Air filter in your building room?

Hi All,

Do any of you have an air filter in your building area / room? I've recently redone the man cave, and since the c-c-cold weather has returned, I'm forced to keep the windows closed. And with that, (and with a plane I'm finishing) I'm noticing the balsa dust seems a little heavier than normal.

So, do you have an air filter? would you recommend one over another?

yes, I have a face mask, but I also wear glasses, so they get kinda fogged up when exhaling!

Several woodworking companies make room air filters that either hang from the ceiling or sit on a workbench. I have tried neither type but look forward to the day when I break down and buy one.

In the interim, I open the garage door and use a fan to blow the unhealthy vapors/fumes out. I wear masks appropriate to the task as well. Masks and safety glasses can be found on every machine in the shop. I even have several shop aprons that I wear to prevent tracking dust into the house.

The machines are also equipped with dust control in the sense that I hook up a very large shop vacuum with a Dust Deputy cyclone to capture as much dust/chips as possible. That is a big help and wasn't terribly expensive. I think I paid about $40 for the Dust Deputy cyclone and about $80 for the 16 gal Ridgid vac and $30 for the HEPA filter. About $150 overall. The shop vac serves many other purposes as well.

At the end of the day, a Toro leaf blower takes care of everything not nailed down.

A leaf blower is right up there with duct tape in terms of utility. I haven't vacuumed out a vehicle in years...the leaf blower does a much better job!

I got a funny look from the Salvation Army cashier when I bought a pair of white panty hose at a 50% sale like they do. I explained they were for my ShopVac and he sez, "well-I try not to judge people" I fell over as I was wearing a Polecat Rocketry sweatshirt, my desert boots and a pair of paint-stained Levi's. You can never tell, eh? Anyways- cut the legs and put these under the regular filter and you don't wind up blowing the fine playa (or fiberglas, or sawdust) powder out the back in to re-settle in the work area. I also have a HEPA filter unit with carbon filters for those nasty organics. And I wear PPG all the time.

Mine is similar to this: https://www.menards.com/main/tools-...ollection/air-filtration-system/p-1498060.htm. Hung from the ceiling.

dixontj93060 said:

Mine is similar to this: https://www.menards.com/main/tools-...ollection/air-filtration-system/p-1498060.htm. Hung from the ceiling.

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Tim- what kind of filters? This looks awesome! Is the exhaust baffled?

fyrwrxz said:

Tim- what kind of filters? This looks awesome! Is the exhaust baffled?

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Yes, filter inlet is on the other side of the picture as shown. The filters at Menards (I think 9"x15"x2" thick) are expensive--like $20 each; instead I got a standard size (~ 9"x14" which still fit the opening) off eBay at less than $5 each.

I don't know about "baffled"... It is two stage, i.e., one thick bag filter that is permanent and gets rinsed/dried every so often and then an input filter (like a heavy duty furnace filter) as outlined above.

Thanks, bro'-this looks seriously like a Christmas present to me!

I don't have one in my building area, but my desktop computer has a 16x20 furnace filter and eight 120mm fans and it keeps my room from getting dusty. (The inside is so dust free as to look like the day I put it together)

It gets mostly clogged every month or so, so I bought a dozen for 70 bucks from McMaster.

fyrwrxz said:

Thanks, bro'-this looks seriously like a Christmas present to me!

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Remote control BTW, which my g'son loves to play with :[

When I had my wood shop, 24' x 24' x 8' I had 2 of similar to one pictured.
I paid $150 each from harbor frieght. Replacement bags and prefilters are cheapest at Penn State Woodworking.
I hung em on the ceiling, pointing them in opposite directions in the middle one on each side of the shop.
I used unvented propane 30,000 btu garage heater in the winter and left them run 24/7 to circulate the heat.
Both together circulated the air a full 16 times each hour. They do way more than you think they would!
But my rocket shop was in the basement, and made my own from a fan motor from a humidifier and cut bulk filter from home depot and did the trick.
Might be a pic of it in one of the albums on my profile page.
You can get a small table top model at almost any woodworking supply store. Great for painting too.
Just cut a piece of old T-shirt and put in front of the prefilter so it don't ruin it.

Table top unit here: https://www.grizzly.com/products/Bench-Top-Dual-Fan-Dust-Filter/G9955

The ceiling mount looks awesome- might have to investigate that. Now, if they could have a filter to catch organic vapors would help with epoxy vapor.


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markkoelsch said:

The ceiling mount looks awesome- might have to investigate that. Now, if they could have a filter to catch organic vapors would help with epoxy vapor.


