I've been badgering the neanderthals with my new-guy questions, thought it was time to head over into the world of electrons.

I'm laying plans for converting my two car garage (we park the cars in the driveway, only need to store kids bikes and things in a small section of the garage) into a wood shop/sanctuary for myself.

Despite having most of the garage, I'm still thinking I'm turning up short on space. I want a cyclone and an air compressor, but am having trouble fitting both in the part of the garage I want to dedicate to the noisy stuff.

I was reading a Taunton book on Shops by Szandor Nagyszylansky where he mentions enhancing your small compressor with external tanks, and that's where a light flickered on over my head.

Has anyone done this? Campbell Hausfeld is located here in Cincinnati and I'm pretty sure they have a factory store. If I could find an inexpensive but powerful compressor, would it be possible to put that in the garage, probably hanging securely from the ceiling to get it out of the way, and then plumb with, say, black pipe through the footers of the wall between the garage and house into the basement where I'd locate a large tank?

If I think this through right, the SCFM of a compressor is based on it's duty cycle more than anything. My 6gal PC mini compressor could only handle small amounts because it couldn't run continuously, But if there were, just to be silly, a 250 gallon tank compressed to 135psi, it would allow me to pump out 90psi for a considerable time before the pump had to kick in.

Would I even need a tank at all in the garage? Would there be any reasonable and SAFE way to buy just a CH compressor and plumb it direct into the big tank by 20ft of black pipe?

I could be wrong in my thinking here, but this sounds like it would give me the best of both worlds, noise out in the garage, big tank in my 1000sf basement that's really just spending time holding boxes right now.

And, since I'm on the subject, has anyone every tried to soundproof a compressor by putting it in an sound insulated box? I realize you need a considerable amount of air inflow, and they do have a tendency to heat, but perhaps if you could include some sort of insulated incoming duct, maybe fan driven, would that work?