I got to thinking about it and came up with a good way to remove water from airlines. First thing would be to find a decent sized cooler. Then solder some copper tubing together to fit in the cooler starting from the top and working your way down. Drill a hole in the cooler for the exit line. Find a way to seal the hole up around the pipe. Then place a T on the line with the output going up and a piece of pipe going down. On the bottom piece of pipe place a ball valve or a needle valve if you feel like spending the money. Open the valve up just enough to get a tiny flow out of it. In theory the hot air will enter the cooler, the air will cool, the water will condensate, enter the tee and be expelled by the valve. You just need to put some ice in the cooler every time you plan on heavily using the compressor. There are more expensive ways of cooling such as a mini fridge but this is the most cost effective (Cheap) way to do it. Any comments, ideas or improvements?
I am not responsible if this blows up your house, and only try it if you have experience with working with these materials. Compressed air has a lot of stored energy and should be handled with extreme caution.
I'm painting my truck and I seem to get a lot of water in my lines while I'm sandblasting, and that can cause major problems while painting. I can't afford an expensive air dryer, and this seemed like a reasonable solution.
OK, I got ya. I have a pressure sand blaster that will clog when water condenses in the line, usually after prolonged usage and the compressor is heating up. I have tried with limited success something similar where I coiled the line bottom to top in a five gallon bucket of water and occasional stopped, disconnected and blew the condesent from the line. I think your idea is better.
Finally bought a good filter from a surplus place for $20 bucks and reserve it's use for blasting and painting.
<font color="blue"> Any ideas to improve it?</font color>
Nope sounds pretty good to me. My filter arrangement has a first stage "squiggle valve" for lack of a better name. In operation you can wiggle it around to cause water to drain more rapidly or leave it alone and it will drip water at some rate, don't know what the guts of the valve look like. A needle valve may not allow enough flow. If all else fails I can loan you my filter ( it's a good one) to get your truck painted (Is Sonoma a chev??) F250 FOREVER.
Fill out your profile so we can figure out if your flooding or freezing.
Don't worry, the Sonoma is only temporary until I can afford a new truck. Believe me, the New F-150 is looking mighty tempting. Mine is 2wd with manual every thing. Even steering. But it gets me from a to b for now. It brings me to tears. Some day I'll be able to get to c.
Sonoma, my NEW truck is a 1973, F250 with a 390 that I just rebuilt. It could use a new paint job. I'll bring my filter and a case of beer, what do you think my place or yours? Just Kidding. Let me know how your project turns out.
Another thought, which is what I have done, takes a little more effort and is best done when building your air system. We used copper for the air lines and on about a ten foot section (pvc pipe comes in 10' lengths) we ran the copper inside a piece of 1 1/2" pvc pipe. At either end of the pvc is a pvc tee and a piece of garden hose. This is a sleave around the copper and doesn't have air pressure on it. When you need cooling either hook it up to the garden hose and run the drain out into the yard or use a circulating pump and the a ice chest with iced water for cooling if the hydrant water isn't cold enough. Be sure and slant this assembly away from the compressor and toward a tee in the copper right after the cooling. We have a 4' drop with a drain valve at the bottom. then about a 8" inverted U and with a T another 4'drop and from the T to the filter regulator. So far this has worked good for us.
Was almost 70 here yesterday, low thirties now and teen tonight. At least here if you don't like the weather, wait a minute and it WILL change, unless it is August.
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