Collection: 10 HP and Above Piston Air Compressors

Above 10 horsepower the piston market splits two ways. Simplex machines put one two stage pump on one tank and are built for 50 to 60 percent duty. Duplex sets pair two pumps on one tank with alternating controls, so the plant keeps running when one pump is down and neither pump works as hard. Both are here, from 10 HP up to 50 HP of connected power.

Duplex or simplex

A duplex set is listed by total connected horsepower, so a 10 HP duplex is two 5 HP pumps. That matters when you size the circuit and when you compare against a simplex of the same number: two 5 HP pumps make about the same air as one 10 HP pump, but each one runs half as often and you still have air when one fails. Shops that can't stop buy duplex. Shops that can live without air for a day usually don't need it.

The honest limit

Past 20 HP, piston is rarely the right answer for plant air. A rotary screw at that size runs continuously at 65 to 72 dBA where a piston is cycling and loud, and the gap in cost of ownership widens every year you run it. The reasons to buy piston up here are real but narrow: higher pressure than a screw will make, redundancy from a duplex set, a lower purchase price when the budget is fixed, or a pump your maintenance people already know how to rebuild. If none of those apply, look at rotary screw before you buy.

Gas drive units in this range run 11 to 20 HP on Honda, Kohler and Vanguard engines for jobsite and service truck work with no power to plug into. Plan receiver capacity around 120 gallons at 10 HP and 240 at 20 to 25 HP, and size the dryer with the dryer CFM calculator at your actual inlet temperature. Call us with the tools you run and the power you have and we'll size the compressor, receiver and dryer together.