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Hard plumbing Air Shammee II

OurTown

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Has anyone hard plumbed Air Shammee IIs from the attic down to the booms? I was thinking 2" PVC with long sweep elbows and a union.
 

HeyVern

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Has anyone hard plumbed Air Shammee IIs from the attic down to the booms? I was thinking 2" PVC with long sweep elbows and a union.
Not sure I'd trust PVC, enough air flow through can create enough heat to dissolve the cement and blow joints apart. Not sure about shammees but, I've seen it happen with compressed air lines.
 

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Not sure I'd trust PVC, enough air flow through can create enough heat to dissolve the cement and blow joints apart. Not sure about shammees but, I've seen it happen with compressed air lines.

The cement melts the PVC and welds it so maybe the air lines you saw blow apart didn't have primer put on them. The pipe is rated for 140F. Do you think the vac hose they put on them is rated for higher? I'm not sure how hot it gets after running for a while.
 

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What about galvanized exhaust tubing bent up at an exhaust shop? Maybe go with 2 1/4" for a tad bit more flow and adapt it down to 2" at the boom swivel.
 

cantbreak80

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I've installed a few of a competitor's blowers. Their motor manifolds are regular old ABS DVW fittings. ABS might be an easier fit? (Maybe not.)
 

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PVC will be fine. There’s absolutely no problem with it coming apart but I would not use hard pipe for two reasons.

1. Hard pipe to that vacuum swivel will most likely cause your pipe to crack if the boom swivel does not operate perfectly ever time which it wont. The swivel will bind up and the force of the boom being pulled could crack your pvc instead of twisting your vacuum hose when that happens.

2. You want to angle the booms down so gravity brings them back to wall. It would be a little challenge to plumb it with hard pipe without it looking too goofy.

I’ll attach a picture of what I do which is cut a hole and run two 3-4” pvc adapters. One from underneath and one from the attic. Attach them together and run vacuum hose through it so when it does twist nothing is rubbing against the sharp metal roof where you cut your hole out. Just my thoughts. I’ll attach a picture but it’s not the best.
 

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OurTown

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1. Hard pipe to that vacuum swivel will most likely cause your pipe to crack if the boom swivel does not operate perfectly ever time which it wont. The swivel will bind up and the force of the boom being pulled could crack your pvc instead of twisting your vacuum hose when that happens.

Good point that I didn't think of.
 

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I've installed a few of a competitor's blowers. Their motor manifolds are regular old ABS DVW fittings. ABS might be an easier fit? (Maybe not.)

What brand? Carolina Pride? They are the only other ones that I remember seeing that had a 3 phase motor but maybe that detail does not matter.
 

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I'm not sure how hot it gets after running for a while.
Up here for all my bays the drainage pipe for the self serve wands is a 4" coupling cemented flush with the ground going to the pit then they glue a 4" two foot pvc section in above ground to hold the wands. They should never glue those sticks cause when a mirror catches the hose the car will break that 2 foot section off. Then lucky me has to get the broken glued part of that stick out of the coupling without damaging the coupling or my heated concrete floors. I will put the primer around the inside of the broken glued pvc pipe and then light it on fire to shrink it and loosen the glue using the heat. I probably repeat this about ten times until the piece finally starts to loosen. Each time the fire will burn for about a couple minutes. That is how hot it has to get to separate that glue. Id take a wild guess at somewhere between 140 to 180 degrees.
 

HeyVern

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The cement melts the PVC and welds it so maybe the air lines you saw blow apart didn't have primer put on them. The pipe is rated for 140F. Do you think the vac hose they put on them is rated for higher? I'm not sure how hot it gets after running for a while.
No, the joints were primed, glued, and assembled properly. Like I said, it was a compressed air line on a hot day. I have no idea how much air the blowers are moving or what the temperature might be. If ambient temperature was 100 degrees, a forty degree rise from the blower wouldn't be surprising. Just something to be aware of.
 

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We mounted all of our 3 phase air shammee motors in the equipment rooms and ran PVC out to the bays. Some spanned 4 bays. The loss of pressure is almost undetectable.
 

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We mounted all of our 3 phase air shammee motors in the equipment rooms and ran PVC out to the bays. Some spanned 4 bays. The loss of pressure is almost undetectable.

Just curious what the advantages are of this. Do you have some way for air to come into the ER when they kick on? Maybe they are plumbed to pull in from the outside?
 

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Just curious what the advantages are of this. Do you have some way for air to come into the ER when they kick on? Maybe they are plumbed to pull in from the outside?
Our rooms are all vented, its hot in our area. The main advantage is we keep the motors out of the elements. Didn't want moisture or over spray from soaps to accumulate on these motors and have corrosion set in. We have over 100 units installed and have experienced very few issues with the motors. Most all issues were early on and were warrantied.
 
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