[59 wagon man]

hope the pics explain it good enough sorry but it's a pic from my cell

[Chris Kemp]

Now something that you guys may not know is to use an old house steam radiator as a water trap. You can pick them up cheap at building wrecker yards. They can hold a lot of pressure and usually all that is wrong with them is bad fittings and you will change all of that anyway. Plumb it so the air from the compressor goes into the bottom at one end and leaves at the top of the other. Depending on what type you find you may have to drill and tap a hole. You may even have to use a bung and this could be brazed on or silver soldered. Place it so that air can get to both sides and put a water trap down low at the outlet side or end, I have an automatic spitter valve on mine. Be sure to slope it about an inch toward the spitter. You will be surprised at how much water it collects.

Chris

[59 wagon man]

not sure i would suggest a radiator for a water separator for a few reasons
1- contanimation from oil used in cutting and threading pipe used to connect radiator.

2- rust scale and debris can work lose ruining tools or paintjob
3- not sure if a radiator is designed to hold that kind of pressure. most steam or hot water systems only operate at a few psi not 100 psi or more. not really sure if this is safe

[Chris Kemp]

Originally Posted by 59 wagon man

not sure i would suggest a radiator for a water separator for a few reasons
1- contanimation from oil used in cutting and threading pipe used to connect radiator.

2- rust scale and debris can work lose ruining tools or paintjob
3- not sure if a radiator is designed to hold that kind of pressure. most steam or hot water systems only operate at a few psi not 100 psi or more. not really sure if this is safe

I have been known to make things work when others couldn't, mine has been up and running for more than fifteen years. Works good! Never had a problem with debris, just blew it all out real good before I hooked it up. It is a very old but in good shape cast iron type steam radiator. I would stay away from the sheet metal type.

The best way to remove water from compressed air is to chill it. Air below thirty two degrees can not hold water. The hotter the air the more water it can hold. I have often thought about cutting open a thirty pound air tank and then installing an evaporator in it. I would use what I know as bulk head fittings to pass the freon lines though the side of the tank. I would then weld the tank back up so that what you would have would be a tank with a cooling coil inside of it.

Another thing to look at is cooling the air before it goes into the compressor. That way it would dump most of it's water before it was compressed. This could be done with a small A/C window unit.

[59 wagon man]

another thing you could try is baseboard fin tubing . it is 3/4" copper tubing with aluminum fins designed for use in baseboard hot water heating systems. it is available in length's up to 8' i believe.
chris if it has worked for you for 15 yrs i guess my hat is off to you

[Chris Kemp]

Originally Posted by 59 wagon man

another thing you could try is baseboard fin tubing . it is 3/4" copper tubing with aluminum fins designed for use in baseboard hot water heating systems. it is available in length's up to 8' i believe.
chris if it has worked for you for 15 yrs i guess my hat is off to you

Well like I said, it is an old unit made out of good iron I'm sure. If I remember right is has 9 sections with three big threaded tie rod bolts going through it to hold all of the sections together. They are stacked side by side. I think they were made this way so they could be made longer or shorter. Anyway they are hard to find down here in Florida, and it probably came out of a big office building or school. I got it years ago from a place called Burhalter Wrecking. Didn't give much for it and at first I had planned to make a still out of it. The guys on here from up north, probably see these old radiators all the time.

Im still contemplating buying a small window unit and separating the evaporator from it and installing the the evaporator in a twenty or thirty gallon air tank. I really think that this would be the ticket for getting rid of the water. A good name small window unit $150.00, an air tank $30.00. A person could sell a unit like this for an easy thousand dollars installed to just about all of the shops in this area. Humidity is real bad down here and all of the shops I know of fight the water in their lines every day.

[DadTruck]

the shed mentioned above sounds close to what i have, I just got lucky on the price. Was walking through Lowes last January when I saw them marking the price down on the display unit. The manufacturer / design was changing. They had the 4 units in stock priced at 119.00 each. Made my day.
The unit is all plastic, but seems sturdy, we had some heavy rains last spring stayed dry inside. I set two 2.5 diameter PVC pipes in the garage / shed wall to be access holes to pass the air hose through. I set in two as some point in time I plan to have a acetylene / oxygen set up and that shed will also house those tanks.

[oldred]

The shed is a great idea and I built a small one attached to my garage to house a large shop vac. I used pipe also to connect to the shed and ran the large vac hose through to the unit, I have a quick connect and power switch on the wall and just roll up the hose and hang it on the wall when not in use and keep extra hose in the shed out of the way until needed. One of the best things I have done to the garage, no noise, no dust (I paint in there sometimes) and it is out of the way.

[capt546]

Back in 1960, my father-in law opened a truck trailer dealership which now has over 30 bays. When originally built it, it is a very large metal building, all the center supports running across the building was 8" iron pipe. He welded the ends shut, installed nipples at about waist high for the quick connects and added a water faucet at the very bottom of every post to drain the water. They were all connected high in ceiling by black pipe. In theory the posts became air tanks. Today the system is still in use, a screw compressor replaces the old piston type and in all these years there has never been a failure. He was a welder during the war building ships and he learned alot. He past away at 93 last September. The dealership is still family owned and operated and has steadly grown larger and every add on to the building has had the same set up. So much for the theory that you should never use black pipe.