I finally have a place to call my shaping room. I built it in my basement, and it is well insulated. Only I got to thinking… the one wall of the room that shares an outside wall of my house has no window. In fact, the room is completely tight. Since I do not plan on doing any glassing whatsoever in this room, do I in fact need to install a fan or window? I do plan on using a dust collection system. Any thoughts appreciated.
-cjs
Take a look at some of the new metal canister tops for dust collectors. They filter down to a much smaller particle size than the cloth bags most collectors come with. Does your dust collection system reside outside your shaping room? If so, then you’ll create a partial vacuum in the room unless you have ingress for fresh air (so you won’t be pulling as much air through the filter). If not, no matter how efficient your collection system is, you’ll still have some particulate matter floating around waiting to be filtered out by your lungs. Also kind of noisy having the collector in the same room.
Yes, I do plan on placing the collection unit outside the room. Therefore, can I get away with something as simple as a small 6"x6" vent to carry fresh air into the room?
I don’t mean to hijack your thread CJ, but I’m curious…I’ll be shaping 2-3 boards a year just in my garage (with big door fully open), and I always wear a full organic-filtered respirator. Do I need to be really “worried” about foam dust lurking around after words, even with fans going full blast the whole time, or can I tell my wife to shu----, I mean, can I let my wife know that everything is going to be “A-Ok”…?? Thanks.
CJ
I’ve got a two horsepower collection system that pulls something on the order of 1000cfm through a six inch diameter hose. That’s about 19 square inches if I remember my geometry correctly, so a 6x6" port would be 36 square inches, so about half the velocity of the air going into the hose. Seems as thought that would be plenty. You could even orient the incoming air so that it would blow clean air toward your shaping bay.
What about a closed system? Just run the return air through a HEPA filter, that way you don’t lose heat to the outside. Just use a large HEPA filter so that there’s a lot of surface area to keep the thing from getting clogged. Maybe you live in a warm climate and don’t care about heat loss, then it’s easiest to just cut a hole in the wall.
As far as leaving foam dust in the garage, it’s chemically inert, but get it in your eyes and it sure smarts. I just vacuum out the place once in awhile and call it good.
Peter
I took a stab at Tenover’s question in that last reply, but forgot to note that an organic vapor filter is probably overkill. Nothing wrong with it if, like me, you have neighbors who burn plastic, but definitely way more expensive than the pink 3M filters.
Peter
I do the garage thing too. Completely seal half the room with visqueen. Vacuum attachment to the planer, fans, mister the whole shebang. A week after I’m done there is a very fine layer of white dust on everything. You have to wet sponge the stuff or it just goes back in the air. I’m not sure if it comes from cleanning up or its just lurking around the atmosphere. It’s mostly from fine sanding…Next time I’m going to try to get it 99% done in the garage then fine sand it outside to see if that helps.
A good dust mask will work, you don’t need the full space suite you’d use while glassing. The foam dust is very innert anyway. You have more chance of getting silicosis from spending windy days at the beach than you would
shaping a thousand boards a year.
My wife busts me 'cause no matter how careful I am, I leave white dusty footprints in the kitchen…
CJ: No matter what you do…you’ll be in trouble ; )
To my knowledge foam dust isn’t toxic, it just isn’t organic and once it gets in your lungs it’s going to outlast you… and your coffin. I think it’s more of a matter of quantity. You want to wear your mask whenever your shaping, but I transport shaped blanks all the time without my mask on. A little bit of foam can cloud off, but I don’t think it’s a big deal. Your body does come with natural protection for this, just don’t overload. BTW – I use a drywallers respirator for shaping so I don’t waste the organic filters – save those for glassin.
Oh yea, I hope your not fooling yourself as to how big of a mess this, especially with fans blowing that dust all over the place – you’d probably be better off without them (until you start glassin). BTW, I shape outdoors and glass in the garage.
I tried glassing in the garage until I realized there’s two open flames in there…DOH! Water heater and dryer. I moved outside REEEEAALLL quick.
If I may suggest- you might want to have a look through http://www.swaylocks.com/cgi-bin/discussion/archive.cgi/read/53331 and see PlusOneShaper’s rather delightful laminar flow wall setup - I see no reason why it wouldn’t work quite well adapted to a closed shop and a recirculating system providing you were willing to do a little duct work - and you could salvage ducts and such from any forced hot air heating system. Put your dust collector in a small enclosed room, have the intake via a duct or such, have a standard heating air filter in line to get anything else that came through and you’d pretty much have it.
Prolly be a good idea to ground any metal ducts - get some interesting static electricity happening in there.
hope that’s of use
doc…
Thank you much. Doc that thread link says it all for me. There is so much information there. I don’t know why I couldn’t find it in the archives. When I work out all the bugs unique to my working space I will update everyone some with photos if possible.
-cjs
Hey and don’t fool yourself. Even with a vent system and an “airtight” room. You will find dust in everypart of your house!