At work we have this system, in 2in piping, ran through our work stands. Each stand hooks together with flex lines. The pipes are all connected with the plastic fittings. By work stands, they are huge stands for working on a 747. Under wings, around the tail, etc. We have access to air fittings every 15-20ft for the entire wingspan. The stand on the end hooks to a line from the wall supplied from some very large output compressors.
My point? I can only imagine the garage version would be fantastic!
That probably all makes sense and you can connect 2 inch easily. After tat the difficulty and cost goes up. I have been in plants with loop-s, it replaced a pipe that would have needed to be 3 inches or needed 2 runs from the same direction etc.
Some of these were long, hundreds of feet and a lot of demand, some it made sense to simply continue 2 inch.
Even in my own shop which would be extremely busy by DIY standards the air demand is pretty low. Frequency and volume are 2 different things. Demands on these circuits is similar to power tools on a 120 volt system and use of a circular saw. Fully loaded the demand is 75 to 80% of the capacity, not enough to start to really worry about pressure loss and efficiency to be much of a factor and then there is duty cycle.
If we are sandblasting it is taking 100% or more than the comp can make, we cannot worry about pressure drop to the rest of the system, none left, its a 1 man show and in general use there would only be minor losses if 2 users ever picked up a body tool for a minute at the same time. All under one small roof.
We got short runs, under 100 ft applying a 15A or CFM load down a 20A circuit and if we try to draw more than that will run out of air in a hurry.
