I have a repurposed whole house vacuum that I intercepted when they were major remodeling the house next door. The neighbor was carrying it above his head and headed for the dumpster when I yelled "hey, can I have that?" He turned and set it down just outside my shop. Over the next few days, the accessories, hose, pvc pipe and inlet ports all arrived. A new $12 control circuit transformer and it ran like new, so I installed it in my shop with a Dust Deputy ahead of it. I had to buy a few couplings and elbows, and 10' of pipe, but was able to use most of the old pipe and it is now located in my shop's attic with the Dust Deputy sitting on top of a 20 gal steel drum sitting next to it. I installed the pipes in the walls and added 4 inlets, two in the shop, 1 in the attic, and one outside next to the passage door entrance to the shop. The 25' hose lets me reach anywhere in the shop, and the outside port lets me take the hose outside to vacuum the cars and trucks.
In the shop it gets mostly used for the scroll saws, drill presses, and sanders. I don't have the room for a serious dust collector, but this system takes care of all of the very fine and more dangerous saw dust. I always use my DeWalt 735 planer outside connected via the accessory hose and drum cover, attached to a plastic 55 gallon drum. The joiner drops it's chips into a plastic waste basket, and the Unisaw cabinet contains most of it's saw dust, until I shovel out the cabinet, whenever I think of it. I vented the central vac out through the outside wall of the shop attic, just under the roof. It's pointed North toward the lake, so the neighbors don't hear it and I don't care if it bothers the geese. It can't be heard outside at either neighbor's house, unless it's dead quiet outside and the vac is the only thing running. It's comforting to know that if even the finest saw dust that might get past the Dust Deputy and the fabric filter in the vacuum never gets into the shop air or my lungs, but so little seems to get vented, that even the dust bin part of the vacuum never has more than a trace of dust sticking to the inside walls of it. I can go about 6 months or more before needing to dump the barrel. It is large enough that I don't need to dump it often, but when I do, it is easy enough for me to get it down the stairs to dump it as it usually only weighs 20-25 lbs. Sorry the photo is oriented sideways
Charley