Dust Collector Location question / advice

Hello,

I am going to spend some money on a new dust collector for my cellar shop. I am looking at either the JDS or the Oneida. My longest run may be 30 feet. I am just a hobby guy so I would only be using one machine at a time. Not sure of the size of the main run yet, maybe 6".

My question is about location:

I was thinking of having the collector outside in a shed and run the pipe through a modified cellar window. Since the window is 6 ft from the floor and the collector input will be 4 or so feet from that I am worried that I am trying to suck the dust to high (far)? Is it worth it to put it out there or should I just put it under the stairs. Has anyone ever had the same sort of setup?

I live in North East Mass if that matters.

Thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks

Larry C

Reply to
Larry C
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A 30-foot run and a 5 foot lift says you will need at least a 2 HP DC. Venting to the outside during the cold winter months will make your shop cold and/or put a strain on the furnace. A central location for the DC might make the best sense.

Reply to
Phisherman

Also the air that is exhausted to the outside has to be replaced. Placing the DC outside may cause a down draft in the chimmney flue while the DC is running.

Reply to
Nova

Larry C wrote:

While your situation is vastly different from mine when talking about heating as I am in a very temperate location, I'd think about putting it in the shop if possible, because a decent dust collector moves a lot of air, and if you are exhausting it outside, you are also sending a boatload of heat out with it. Needless to say, if you exhaust outside in the winter, you will need to provide makeup air, and you will have to heat that air or your shop will soon be at outside temperature. The heating costs can easily exceed all other costs (including electricity to run tools and the DC, wood, supplies and the like). Thus, you may wish to put the DC in the shop with you, or provide some way for the heated air to be ducted back into the shop from the outside shed.

Ignoring the heating problem the real issue is going to be the air flow of the system, not the height you have to run the ducts.

For any reasonable system, you shouldn't have any real issue with the "lift". On my last shop, the initial installation had 4" PVC pipe ductwork at 10.5 feet from the floor, and used a simple 1.5hp dust collector with a "trash can cyclone" style pre-filter. With the pre-filter, almost nothing ever collected in the filter bags, so after awhile I just left them off because it allowed for more air flow. I was exhausting the air outside, and never had a visible dust on the ground or outside wall of the shop as a result, so the cyclone was really doing it's job. The longest run (to a wood lathe) was about 50 feet plus another 10 for up from the lathe and 5 down to the Cyclone at the other end, and it really didn't perform as I'd have liked, but lathes are really difficult to deal with. Table saw and 12" planer were about 30 feet plus the up and down and did pretty well, but If I were pushing the planer hard I could plug up the duct. At something under $300 including the PVC ducting, it was a low budget approach to DC and did pretty well for the cost. Swapped out the DC and trashcan cyclone for a "real one" without significantly changing performance, though it was quieter and it did look a lot nicer. All in all, it worked pretty good and I'm not complaining, but sold the place before I had a chance to move to larger main ducts. My biggest mistake was not really looking at the restriction of the ducting I was using.

If you're looking at sucking up small shavings and sawdust, a Dust Collector might work, but I'd personally not use anything that doesn't have some sort of cyclone or pre-separator, so nothing but fine dust ever gets to the impeller... (memories of wood shop and kids dropping chunks of wood into the ductwork to hear them rattle all the way to the impeller, and the whack they made when they hit it still make me cringe. How it ever withstood repeated freshman wood shop classes I'll never know.)

Since I had some time before I get the space in the new place back to use as a full workshop, I did some additional homework. One web site worth visiting is the following:

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's got a lot of information and some really good points, and even has plans on his site if you want to make your own from scratch. He took the approach of determining the needed airflow based on duct size and feet per minute air flow required to keep things moving, and eventually figured out a cyclone with an inclined input is more efficient overall. Most manufacturers don't seem to pay any attention to this, and though I'm not totally convinced the other ones are that much worse than his approach, I'm still looking at my total costs for delivery. As I'm in a "delivery challenged" location, shipping costs can be a significant problem, so I may be much more sensitive to the shipping costs than where you are.

The new shop will have a main run with 35' of 6 inch ducting at the truss level (10') feeding a 3HP cyclone (very possibly the clear-vue). I would expect it to keep up with all of my needs, as my shop is primarily also a single man operation. Only occasionally do I have any help, though I'm thinking on offering some sort of internship to somebody nearby if I could [con

Reply to
rick frazier

As some have said, a bunch of air and heat will leave your house, if DC is outside. But, you could return that air thru large furnace filters. Double stack or hi efficiently

Reply to
Rick Samuel

as far as figuring uot the size you need, Oneida used to spec a system for you (including a duct parts list) iof you sent them a shop drawing (size, machine locations, etc).

