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Thanks Todd,

Great info, scary, and also informative. What to do?

I have a penn ind cyclone piped to every big tool, and a jet whole room filter, and a small grizzly bench top collector. Probably still not good enough. Add to that my laziness to properly use them and I am sure Im not doing my self any favors.

I am very close to springing for a full Clear Vue system. Id like to install it in a small room out side my basement shop. My biggest hurtle is that I need a return air supply.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Yep this is good info and no surprise to me being the clean freak that I am...

My ceiling mounted Jet air cleaner has been something that I have been wondering why I even have it...

When I installed it I noticed that it is so very powerful in terms of moving air that it stirs up any dust, even dust on surfaces to some extent, and makes it airborne.... This unit when on medium or high will even make some of my suspended lights start swinging.

So my routine is to collect the dust at the source where it is created AND collect it with a device that is HEPA rated so that I am not just straining the dust into smaller, more harmful particles. When I am done I vacuum the shop with the same vac. In the past I have then turned on the Jet air cleaner and used it's timer features to have it turn off automatically so that I can leave the shop and I did exactly that. When I returned surfaces that had been vacuumed clean now had fine dust on them.... Not good... This is when I started questioning the value of shop air cleaners.

IMHO being able to draw in fresh, clean air and exhaust shop air is important too and that is how my shop was built with an exhaust fan venting shop air through the house's foundation and outside. I did this so that I could also exhaust vapors when working with things like epoxy, DA, etc.

The downside for guitar builders of exchanging air in our shops is the need to maintain good RH control. So with that in mind my humidifier is over kill and keeps up very well with the constant introduction of dry air into the shop and the venting of RH controlled air from the shop. I am hoping that this will hold true with my dehumidifier too but I have to wait for more spring weather to try it out.

So who's the first one to list their air cleaner in the Classifieds?

My small shop has dust collection via DustDeputy and a shop vac. Most of my really dusty work is done outside, I use portable saws, sanders, etc. Like I said, it's a small shop. I also have Shopvac's air filter, I feel it does a good job of clearing the air visually, I can't comment on particulate issues. However, if I do have a situation where I need to clear the air, I have a window on the opposite side of the shop from an exhaust fan. The fan can exchange the room air in about 5-10 minutes. It works well for solvent smells as well as dust issues. Just a thought.

I wrote this before I saw Hesh's. I had an issue with humidity during the summer. Two years ago I installed a whole house dehumidifier. Wow, what a difference. It keeps the basement spot on through the entire summer. I also have a whole house humidifier for the winter months. It's not as successful, but does OK. The whole house dehumidifier runs for a few hours a day on the worst days and like I said keeps the humidity spot on. I'd highly recommend one.

Joe, I do the same in the summer or when im sanding Rosewood
I have two basement windows, one on each end of the shop. If I vent a fan out of one and open the other that does a pretty good job of cleaning the air fast..

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Interesting article. I seems that if you really wanted clean air, you'd have to go with a high-end air purifier intended for in-home or hospital use.

At the low end, ($400), you could go with something like Rabbitair, which has washable filters. But you're going to have to clean the primary dust filter almost every day. And that's about 80% efficient.

If you want to get up to 100% efficient, you'd probably have to go with an IQair model in the $800 range. And then the wood dust might clod the filters all the time.

And if you really, really, really, wanted clean air, then the IQAir whole-house filter would probably be the best way to go. It's only $3000.

Maybe it's better just to sweep and vacuum...

Joe...what brand whole-house humid/dehumidifier did you go with?

Flori my friend in my old shop I tried both a Honeywell home air cleaner (HEPA) and a BlueAir air cleaner and both of them clogged up in no time flat. The filters at least on the Honeywell were VERY expensive so that did not work for me.

AprilAir. It hooks to the hvac unit and has two inputs and two outputs. It will either do the house or the basement alternating between the two. So it "sniffs" the air every 15 minutes or so (setable) and determines if it needs dehumidification. It then runs a cycle to dehumidify.

I resisted getting one of those for years for that very reason. They make the air appear cleaner and make people less likely to wear a respirator. In my opinion, a respirator is the only decent protection that is practical in this work.

I did finally buy a jet shop filter and it does help with cleanliness which is nice when clients come around.

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I'm waiting for someone to invent some micro respirators that fit in my nose.

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Mike

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh." The Stranger

The small particulates are the primary reason I blew my tool budget for several years and bought an Oneida Dust Gorilla cyclone system. I can tell a huge difference while I'm cutting/sanding and the shop stays much cleaner. I have a length of 5" flexible duct that I use when I'm using my ROS or other tools that aren't hooked to the dust collection system. I just clamp the hose down as close to the work as I can get it and it really helps keep the dust down - just gotta watch out for small parts, sandpaper, and so on. After I finish sanding I just let the system run for 10 or 15 minutes while I do something else. I can always tell if the air is relatively clean by whether I sneeze or not

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Rabbitair's $400 model has two washable filters + a hepa filter. The washable filters last 2-3 years. The hepa needs to be replaced every year or so. You can also just vacuum the primary dust filter clean. (The hepa catches allergens. And the washable carbon filter deals with pollutants.)

But I do think you're right. Home air purifiers are not designed for shops...so a good dust collection system probably works best. Though for getting the dust out of a finishing room, rabbitair might be worth a shot. And it couldn't hurt to use it in tandem with a dust collection system.

-

I have a Jet unit on my ceiling. I also collect dust at the source and wear a respirator.

