Dust

There are a lot of considerations here, especially because your wife will be working in close proximity. In addition to keeping dust out of her area, noise must be given serious consideration. Many dust collectors on the market develop in excess of 85 dBA which is the threshold of permanent hearing loss. Basically, the larger the HP and the greater the air flow – the higher the noise level. Because of this, many shops put the DC outside the shop in it’s own enclosure. If you have neighbors near-by, this might not be a suitable solution. Exhausting the air outside may very well sharply increase your heating and A/C costs.

If your shop is not too large, and you work on on one tool at a time, consider a low HP single stage dust collector with a 1 micron polyester filter bag. For a short run of 8 feet or so, a 2 1/2” flexible hose will do a fine job. For many years I shared garage space with my wife’s laundry area, which in turn was right outside the family room. My Shopsmith DC3300 dust collector was the perfect answer for keeping the environment dust free, and with a noise level that didn’t interfere with other activities in the house.

-- "Heaven is North of the Bridge"

If you push the dust collection air outside you will be pretty much be pushing all that expensive heated and cooled air outside with it. Build a small room for your dust collector. Keep all the dust collector filters in place and install filters in the door or wall of the dust collection room to trap any additional dust that may escape the dust collector filters before the air re-enters the shop area. Also, get an air filtration unit that you can run in addition to the dust collector.

-- DaveH - Boise, Idaho - “How hard can it be? It's only wood!”

DB, Here are 2 links to get you started. Wynn Environmental sells all types of filters. CLearvue cyclones uses some of their filters for their system. The 9L300BL filter seems to be the one most people use for enclosed indoor use. They are great and will help a lot. Take a look at some of the Clearvue cyclone setups. There is a wide variety of ways to install a dust collector. As has been already stated, it would be great if you could put the collector in another enclosure so as to have a quieter shop.

http://www.clearvuecyclones.com/

http://www.wynnenv.com/cartridge_filters.htm

-- Oldworld, Fair Oaks, Ca

My first though was DaveH’s: You would be power-exhausting environmentally controlled air to the outside, which can be expensive.
I am on my second dust collection system (moved houses and shops) and I’ve read a couple of the popular dust collection books, but I am not an expert.

If you can, build a small closet for your DC (remember it doesn’t have to be load bearing or strong—and pump the exhaust back into your shop via a filter out of this closet.
That plus an ambient air filter in the shop (perhaps located strategically to draw air before it gets near a door) is pretty much all you can do.

Initially, I wasn’t even considering putting a collector in a separate room. I just don’t have the space for that. However, I’ve got a concrete ledge that runs all the way around my basement/shop that is about 28” wide and 36” tall. I bet if I put a collector on that and build an enclosure around it and include some amount of insulation and filtration between it and the shop it will solve a lot of my problems.

-- He said wood...http://hickbyassociation.blogspot.com/

The other thing to consider if anyone exhausts a DC to the outside, is the nieghbors, they may not like you blowing dust out into the enviroment. It may even be against the law intown in a non commercial area. I’ll second the idea of adding a air filtration unit, but you should also use a good dust mask, geting all the dust from all the machinery is next to impossible, if not impossible.

An excellent site I picked up on the net is: http://billpentz.com/woodworking/cyclone/Index.cfm
Have a look at it.

Henno

-- Henno