TWW Dust Collection System?


dhall9

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I am still venting outside now that I'm back in the old location. I love not having to worry about filters. And I do indeed have blast gates at each location. I still have to do a new shop tour as soon as I can find a few spare moments. You'll be able to see the full setup then. But no major changes have been made.

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How much dust gets exhausted to the outside with a ClearVue / cyclone? I'm thinking of getting one but I don't have any space in my tiny shop, so maybe I can skip the filters. I'm in the city, and the dust would get dumped behind my house under my deck - near where we park. Will I have to shovel the dust off my wife's car? What about noise - will it bug the neighbors?

Thanks in advance for any info.

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I gave you a quick answer in the chat today Aaron but I'll elaborate here. There isn't a lot of dust that gets pushed out. But over time, even a little bit of dust will build up. And if I let the can fill too high, small chips and shavings will shoot out, lol. Over time though, the side of the house gets a light coating of dust but that comes off whenever it rains (so like twice a year!). :) Based on what you describe, I doubt you'll be shoveling anything off the car. But if you just washed it and the wind is blowing the right way, she might have a nice little coating. So depending on how much that would bug her...... :)

As for noise, its pretty noisy when you direct vent. I can even give you a dB rating tomorrow if you want. I have a little meter.

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Thanks Marc, that info helps. I'm trying to weigh the options to conserve space in the shop. From what you describe, the unfiltered dust creation wouldn't be a big deal. I would be curious about the dB's if you don't mind.

Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I should put the whole cyclone outside the shop in a separate enclosure. Hmmm... :)

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Hey Aaron, with my DC, a PSI 2.5HP cyclone, the loudest noise that you get, comes from the return air. I put a muffler between my cyclone and the filters to help keep the sound down. It really helped a lot.. The actually DC itself is pretty quiet.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The disadvantage of outside exhaust is that the air in the shop is sucked out and gets replaced with outside air. In winter, this means that any energy spent heating your shop is wasted. Likewise in summer, the A/C energy is blown away. In my case, it also means that I would be sucking very humid air into my shop resulting in serious rust problems.

A good filter lets me keep my shop temp/humidity stable.

Mike in North Carolina

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The disadvantage of outside exhaust is that the air in the shop is sucked out and gets replaced with outside air.

Also, if you have any combustion in your shop that uses a chimney or vent, the carbon monoxide can be sucked into your shop because air is being sucked down the chimney to replace the air you are pumping out.

I really liked the idea of venting my DC outside, but I've got a water heater and boiler in my basement shop, and when I thought about blowing the air out and then pulling additional air in to replace it, I decided it would be easier to just get a Wynn filter.

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Despite being in the desert with crazy hot temps, I have never really even noticed a significant temperature drop when using the cyclone and A/C at the same time. Obviously the AC might stay on a little longer but again, not so much that I notice. I also have 16 foot ceiling so that cyclone would need to be on for quite some time before it has any significant impact on the air volume. And I have to say that even if it did, I'd consider it a small price to pay not to have to worry about the filter getting dirty and the peace of mind knowing that 100% of the fine particles have no way to get into the shop air. Now if my shop were smaller, it might have more impact and I might think differently......

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You can decide where the air/dust goes out of your shop.

...And you can decide where it comes in. On hot days open a window on the cool side of the shop and pull some cool air in. One can bury pipe and pull in earth temperature air (usually about 55 degrees) if they want an eco solution. On cold days you can solar heat the air that comes in. I decided that if I m paying to move the air around why not make use of that?

Having all the fine dust out (like Marc said) was the main reason I picked direct port out. Not having to buy $250 filters was next. Better CFM was third but as you can tell, these are personal choices.

A side note: I put a hardware screen on my OUT port to keep the wild life out...

I will try to post something about my setup if anyone is interested.

Dave In Oz:

I am in the process of building my ducting and waiting for some parts I ordered from Rockler. Getting closer, exciting. If the filters do not work to full efficiency (as filters) unless they are caked to some degree then you would think you would have to be losing some CFM, at least I would.

I also built my own wooden stand so my dust collector is on casters and can be moved like if I need to paint or wire - make no mistake, these machine are big and bulky.

I will try to post something about my setup if anyone is interested.

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This is a cool topic ! Here I am, a year or so away from even thinking about a built in DC system and I am getting input for my subconscious to chew on.

My little shop vac caddy, dust bucket with boom arm is working far better than I expected (except that the vac hose I am using whistles louder than a canary on steroids due to the amount of ribbing), so it will keep me out of trouble until I make the move to stationary tools like bandsaws etc. For hand power tools it is great!

My shop area will not be huge in comparison to most, it will be around 16 x 40 feet, but, I built the building east west, I love solar orientation, and I have doors facing south and windows facing North. Southern hemisphere is @rse about to Northern hemisphere for solar design. During summer I usually keep everything open as the sun never hits an opening as it tracks overhead from East to West. During winter I open the north up to glorious sunshine as the sun tracks low in the northern sky, east to west. The trick is to exhaust port to East or West :) in my situation. The other thing, the temperature range here is 32 to around 105 F, but that is only for a short few weeks, more like 45 to 90 F for the balance of the year, God's country indeed.

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