I'm not yet convinced the ceiling units do more harm than good. I do not notice any stirring up of dust when running mine. The air flow with any significant velocity is going on way up at ceiling level, while dusty surfaces are mostly down relatively low and are not being blown on.

Running the unit seems to reduce the amount of dust that settles out on surfaces in the shop. That suggests to me that it is reducing the amount of airborne dust - otherwise, the amount of dust falling and collecting on surfaces would not be reduced, it seems to me.

Whether or not it is filtering the tiny, invisible particles, I don't know. But the interpretation of test results given here does not sound at all conclusive to me. It sounds fairly speculative, actually.

There's no question that having the best dust collection you can at the source is the best thing, but I'm not going to stop using my ceiling unit until I hear more convincing evidence that it's a bad idea.

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

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Dang, better stop running in the morning when all those cars and trucks drive by me. And I wonder what's in the air at work, and the clients house's I have to go to, and what about at the bingo hall (god knows they only just stopped them from smoking in there) and at the movie theater, and....

There are certainly more chemicals which enter our body everyday which reduce our life span versus the exotic wood dust that we breath in while working in our shops. I'm not being skeptical here, but rather just trying to visualize and think about ALL the other stuff we simply don't even consider on a daily basis. Where is the perspective?

I have a ceiling hung air cleaner. It picks up a lot of dust. I also have a DC for my tools (not all of them are hooked up to it though). I also try to remember the respirator when sanding with the ROS or the drum sander. Nothing is perfect.

The absolute best thing to do, is stop using anything that makes dust. Hand tools all the way, that's the only way to stop making dust.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. All we are is dust in the wind my friends.

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Funny, Rod, that's pretty much exactly what I was thinking as I was reading this. Not making light at all of the dangers of fine dust in the air (and, yes, I know many of the woods we use can be toxic), but I wonder what these studies would show about the dangers of the ambient air outside our shops? There's lots of stuff floating around out there!

I definitely need to (and am planning to) improve my dust collection and filtering. But I do sometimes think we need a reality check, too.

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Wes McMillian
Santo, TX
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Hey, I use an air filter and it does a good job of collecting fine dust. I only have to look at the filter to know that. I think the trick is to set up you cleaner so that you create a flow of air around the room so that dust that is stirred up also ends up flowing through the filter and not just redistributed. It is no good having them on the ceiling.

They should be on a wall, in the middle of one long wall is best, in you shop so that a circular air flow is created. And leave them on for a few hours after leaving the shop so that all those fine particles still in the air gets filtered. Every now and then I will use my air compressor to stir up any settled dust in corners and turn the unit on full on its timer and leave it for at least 2 hours.

When I return everything is much cleaner.
Hope this helps
Dom

In my day job I often work in a Class 100 clean room that I designed, so I know something about this.

The "bad" particles are the ones you can't see - so you're missing it if you're looking in the air, or looking on surfaces, or looking at your filters. If you must make it, the only way to filter these bad particles is to run your air through some rather expensive HEPA filters, and change them often.

Fresh air exchange is much preferred over recirculating and filtering.

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The member formerly known as erikbojerik....

Until this winter, when I made an air filter, I relied extensively upon gravity as my main air filter. It's very effective, but slow.

Sometimes my dust production creates clouds of dust, something that is not collectible from a dust collector, that is when the air filter works best. And running it for an hour or two after the end of the work day.

I have a large shop door, 7' high by 17' long. When the weather is warm enough, I always wok with that open. Absolutely no air filterI have ever used can match the performance that open door has. From time to time, even in winter, I open the door and go around the shop with a electric leaf blower cleaning out the nooks and crannies.

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In my shop I have a cyclone dust collector to pull the dust off all of my stationary machines which does a very good job but some still escapes. I don't have anything for my small hand sanders and that is where the majority of my airborne dust comes from. I have two ceiling mounted air cleaners that I built and they have three filters on the suction side and one of them has one on the exhaust side of the filter. The funny thing is I am always cleaning the suction side filters but I have only had to clean the filter on the exhaust side once so I'm not sure how it would be letting much through. The filter on the exhaust side is there to stop the wind from the fan blow other dust off fixtures etc. I also always use dust masks, not the perfect system but it works for me.

It could be letting a lot through, depends on the particle size. There are filters, and there are FILTERS.

http://www.gsfcc.org/Resource/Paper_ID_289.pdf

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The member formerly known as erikbojerik....

I made an excellent working air cleaner in 5 minutes with stuff I already had sitting around. I took a 20" box fan and taped a 20"X20" home furnace filter to it. The fan has 3 speeds. I leave in on low speed all the time but turn it up when I'm making dust. There's all kinds of furnace filter available with different micron ratings. I use a good mask when I'm sanding, but before my filter I'd have some sinus irritation. I no longer have any problems. My air cleaner was a BUNCH cheaper than buying one. I doesn't look good, but I guess you could make a fancy box to house it.

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The dust in the shop can be a serious hazard both to health and safety. I have a main dust system for my tools and I run a 2 micron filter for the air. For those that think the ceiling mounts are not useful , you should see the dust that settles on flat surfaces when it isn't running. I was sold the first time I used it and it really helps.
You need a system that will filter your air about 10 times per hour so figure your cubic footage and multiply by ten. That will tell you the minimum requirement. Since I have been running the ceiling cleaner I breath a lot easier and my shop is much cleaner. Keep the filters clean and replace when you need to.
Health and safety should be your #1 priority
john hall

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John Hall
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