I'm curious to see how you wired the solenoid into your lights Terry. That's a great idea!
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It was very simple.
1. Install a standard 120VAC duplex receptacle on the wall near the compressor. Wire it into the light circuit for the garage (which is already protected by a GFI).
2. The air receiver has two valves on the outlet. First is the 3/4" ball valve, next is the 3/4" Red Hat solenoid valve with 120VAC coil. The distribution line connects to the solenoid valve.
3. I wired a short length of SJOOW three wire cord to the solenoid valve. The other end has a simple three prong plug that plugs into the switched wall receptacle.
Easy as pie!! The worst part of the whole job was writing the check for the valve, as it was about eighty bucks or so, but it has saved it's cost in electricity in the ten years or so that it has been in place. I used to manually turn the air on and off, using the ball valve at the tank. All too often I would forget to turn off the air, and the compressor would kick in about once every six or eight hours or so just to replace the air lost to leakage. It always happened on Saturday evening, after working in the garage all day. The compressor would kick in about midnight and wake up everybody in the house, even though it was out in the attached garage. I quickly got tired of having to wander out to the garage in the middle of the night just to turn off the air. Having worked on industrial compressed air systems, I knew that air leaks cost big money, both in wear and tear and in electricity, so it did not take long for me to figure out that I had to come up with a better idea, and the solenoid valve was the result. If left unused for long periods, the compressor will not run for weeks at a time, even though the compressor itself is always on and will kick in if the pressure in the tank drops too low. The biggest advantage to the shutoff valve is that if the air is turned on all the time, and an attached air hose were to burst while no one was home, the compressor would run steady until someone returned home. Once again, wasted wear and tear and energy. The solenoid valve prevents that.
I am in the process of setting up my machine shop in my basement. There generally is not much call for huge amounts of compressed air there, so instead of running a line from the garage to the basement and having to remember to turn the air on and off, I opted to purchase a small compressor just for the basement shop. It only gets used to run a coolant mister on the mill or to blow some chips out of a blind hole in a part, so a small compressor is more efficient for those purposes. I purchased a small unit from California Air Tools and I love it. It is very quiet, and is oil less. You can sit right next to it when it is running and have a conversation in a normal voice. There is a thread about it here:
http://www.hobby-machinist.com/showthread.php/19115-Ultra-Quiet-Air-Compressor Now I only need the large compressor for the big jobs outside, like running an impact wrench, sandblaster, or spray gun.
Did not mean to get off topic, but thought the information above might be valuable to someone.