Need air filtration system for my 1000 SF shop

[Kerry Krishna]

 The dust in here is amazingly bad, and I am not talking sawdust. I remember the electrostatic Oreck filters and such. I am not sure how to deal with this problem... 

[Mark Dobbins]

Kerry i use a ricon shop air filtration unit i bought at woodcraft , it was on sale so i sprung for it but you can build one with a blower motor and some filters,there are alot of youtube videos on building a shopmade filter.

[Mark Fogleman]

I use a 20X20 box fan with a 20X20 Filtrete HVAC filter taped to its outflow and a regular cheap HVAC filter on the inflow side and it works great. One of the woodworking magazines published a study a while back and this worked as well or better than most purpose built shop air filters. It's connected to a timer and I run it any time I'm making dust and for 2 hours after closing down. I use HEPA filters on my shop vac and cyclone but dust still get out. 

[Robbie Collins]

Whatever you do, don't put it in the back burner, it's terrible for your lungs. If you use CA glue, the fumes can glue the dust motes to the inside of your lungs and present as fibrosis.

[Mark Fogleman]

But...Don't depend on a shop air cleaner as your sole method of protecting your lungs. They can take quite a while (>15 minutes for the best ones) to bring the level of dust in the air back to baseline if positioned correctly and sized appropriately for the air volume of the shop after using power tools. FWW Air Cleaner Review You also have the problem of being exposed to more circulating dust while the cleaner is cleaning the air. It circulates the air and exposes you to all the air in your shop while it's doing its job. Capturing the dust at the machine with adequate airflow, HEPA filtering the air being returned to the shop from the dust collector/shopvac or exhausting it outside and most importantly wearing a tight fitting high efficiency dust mask are still needed if you use an air cleaner.

To me the air cleaner is more for keeping environmental "trash" (dust bunnies/pollen/soot/pet hair/stuff that mess up a drying finish/etc) and any non-machine generated wood dust out of the air.

[Brian Burns]

Hello Kerry,

What has helped my dust problem a lot is to put my 6.5 HP Sears shop vacs (the most suck for the buck) outside. A shop vac inside the shop is just a fine dust concentrater, as the filters get tiny holes punched in them by sharp bits of sawdust. At least devote an exhaust hose to venting the vac to the out of doors.---the fine stuff is the worst for your lungs. I lose heat in cold weather, but it's a small price to pay for clean air and lungs.

Cheers,

Brian