Small Enclosed Room for Dust Collector

[Samuel Brooks]

I am in the process of finishing the interior of my garage expansion. I added 10' to the back of my garage so now I have a 24' x 40' garage that still shares space with my wife's SUV. Justification for that extra 10'. Now we will see what she says when I still park her vehicle in the driveway. :D

I was thinking of adding a small room just big enough for the collector and installed inside of the garage, my dust collector the Jet 1200CFM model. I was then planing on using some furnace filters to minimize the dust being returned to the room though the bags. Has anyone done this and if so were they happy with it? I also have a ceiling hung Jet Air Cleaner which I like but at that point it's a little late :rolleyes: but better then not having anything at all.

If I were to do this I would need to put in a vent area equal to or greater then the input on the collector which is a 5" at 1200CFM. How would I calculate that surface area for the filters?

Any comments will be appreciated.

[John Schreiber]

I'm not there yet, but I'm planning for something like that. If part of your goal is to quiet the dust collector, there are some tricks that make a big difference. Another thought is that if you might ever have a compressor, you might want to leave space for it in the closet.

[Eric Gustafson]

I have a simular strategy. I never used the side door to the garage, so I placed a 4 1/2' x 12 ' slab out there. I will make large closet out of the space where I can install a clearvue dust collector, air compressor and storage. Air return will first pass through a furnace filter box with a baffle for further sound reduction. Ought to work well.

[Chuck Lenz]

I'm not sure that puting a air compressor in the same small enclosed dusty space is a good idea. I would think you'd be cloging the filter for the compressor alot.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I'm getting ready to do the same thing in the next couple of weeks. However, I won't be placing the a/c in the same room as all dust collectors leak. I'm making two separate closets next to each other. The a/c room will have filters in the door. The d/c room will have a S shaped return duct lined with a sound adsorbing material to minimize the sound returned to the shop work area. If you do a search here on DC ducts or just go look up threads started by Jim Becker, you can find a thread where he details how he built the return duct to the room. With it shaped like an S as viewed from the side, there is no direct line for sound to travel from the d/c room to the work area.

[Bill Wyko]

With a clearview, dust won't be an issue I don't think. If I'm not mistaken, it filters down to .02 microns. Plus with the air being returned to the work area very little will hang in the air in the room. IMHO:D

[Chris Parks]

I'm not sure that puting a air compressor in the same small enclosed dusty space is a good idea. I would think you'd be cloging the filter for the compressor alot.


Just run the inlet for the compressor to an outside wall.

[Randy Denby]

In the HVAC business we calculate one square foot per ton for return air grills. This is free open area and as such, you have to take into account the grill/louvers. One ton of an a/c unit usually means approximately 400cfm. So use one square ft of free area for 400 cfm and this should be good for about a .01 of static pressure drop.
I'm giving an example for air conditioning, but ti should apply to dust collection too, as far as figuring how much filtered area you will need for filtered return back into the shop from your dust collector room. Just figure how much cfm your dust collector draws and go from there..........

[terry richards]

I agree with the idea of a separate room; the noise factor was my main motivation.

I built a shed (3'x8') like the one described here on the back of my shop. I also left room for the 30 gal garbage can cyclone pre-collector. I made this little room as airtight as possible, sealing all the joints and putting a gasket on the door, thereby directing nearly all the cleaned air back into the shop through double filters. I also have my compressor in this little room.

Since it's on the south side of the building, it gets quite warm in the afternoons when the DC is not running. That makes it a great place to air dry rough woodturnings on shelves I built in there. Constant air movement when the DC is running - toasty warm when it's not.

The other advantage is by returning your shop air back into the main shop, you don't suck out all your heat in the winter or your cooled air in the summer. Whatever you suck out comes back to you - minus the dust.

[Samuel Brooks]

I have been thinking about this project some more and instead of building a "Dedicated" room, I am going to build a Box out of 3/4" plywood and that will hold the dust collector. This way if I want to move it later, I can without much trouble and 3/4" will take up less space then a 2x4 wall.

According to Randy Denby, I will need to allow for at least the equivalent of (3) 12"x12" filters or some combination of that to cover the 1200CFM that my machine can produce. I will most likely also put them in double so it has to pass though two filters to get out so I would end up with (6) 12"x12" filters.

Thanks for all of the suggestions.

[Jameel Abraham]

Last week I built a sound reduction closet for my ClearVue. It works very very well. I detailed my progress and techniques at that company's forum. Here are a couple pics. Glad to elaborate...

The return air on mine ended up being about 3x as large as the intake. The larger you make it, the more chance for noise seepage, but also the less velocity of escaping air. I positioned mine (with baffle made to block the sound from the blower above--that's where most of the noise is produced) as low as possible and when the DC is running the exhaust is strong enough to kick up any dust on the floor outside the closet. Good reason to keep that area (and the whole shop) clean.

Also keep in mind that a lot of the sound will come from open blast gates at machines if your machine is powerful. With all the gates shut on my ClearVue the whole thing isn't much louder than a washing machine. But with one gate open the rushing sound is much louder. I tested this with a blast gate just connected to the intake on the DC, not an actual machine, so connected-to-machine results might be different.

I used a combo of fiberglass batts, homasote and black open-cell foam (like you'd see in a fitted gun case or the like) for the enclosure.

You can hear my results here: http://www.khalafoud.com/media/ClearVueSoundTest_Jameel.mp3

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