For the kind of plumbing that he air moves thru, that is.
So at my old house, and the one before that, which I lived
and worked at for about four decades, I had the basement and
garage plumbed in with ½” hard copper lines. Never had a
bit of trouble with it, and my thinking was that copper
conducts heat so well that it over its length it made a
good condenser to cool down the air before it gets to the
separator/regulator.
Now I’ve heard from a couple of people that believed the
soldered copper lines weren’t meant to take the pressure
than an air line might put on the joints and they can fail.
If you’re ever tried disassembling a properly soldered
copper line to save the fittings then I think you would
agree, that shop air pressure isn’t gonna blow the joints
apart. So I have no problem with copper for an air line.
Only one thing to say about PVC,……DON’T DO IT,
and that’s all there is to say about that!!!!!
Then there is the good old reliable black pipe airline that
TP Tools recommends/sells and that has been the standard
for a century or more in shops that require compressed
air. It’s cheap, it’s strong and although it’s not as good
as copper, it does do a fairly good job as a condenser. The
drawback to black pipe in my mind is it rusts and if you
don’t have a threading die it can be kind of inconvenient
for some people. Some say to use galvanized then some say no
,it will flake and clog filters, I haven’t found that to
be true at any shop that I’ve worked in and many places have
had a mix of black and galvanized, which ever was handy late
on a Saturday night when you needed to run a new line somewhere.
I’ll bet everyone has an opinion about this, so let’s hear
what you think and why you think it.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
Last edited by Denny Graham; 06/08/2015 8:39 PM.
