Sourcing vacuum piping

[paco]

I'm upgrading my vacuum system but I have a hard time sourcing the piping in all the same category of piping and fitting.

Out of four local hardware stores, no one had all I need. Either the valves wouldn't fit the piping or the other way around...

What actually happen is that I have a caprice; I want my system to be all white like what I've seen before. I can get whatever size plastic ball valves without problem but only to be fitted with black ABS drainage piping. Vacuum cleaner 2" piping is white but can't be fitted with the drainage valves... I can't seem to be able to get smaller diameter PVC piping than 3"...! Oh! and all the plastic ball valves that I can get are white!?

Help me sort this out please!

Looking at various setup images post on this forum; what is the normal purpose of the piping used to built your vacuum? Is it drainage, central vacuum cleaner, pool filtering piping, else?

One more while at it; I want a four valves/zone system used with one (soon two) Fein T3; should I go with 2" piping (what I planned) or is 1-1/2" more than enough?

[Brady Watson]

Paco,
A couple things...

The PVC pipe that ships with ShopBot vac systems is 2" --> schedule 40 <-- pipe. Don't feel bad...there are some areas of the US where you can't get Sch40 and only ABS. You CANNOT use regular PVC cement on ABS. They make what they call a 'transition glue' that will weld ABS, PVC and ABS to PVC. The stuff I used was a weird (what I call) a milky snake vomit green color...like a milkshake in consistency.

If you have the need to join ABS to PVC in a straight coupling you can use a rubber coupling like those sold with clamps at the big home centers.

I would go with the largest pipe you can, as the 1.5" will choke your CFM, with an increase in air velocity (not needed for vac hold down). The Fein intake is 2.25" so a 2, 2.5 or 3" will work just fine.

If you are not too far from the US border, it might be worth a trip to NY to get some PVC pipe and fittings.

-B

[danhamm]

I had the same problem, All of the vacuum piping was wrong size for the valves ...I ended up going with PVC gas piping and valves were quite cheap to..as I was using 2 suction feeds I went with 1.5 in. system...cheers..Dan

[paco]

I can get the ball valves I want (2" plastic) but can only source black ABS drainage (waste water) piping and fittings for them... I won't look like a PRO!

So if I want those white PVC piping and fittings, I should ask for Schedule 40 piping?

[Brady Watson]

Yes...Schedule 40 PVC pipe.

-B