# Air Filtration



## David Justice (Dec 14, 2016)

I have a 2 car garage workshop and have been thinking about getting a hanging air filtration system. I have been reading a lot on the subject and of course Bill Pentz website. I live in the piedmont area of North Carolina, so it never gets excessively cold or hot for a long time. Maybe a few days a year is it too hot or cold to work outside (to me anyway). My questions is, is it necessary to have an air filtration system if I already have a 2HP dust collector venting outside and I almost always work with my garage open and a 4000CFM fan at the door entrance blowing outside. At night I usually close the door to the top of the fan and I wear a respirator whenever I use the table saw or am sanding. Also, every weekend I blow the shop out with a leaf blower, with respirator on, of course.
I don't really care about dust that collects on the floor and bench tops, I can clean that easy enough. I just want to protect my lungs from long term micro dust exposure. 

Thanks for your thoughts.


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## woodnthings (Jan 24, 2009)

*my guess is ...*

I would think that all the air movement you create by having the fans and blowing the days dust off everything would eliminate the need for an air filtration unit. I would suggest that when sanding, wear a respirator AND hook the sander to a shop vac to collect as much dust as possible off the tool itself.

Bandsaws and table saws do create some fine particle dust and it should also be collected at the tool itself. A dust collector at the base of a table saw basically gets the dust that falls down into the port and some of the airborne dust in the cabinet. Table saws are particularly difficult to evacuate without a really powerful DC and lots of cubic feet of air movement. I have pretty good results, but not what I'd like. My DC is a Jet 1100 1 1/2 HP collector connected via 4" flex hose and PVC pipe run under the saw to a 6" port in the base.

I also have a Jet 1000 AFS overhead air filtration unit. The filter gets pretty clogged up and needs to be cleaned out on a weekly basis. I do NOT exhaust any air directly outside to maintain the heated air in the shop as a rule. I do have a ceiling exhaust fan for when I do need it.

The larger chips and shavings from the jointer and planer are less of a problem. You can fill a drum or bag pretty quickly with a good run on the planer. Emptying the colllection drum/bag generates a lot of airborne dust, so it's best to wear a respirator and have the air filtration unit ON and the exhaust fan as well, giving up some shop heat.


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## David Justice (Dec 14, 2016)

Thanks for the good detailed answer. I do use the DC one tool at a time with a flex hose with all the major machines, TS, Planer, jointer, etc. And a shop vac with the ROS. I also have all of my sanding machines and equipment right inside the garage door and I usually just open the garage door all the way when I do any sanding, plus wear a respirator.


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## epicfail48 (Mar 27, 2014)

Im of the opinion that when it comes to keeping dust out of your lungs, one of those hanging filtration systems is pretty well useless. After all, in order for the filter to catch it, the dust has to be airborne, and if its airborne you can breathe it in as easy as the filter can. A respirator is your best bet to protect the lungs, even if youre running a DC and a filtration system.

If youre just trying to keep the shop clean though, one of those filtration systems could be worth it, if it manages to suck the dust out before it can settle out of the air


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## jjones03819 (Nov 17, 2016)

I agree, I run one in my basement shop just to keep the dust from making it up into the rest of the house. I still wear a respirator while in the shop.


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## shoot summ (Feb 21, 2014)

I've got one in my garage, surprising how much dust it catches, and that is with me using a DC, and trying to catch as much as I can at the source. And anytime I am sanding, I am wearing a dust mask. Many times when other activities are going on, but sanding is the worst.


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## Jim Frye (Aug 24, 2016)

I decided a long time ago to go a different route and built an ambient air filter unit that sits on the floor of the shop. It has a large 20" x 20" intake with a 4" thick pleated filter insert. The unit has two outlets and sits in the corner of the shop. One is on the floor level and blows along the wall to create a circular flow around the shop. The other outlet is at the ceiling level and blows diagonally across the shop. Since dust tends to settle, I decided on a floor unit. My unit pumps 700/1,000 cfm, so air flow is good in the shop. I used a cast off HVAC air handler as the basis for my purposes.


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