Old dust, health and motivation

[Skip Helms]

Hello All,

Lately I've been upgrading my basement shop starting with a whole-house dehumidifier. I built a new Roubo/Shaker bench, revamped the old one for guitar making and replaced lots of ballasts and bulbs overhead. Practical and cosmetic but I haven't really tackled the fact there is dust in the overhead joists, nooks and crannies, the stem wall and almost everywhere else. I wear a mask when I'm creating it but it is always there. I've got a good Oneida cyclone collector ducted to all the machines and a rolling scrubber too.

Question one is; if this were your situation, how would you make a major effort to vacuum, collect, remove or otherwise improve the situation? I can't take a week off to shop-vac all the corners but can't think of a better way to get it all. Hiring someone makes sense but I don't know who even does that (or does it well). If there is a great idea out there, I hope you'll share it.

Next, I'd like to know if anyone on the medical side has suggested ways to help lungs clear themselves of stray sawdust. No matter how clean you try to be, we do breathe the stuff. Nostrils and sinus I've got covered but not deep down. I'd like to know I'm helping my body slough-off inhaled wood (probably other things too) as well as I can.

Any ideas on either topic would be welcome. Thanks, Skip

[Malcolm Schweizer]

One radical thought is to blow the dust out with the reverse end of your vacuum, with the air scrubber running and the windows open if you have them. (If not, DON'T do this!) I was cleaning the shop, which for me is ground level and has a door, and mistakenly put the hose on the exit port on the shop vac, and blew dust everywhere. I sat and thought, "hmmmmmm- this may work." I opened the door and blew the dust out. It worked like a charm, getting dust out of places that the vac can't reach. Not something I would do every day, but this was a deep cleaning.

As as for clearing your lungs- drink plenty of water. It helps the body make mucous and keeps it liquid so it can do its job.

[Ole Anderson]

Every few years I close the doors to my shop, turn off the HVAC, run the ambient air cleaner on high along with the dust collector with all gates open (a 2 hp SDG), put on my respirator and go at the walls and joists with an air nozzle on a compressor hose. Before that I try to vacuum horizontal surfaces that don't get cleaned frequently, like the top of light fixtures and ducts, just to get the worst of it. Once the dust settles, I vac the floor. Takes about an hour. Then I clean the filter in my air cleaner.

[Wayne Lomman]

Skip, make a temporary vac by attaching a length of vac hose to one of your dust collector inlets and use that to clean up.

In the longer term, put lining in all your ceilings etc so there are minimal dust traps.

I am not in favour of general blow down. The smallest visible dust to the human eye is about 2 mil but all the hazardous stuff is much smaller than that so it is better to clean by vacuum. I've done lead removal work and this rule is belted into the guys every day.

Also note that some wood fibres are more hazardous than others for example Tasmanian Blackwood has fibres very similar in structure to asbestos. Also, composite materials such as MDF and plywood have significant proportions of bonding agents that are chemical in effect as well as particulate. Your dust will only be as hazardous as what you work with.

[Hoang N Nguyen]

The woodwhisperer did a good video on this. He installed a huge fan on the side of his shop with louvered flaps as a cover for when not in use. He did an air quality check of the shop, before, during and after blowing all the dust off all horizontal surfaces. In addition to running his air filter, the results were very good after everything is said and done. Here's the link http://www.thewoodwhisperer.com/vide...lity-upgrades/

[Daniel O'Neill]

I think with a basement shop Hoang has a good idea. For my garage I have an electric leaf blower and I run my air cleaner. After a through cleaning I'd try to get some of those spots that collect dust covered. It will be better for the family in the house too. That for me is the main reason I use the leaf blower so much on the garage floor. (keeps the dust from going inside the rest of the house as much)

[Morey St. Denis]

High school and college students will be getting out quite soon. You might consider hiring a mature, responsible student for a brief spell during their summer break to handle that vacuuming task?..
Give them a pack of disposable breath masks to be worn while potentially at work vacuuming your shop along with a good variety of vacuum hose attachments. Unplug or otherwise lock-out any serious power tools ahead of time. Is anyone available near the home to supervise that cleaning work? I've got a couple high school and college age nephews and it occurred that this sounds right up their alley for short term summer fill-in work. Just an idea for you that may no longer be PC!