I also live in the NE, and I put my DC outside the shop. Mostly because of noise (I have a 3HP oneida, and it roars)... In order to keep heat loss minimal, I have a return duct so the air comes back tot he shop after going through the DC. A couple of furnace filters in the return pick up a bit more of the dust (although not much gets through the super fine bags). If you go for this option, make the return duct really bog 0as big as you can amange. There is a lot of air moving through the DC, and the less back pressure you have the better. If you generate any real amount of back pressure, the warm air will escape out of the vents and leaks in the DC shed anyway... If you are really adventurouse, you could power your return duct - old furnace fans are cheap, especially if you know someone that reapairs/tunes furnaces.

Given teh option of doing it again, I'd keep the DC out of the shop.About the only disadbantage is that you ahve to remember to chreck the barrels - a busy day of planing can fill them up, and if they clog, the chips will back up into the DC fan, which will chuck them into the filter (cleanout is a major PITA)....

-J

Reply to
jd

FYI I use a 1100 cfm Jet with canister filter. I only use a 20' run of "4""clear flexible hose. Because like you I only use one tool at a time the hose is totally portable and is not fixed to a particular tool. For half my operations including catching waste from a 15" stationary planer the hose exits the DC about 18" from the floor goes straight up to a ceiling hook 12" from the ceiling then comes back down to the Planer about 6' away. Similarly the hose exits the DC goes up to the ceiling hook and back down to about 4" above the floor to my Laguna BS. Same situations for the Drum Sander, DP, and Router table.

For longer runs to the other side of the shop the hose comes down from the ceiling hook to go to an OS Sander, Disk Sander or my TS up to 16' away from the DC.

With the hose going up to the ceiling I see no drop in performance and I have never had to clear a clog. The DC seldom looses any debris from the high volume planer or drum sander.

Reply to
Leon

I went through a lot of research when I moved and was designing the new shop.. In my case, putting the unit outside would have caused the same problems that others have, plus future building in my area will eventually include neighboring houses.. I didn't want noise abuse to folks nearby.. (We also have the AC in the shop running every day for almost 6 months a year)

I have a Harbor Freight unit that does the job well for me... It sits in the corner furthest from the rest of the house (my shop is a large room in the house) with a 20' run of 4" hose between the DC and a shop-built separator, with a Y on the separator making short runs to the band saw and lathe, each with a blast gate..

I also added a DC muffler, which was a GREAT investment:

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Hello,

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

Reply to
mac davis

Seems like that muffler would be pretty simple to make. Now granted I don't know what's in it, but seems like to me that you could get the same effect from a can of something crappy like Yuban, drilling a hole in both ends of the can and sliding a piece of exhaust venting through the hole. You could pack the can with fiberglas or steel wool or heck even leave the dried out Yuban in the can to act as packing.

I don't know, sure would be interesting to see what is in that muffler they offer.

Reply to
Eigenvector

You need to check the heights on those machines and make sure you can get it in your basement. Many basements are quite low.

The Oneida is

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87" tall.

The Dust Gorilla is 90"

http://www.> Hello,

Reply to
Pat Barber

On Sun, 7 Sep 2008 23:37:10 +0100, Larry C wrote (in article ):

That's a relief. Remember that as you move further south, you need to add more coils to your dustpipe, otherwise you'll be fighting the natural cyclone action appropriate to latitude in the northern hemisphere, Once you cross the equator, you have to reverse the direction of twist otherwise you'll be in _real_ trouble.

On the equator itself you can get away with straight pipe. but try to keep it running east-west.

Feel pity for those in northermost Alaska who must have their DC mounted _directly_ below them, with minimal horizontal runs as they have far more latitude than longitude up there, with the obvious effect you'll all be familiar with - (which I suppose is better than all the south polar woodworkers who have to have theirs built on towers to keep the line going directly UP.)

I hope this helps.

:-)

Reply to
Bored Borg

I did quite a bit of buying when I did my dust collector and plumbed my entire garage for each tool. I did quite a bit of reading and the one thing I never paid attention to was that a LOT of people just move the hose from tool to tool as they work. My JET dust collector was far under powered for what I was asking it to do, and have since moved to just moving the hose from Jointer to TS to Planer. I like the setup I have now and wish I had not spent the extra 200-300 bucks on the stuff I recently sold at a garage sale for maybe 20 bucks. The money was not as big a deal to me as the countless days trying to get it to work.

Mark

BTW - I did the same thing with my compressor. I have a lot of black iron to sell at the next garage sale....now I just use a long hose.

Reply to
DejaVoodoo

No idea, maybe fiberglass, like a glass pack? wow.. flash back!

Not being a welder or sheet metal guy, I'm happy with this one... I'd spend more than $100 worth of time just getting the hose fittings the right size and round.. lol

It was less than $100 with shipping, it works well and I didn't lose turning time designing and building one.. (As if the first one of ANYTHING that I design & build works well)

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

Reply to
mac davis

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Reply to
J. Clarke

Thanks. I was considering doing the same in my new shop. I was thinking about putting the DC downstairs in the garage and running a vertical down to it. I'll have to think about that some more.

I did that in my last basement and garage. It worked quite well, though I left 150' of copper and more than a dozen disconnects when I moved. I understand the issue with the DC though.

Reply to
krw

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