Venting dust collector outside

You want to be very careful with this if you have neighbors anywhere close by. I built race cars for many years and we had the bright idea to vent the shop air outside one night when painting a car the night before a race. I put a window fan in the window, facing out with a furnace filter on the inside face. That went well, got the car painted, the shop stayed sort of clear during that process and all was fine. Untill the sun came up. Then we noticed a pronounced reddish streak across our lawn, across most of the neighbors lawn and a very scary red tinge on the side of their house around 100 feet away. Fortunately the paint was pretty dry by the time it got to the house so we got that off and the grass survived. The best news is that the neighbor was a very good guy and he didn’t murder us.
Dust isn’t as toxic but if you blow it all over someone elses property (and it will go WAY farther than you expect) things can get a little touchy.

-- Tom Hintz, www.newwoodworker.com

I agree with with Tom about respecting the neighbors, besides the dust you’ll also have a noise problem. If all that can be overcome this is the most efficient way of running a dust collection system, Without the back pressure of bags or filters you probably won’t even need a cyclone unless you have a large shop. A 2hp dust collector and a Thien seperator would be more than enough for a two car garage set up and is economical.

One caveat though, if you run the system to the outside for any lenght of time you will be getting rid of your air conditioning and heating out the DC vent. I personally don’t worry about, I do large amounts of machining and keep the conditioned air systems off while doing it.

Good Luck.

-- -JimmyC...Clayton,NC- "Just smile and wave boys, smile and wave"

Also keep in mind if you have a gas furnace or water heater in the garage that the DC could essentially create a negative pressure scenario which would pull exause gasses back into the garage, mess up combustion, maybe make the pilot light go out, etc.

-- "Never measure......cut as needed." - PeteMoss

Thanks, those are good words of caution – tells me I should experiment & test before doing a permanent installation.

SJBob

(and I love the visual of a long, red streak across the yard :-)

-- More sawdust for the compost pile.

(and I love the visual of a long, red streak across the yard :-)

It was awful, especially when I noticed that it went right up the house also…..not a good deal at all. one of those feeling like you were going to throw up after a three-day drunk only I don’t drink.

-- Tom Hintz, www.newwoodworker.com