So I have a 1 car garage so that I'm building a dust collection system for with 2.5 inch hose since that was the diameter of my shop vac hose. However, it's really fucking loud and my breaker keeps tripping when I have the vac going and the table saw.

So, I decided to instead go with a harbor freight 1hp dust collector since I'd read that CFM was more important than hp. Figured it would load the system less than the vac.

However, the 1hp has a 4 inch port, so I'm reducing to 2.5 and then for some small tools I'm reducing to 1.25 inch hose. The suction didn't seem great.

Am I fighting a losing battle trying to get decent suction from such small hose diameter from the 1hp? Should I return the harbor freight and just go back to the vac, get a bigger fuse, and try to dampen the sound instead?

I've already got a decent amount of money sunk into the 2.5 inch hose, gates, etc that I really don't want to have to change that.