Not really in a shop, but rather my garage.

I got this upright air compressor last Christmas and have it set up in my garage like so:



Now recently I built a platform to raise up the compressor, which gave me room to install an electronic drain valve on the bottom:



This allows me to keep the air tank filled all the time, and it will automatically open the drain valve every so often to drain out condensate so that it doesn't build up inside the tank and rust out the inside of the tank. Right now I have opening for 2 seconds every 24 hours, but I may change that to open for 1 second every 12 hours.

So my question is, what about if the temperature gets below freezing inside my garage? Should I maybe wrap my air tank with an insulation blanket like those ones you can get for hot water heaters? I just don't want any condensate that may be in the tank before the valve opens to possibly freeze up and cause problems.

 

No need to wrap it, but I would add a water separator on your line coming out of the compressor because when temps drop below freezing, water builds up in there much quicker.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by slomofo &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">No need to wrap it, but I would add a water separator on your line coming out of the compressor because when temps drop below freezing, water builds up in there much quicker. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Well I don't ever keep air in the actual hose itself. I always open the regulator up to put 90 psi in the hose when I pull out the hose to use it, and then empty the hose by shutting the regulator when I get done and coil the hose back up.

I do have a little dessicant dryer on the outlet side of my regulator. Guess I should have mentioned that in the OP.

 

I thought about doing this to mine but it wasn't worth it. i'd like to see a pic of the platform you built.

i do refrigeration for a living. i'd get a thermostat and program it to heat @ 36 degrees. when the tstat called for heat it would energize a relay. the load would be 120V heated tape wrapped around the drain. i'd wire in a auto reset hi temp limit switch in series with the t-stat so the heater could cycle and not overheat itself lol.

try some copper tubing insulation from home depot or any refrigeration parts house. It's less than $.20 a foot and would work well.

 

Yea I'll try to get a pic of my setup as it currently sits as soon as clear out all the junk around it haha