Living in Ireland I have found it difficult to get good advice locally on a small dust collection system for my garage. I have got a lot of info of previous threads on this forum on dust collection and have been trying to design a system that will work.

We do not have any cyclones for home use availiable over here, and to build one, the sourcing of the impeller and suitable filter is a problem. This leaves me with using the twin bag collectors. The dust collector I am looking at has a 1.5hp motor and is rated at 1300cfm, supplied with a 5 micron top bag and a plastic bottom bag, and has a 8″ inlet with a Y and a 4″ and a 5″ outlets. There is no info avaliable on  static pressure loss.

I only use one machine at a time and the combination planer/thicknesser would produce the most waste. It will be positioned about 20′ from the collector, so if I use 600 cfm my pipework has a loss of about 4.5″ in 5″ pipe or about 3″ in 6″ pipe.

Is it too much of a risk going to 6″ pipe with a lower air speed using the above collector ?

If I go with 5″ to keep the air speed up,can I expect any performance increase, if I replace the filter with a large pleated version in the furture?

What do you Guys feel would be the best way to go 5″ or 6″?

Also will I get 600cfm from this extractor at my planer or is this figure to optimistic?

Any help would be great!

PJ