Air Compressor Room Ventilation

[red vette mike]

I am building a 31x54 garage addition on my house. There is a dedicated room off of one end for the air compressor. I am buying an Ingersoll-Rand 7.5hp, 80gal, 230v compressor. My question is as regards ventilation for this unit. Is a grill in the exterior door enough for an air inlet? There is no ceiling in this small room so I need also to vent the heat. Would a small power vent be the best way to vent the room? Thanks for any help.
Mike

 

[BoostAddiction]

My 230V compressor is also in a dedicated compressor room. The room, which is about 20' long and 5' wide, is basically sealed except for a little leakage around the sill where the builder never caulked adequately. Never had a problem with heat from the compressor.

Now, I also store my off-seaaon tires there, and I wonder to what extent the ozone created by the electric motor on the compressor is prematurely aging the tires. But that's a topic for another thread, I guess.

-Will

 

[Roadster]

Why a dedicated room? Noise suppression or spark control?

 

[rockwithjason]

If there is no ceiling in the room you will be fine with a vent in the bottom of the door. Convection will carry away the heat.

 

[kartracer55]

Why a dedicated room? Noise suppression or spark control?

Noise


Will... Id be careful how you store those tires in that heat. Maybe not with daily driver tires, but if they are high performance soft compounds you might be drying them out a little quicker. Do you armor all them?

Jim

 

[BoostAddiction]

Noise


Will... Id be careful how you store those tires in that heat. Maybe not with daily driver tires, but if they are high performance soft compounds you might be drying them out a little quicker. Do you armor all them?

Jim

The separate room in my case is for noise control, to retain a cleaner look in the garage area (I thought a compressor was ugly) and to avoid cluttering up the garage itself with things that could be placed elsewhere.

The tires don't suffer from heat- it never gets hotter in the compressor room than most uninsulated garages as the compressor is only on when I'm doing something with the air tools. My main worry is ozone produced by the motor. The tires stored in the room are winter ones in the summer, and high-performance summer ones in the winter. The same winter ones have been there for about three years now and don't show any obvious signs of ozone damage, but I suppose a quick visual isn't exactly the gold standard to check for damage.

-Will

 

[bobbyd]

Slightly off topic, but I was curious and found this related to ozone and tires.

By far ozone exposure, is the most damaging to rubber, even the small amounts that are normally present in the atmosphere (a few parts per hundred million), which are sufficient to cause severe cracking within a few weeks or months. Its damage raises considerably with higher concentration, at higher altitudes, or proximity to ozone emitting electrical devices. Ozone molecules act like a chemical scissors which cut through the mass of cross-linked molecules that otherwise impede cracking gaining the energy required to break the molecules almost wholly from direct chemical interaction. Ozone has no visible effect on unstretched rubber, but microscopic examinations have demonstrated that a reaction does occur at the surface. Inflating the tire, stretches the rubber. With just a 5% tensile strain, cracks form on the surface and grow perpendicular to the direction of the stretching, growing greater in number the tighter the stretching. This is because the molecular movement induced by the stretching with surface ozone damage leads to rupture of the surface layer permitting further ozone penetration and reaction on a repeated basis until cracks result. In practice, many tire makers rely on the same waxes used to impede oxygenation to prevent ozone damage, which makes a "tough transparent coating", but the wax is short lived and so is its protection. However, two classes of protective chemicals exist, known as "antiozonants", one type reduces the rate of crack growth, the other increases the amount of energy needed for crack growth to occur. They function by forming an intermediate molecular structure that requires a greater ozone concentration to complete the rubber's degradation.

Quoted from http://www.bikepro.com/products/tires/tireover.html

Will, it appears that uninflated tires will not show ozone damage that much - until possibly they are inflated.

Other sources indicate that the stuff we use to make our tires look good, also remove incorporated ingredients used by tire manufacturers to reduce the effect of ozone. SO..by making our tires look good, we're actually reducing the useful life? Who would of thought?