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McMaster sells filters with carbon in them for organics and odors. I don't know if that is nearly good enough or not, though.

A friend was redoing the inside of his home. He built a plywood box around a box fan that could take furnace filters. He used two filters; one worked as a prefilter and the other stopped what the first missed. When changing them out, he used the second filter as the new pre-filter and installed a completely new as the second.

It worked well to catch and clean drywall sanding/wood sanding dust.

He built the box to allow it to have both filters on the "suck" side of the fan. Kept a room dust free and the most expensive items were the filters.

Mike

CarVac said:

McMaster sells filters with carbon in them for organics and odors. I don't know if that is nearly good enough or not, though.

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When I am doing lay ups it wear a respirator rated for organic vapors. That takes care of that while doing it, but allows them to filter into the room and my homes ventilation. I doubt it is good enough now that I think about it, but has given me a couple ideas to investigate.


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Closest thing you could get would be a welding vapor air clearner, which actually works on electro statics.
Only thing you could do is build a box of plexiglass with shoulder gloves mounted to 2 wholes and have it direct vented outside with clean air intake.
Not sure all that would be worth it.

My filter system is a blower unit from an old mobile home heater with one 4"x24"x24" MERV11 filter and a 1"x24"x24" prefilter (cheap, just to remove large particles). The fan is a 4 speed fan and the switch box on the side controls the fan, which ever switch is in the on position is the speed. This unit filters the air in the shop about every 5 mins on high speed (its a 24'x30'). Total cost to build less than $50 dollars since the blower unit was free. Air Filters were less than $20 dollars through an HVAC supplier (air filters at the big orange or big grey home stores are way overpriced). Since putting this system together dust on the work benches has been cut down to near zero.

Carbon filters are really not necessary in a shop filtration system unless you are using lots of paints and stuff (VOCs iirc) and then the best for those is a cartridge respirator either half mask or full face powered air purifying respirator (PAPR, one of John Cokers videos show him wearing a full face PAPR). MERV 11 filters capture particles between 1 and 10 microns, a MERV 13 captures particles less than 1 micron. Most shop dust collectors have filter bags good for between 1 and 5 microns, usually 5 unless you buy the more expensive replacement filter bags or a canister filter for them. Bill Pentz has a great website all about dust collection (which includes shop air filtration) https://billpentz.com/woodworking/cyclone/.

I do lots of woodworking and some woods have really nasty dust, many exotic woods, MDF, most plywood glues, some are even cancerous. Dust can also cause fibrous areas to develop in your lungs if not filtered out, I found this out from personal experience. I work at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation transporting radioactive and chemical contaminated waste, and safety has become more important the more I learn about certain things.


That's odd the picture wasn't rotated in my pictures file.

Yes, I use a pair of Jet air filters hung at ceiling level at opposite sides of the room. They are arranged so that they create an air current around the room (although I'm not sure how effective this is given the size of the room).

For woodworking dust, which isn't particularly toxic, this is a fine setup. For fiberglass dust or solvent fumes, however, it is not. You should use dust collection at the source for fiberglass dust and use a respirator for solvent fumes.
See my Shop Safety video for more info.

JohnCoker said:

Yes, I use a pair of Jet air filters hung at ceiling level at opposite sides of the room. They are arranged so that they create an air current around the room (although I'm not sure how effective this is given the size of the room).

For woodworking dust, which isn't particularly toxic, this is a fine setup. For fiberglass dust or solvent fumes, however, it is not. You should use dust collection at the source for fiberglass dust and use a respirator for solvent fumes.
See my Shop Safety video for more info.

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This is correct. I don't even use my ceiling mount unit for dust collection purposes, it really is just an "air freshener" to remove any smells i.e., after cutting fiberglass or outgassing after applying a paint or primer coat. For true dust collection I have a Festool HEPA vac system that hooks up to my sander, jigsaw, router, etc.

While wood dust isn't necessarily toxic most are at least irritants and the glues from many plywood and (all iirc) MDFs once ground into little bitty dusties from cutting and sanding are known cancer causing agents. Also check out this list of woods, https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/wood-allergies-and-toxicity/ while most are just irritants a few are toxic i.e. Yew, Sassafras and some others, most wood dusts are long term harmful and not immediate dangers, but many can make you sick just by breathing the dust. Which is why most good woodshops have both a dust collection system and a good air filtrations systems. Also check out the short bit from everybodys un-favorite government department https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/wooddust/. I use a cartridge respirator (half mask with P100 filter) for sanding anything, and a full face PAPR with combination cartridge (vapor and particulate) for chemicals.

It ain't classy, but depending on the filter used, it works remarkably well..