example. It’s more suited to air tools that require long duration bursts of air, whereas the pancake compressor can only deliver really short bursts of air like for shooting a nail.
The larger compressor has been in the garage, since it’s more for garage tools. It hasn’t been a huge problem hanging out in there, but it’s been in the way a bit. We come close to hitting it every time we pull the car into the garage. Here’s a picture from the fall with the compressor making a cameo near the steps.
One of the primary goals for this garage clean up effort is to get as much crap off the floor as possible. So our solution for the compressor, which gets covered in cobwebs in the garage, is to move it to the basement. Since I still need access to that large air source, I’m going to run a pipe from the garage to the basement. I’ll use the same fittings that are on my air tools and the compressor to make the pipe basically act like an extension cord for the air. This solution will free up some nice garage floor space.
The first thing I did was locate where I want the pipe to stick out from the wall in the garage. I thought a location underneath the workbench would be ideal.
Now onto the pipe. After doing some internet searches, it seems like the best pipe option to use is either copper or iron pipe. Copper looks lovely, but it’s expensive and I’d need to solder all of my joints, which would be a major pain. Iron pipe seemed like the best option. I believe it’s strong enough to handle the roughly 100 psi of air that I’ll be running through it. Iron pipe is relatively inexpensive and the fittings are all readily available at every hardware store around. Iron pipe is usually used for natural gas.
I’ll start the pipe work by drawing the pipe layout on a piece of paper and getting a shopping list together. When all the parts are bought, I’ll lay them out on the floor to make sure I have everything.
You can see the pipe assembly consists of some straight runs, an elbow, a tee, a few reducers and the air compressor fittings. It’s about $50 in parts.
I’ll start the installation by locating and drilling a hole from the basement ceiling into the garage space. Then I stick the 18″ long piece through the hole with the elbow already attached to the pipe. The pipe sections get joined together with a couple of pipe wrenches. Pipe wrenches are great tools to have around. You usually need two wrenches for this type of work since you need one wrench to hold the pipe and the other to tighten the fitting. I also use both pipe tape and some pipe joint compound when I join two pieces together.
Below is a picture of the pipe leaving the basement going into the garage. The pipe will need to be held in place with some pipe clamps.
Once the pipe is through the wall, the rest is pretty simply. I connect the longest pipe, which runs from the elbow up top down to where the compressor will be located. The longest pipe will have a tee fitting on the end.
You can see from the photo that the compressor connects to the pipe with an air hose that I already owned. The hose is long and flexible and will give me the freedom to move the compressor where I need to. The pipe also has a section that is point towards the floor and it has a little drain valve. Compressed air tends to get moisture in it, especially in the humid summer time. That vertical drop in the pipe allows any condensed water to collect without getting back to the compressor. The little brass valve on the end can be opened and the water can drip out.
The pipe is also secured to the wall with a pipe clamp. The wood is fastened to the concrete wall with some Tapcon masonry screws.
So, here’s how this will work. When I need some compressed air in the garage, I can tap into a compressed air fitting in the garage wall. Here’s what’s sticking out of the wall now. Notice my boo-boo hole. Whoops.
I can then go into the basement and turn on the compressor to give me the air I need. I don’t like to keep the compressor filled with air when I’m not using it, so normally, the pipe won’t be pressurized. I also have the option of using the big compressor in the basement if I ever wanted to. All I have to do is unplug the red hose from the pipe.
It’s worth noting that my compressor runs off of electric. I could never move a gas powered compressor into my basement since the exhaust fumes would be poisonous. Also, I need to add some fire-blocking foam around the hole I drilled into the garage. I’ll show what that looks like when I add the outlet.
Down the road, when we finish the basement, I’m going to have a workshop area. I can always add another tee on the black pipe and run another couple branches around the basement to provide air to various workstations. This whole compressed air system for a garage, basement or workshop is pretty common among carpenters. It’s a convenient little feature that saves us some garage space.
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