Help me choose a wall mounted air compressor regulator and desiccant setup!

[DavidLee]

I went down to HF and thought I could use their inexpensive wall mounted air regulator since the 10 year old one on my porter cable air compressor finally bit the big one. The HF POS was defective right out of the box. Its going back tomorrow. I guess going cheap was real stupid on my part. I am looking for nice setup for for about $200 to $300. Help!

 

[Tooljunkie]

Personally i would stay away from dessicant for everyday use.
When you forget to drain it becomes a big problem. One i had i drained often, but it corroded and caused chunks of rust to pollute my air lines.

My solution was to run lines so they go straight up,any accumulating water makes it back into pressure tank. Huge difference. Very rare i get moisture in my blast cabinet.

 

[DavidLee]

i still want the capacity to use one.

 

[YY1]

My supply lines run straight down, with a purge valve on the bottom.

The one I use for painting has a T about half way down, and I have a small HF desiccant filter in that line as well as a fine regulator.

No water in the paint (I do open the purge valve first) and very rarely need to purge since the supply climbs up one wall, then down the other.

IIRC that setup, minus the actual line from the tank was under $20.

The only minor issue is that the desiccant causes the psi to be lower than the regulator is set at, so some adjusting up is necessary.

I could probably swap positions, but the regulator also had a water trap and that's what I was thinking when I set it up. I've never seen water in that trap.

The line with the hose attached is a regular pressure tap, controlled by the main regulator on the compressor.

It's nice to have both available with out messing with anything to switch between.

 

[YY1]

That mini-regulator is pre-HF chinese, so I can't complain about it's service.

 

[jbc426]

I went down to HF and thought I could use their inexpensive wall mounted air regulator since the 10 year old one on my porter cable air compressor finally bit the big one. The HF POS was defective right out of the box. Its going back tomorrow. I guess going cheap was real stupid on my part. I am looking for nice setup for for about $200 to $300. Help!

I did some research on the web some years ago and found a simple way to remove so much water from the air lines that I've never even gotten one drop of moisture in my water trap.

As wisely mentioned above, run the beginning and end of your air line vertically with a ball valve near the bottom of them.

Here's where the important part is. Install 50 feet of galvanized water pipe sloping up at a gentle angle between the two vertical pipes. Mine slopes one direction for 1/2 the length and the other direction for the opposite end. My pipe zig-zags up the wall like 2 Z's stacked atop each other.

The pipes cool the hot compressed air allowing the moisture it's carrying to condense on the insides of the pipes and run back to the lower vertical pipes to be manually drained occasionally. The water trap is installed above the final vertical pipe.

A few pictures should help the above make better sense.