After seeing too many Creeker pictures of nice, organized DC piping, I'm toying with the idea of revising my current set up, which I lovingly refer to as the Frankenpipe. I've got a JDS Cyclone in the corner of the shop that has an 8" inlet, but also included adapters to go to 6" or even 4". After playing with the spreadsheet on Pentz's site, I think I'm going to stick with 6" S&D for the most part. Here are my two questions...

First, what are the recommended practices right at the inlet of the DC? I seem to recall hearing someone say that having a section of straight pipe at the inlet was beneficial. Is that true? If so, how big a section of 6" pipe is reasonable?

Second, right off the bat, I've gotta traverse about 7' down a wall and go up 5' to the ceiling, then come straight away from the wall across the room. I can do 2' of straight pipe, a 45* bend, about 7' of straight pipe diagonally, then a 90* bend to shoot straight off the wall. A 7' section of pipe diagonally across the wall chews up valuable wall space, however. The alternative is 2' of straight pipe, a 90* bend up the wall, 5' of pipe up the wall, another 90* bend to go across the wall, another 5' of straight pipe, then a final 90* bend to come out from the wall. I ran Pentz's spreadsheet just on the two scenarios and the loss in inches was less than 1/2" of SP. I'm thinking the gain in wall space is worth it. Anyone care to correct me?

The final alternative would be putting the first 90* turn right off the bat, and then using 7' of straight pipe across the wall. That recovers even more wall space, but means there is a 90* bend right before the DC inlet.