Morey

[Thomas Bank]

Every few years I close the doors to my shop, turn off the HVAC, run the ambient air cleaner on high along with the dust collector with all gates open (a 2 hp SDG), put on my respirator and go at the walls and joists with an air nozzle on a compressor hose. Before that I try to vacuum horizontal surfaces that don't get cleaned frequently, like the top of light fixtures and ducts, just to get the worst of it. Once the dust settles, I vac the floor. Takes about an hour. Then I clean the filter in my air cleaner.

That’s my method. I use a handle similar to this so that I can use the air nozzle with one hand and hold the dust collector hose close by with the other. It cuts down on the free-floating dust a bit, but I still wear a respirator as it kicks up quite the dust storm.

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I have been tempted to let loose with the leaf blower inside, but figure I’d be blowing a lot more than just dust around!

[Peter Aeschliman]

Skip,

I don't think anybody has addressed your question about how to clear dust out of your lungs. I'm not a doctor and have only a layman's understanding. That said, my understanding is that there are maybe 3 categories of airborne dust:

1) Dust that is big enough that your body can mechanically filter it out before it reaches your lungs (nose hair, saliva in your mouth, sinuses).
2) Dust that is small enough to get to your lungs, but big enough that it cannot be exhaled once it enters
3) Dust that is small enough to be inhaled and then exhaled

#2 is really bad for you, because from what I've read, there really is no way to get rid of it. It's the stuff that will mess you up... So the key is to just not breath it in the first place.

Another random idea: one thing that I think often gets overlooked is reducing the number of exposed surfaces for the dust to settle on. Like, putting all small tools in cabinets rather than hanging them on the wall, closing off joist and stud cavities with drywall or other coverings, and using gloss paints that are harder for dust to cling to (and are easier to wipe down). Like you said, dust is always going to escape your primary and secondary collection systems. So knowing that, I think it's smart to organize your shop with cleanup in mind.

This advice is probably out of the scope of what you're trying to do here, but I thought I'd throw it out anyway. In lieu of that, I have nothing to add to the great advice provided by others here.

[Skip Helms]

Thanks all. I'll give a good think to stirring it up and blowing it out. The basement is under a single-story 2900 sq ft house. With only a couple windows and leaving the door up to the kitchen open it would take quite a vortex. I'd also have to rig a panel for the fan in the exterior door jamb. Hoang; I'm glad I watched the video. It would not have occurred to me to cut the furnace off first.

Morey; you must be persuasive. The only college kids I know want to be hedge fund managers. Dirty jobs don't enter into it.

The lung thing is wishful thinking. Shops are dusty -- especially if you use them. I was trolling for ideas like herbal expectorants or things that flush foreign objects out. sh

[Hoang N Nguyen]

Another thing you may consider is to hire maids and have them clean your shop every time they come. My maids come once a week to clean my house and I use to have them clean my shop while they were at it. They didn't do a perfect job but I didn't have that fine layer of dust on all my horizontal surfaces. I asked them to stop cleaning the shop after they kept moving things around and I'd go nuts looking for it afterwards. When they WERE cleaning the shop, they only charged me an extra $20 to do so.

[Brian W Smith]

One reason our shop will never be without shop-vac/s.Regular use keeps things extremely tidy.This is as an adjunct to well engineered DC systemS.

But twds the OP,trying to be polite as possible....if a shop doesn't have a master plan of sorts in this matter(total shop "blowdown"),then,somebody dropped the ball on design.With a really big fan sitting into the downstream door/s,blowing out....and a medium sized fan/s blowing in from the intake door/window,you can pretty much blowdown with impunity.....not quite,but pretty durn close.Should be able to,with a well designed shop,to blowdown and not need a respirator(yes,you should still wear one).

Good luck with your housekeeping.

[Skip Helms]

Design really never entered into it.

It's a basement with a lot of original support pillars and a bunch of floor-jacks under I-beams or 6x6's where the floor sagged over the last 65 years -- especially towards the middle of the house. All the machines are arranged so stock doesn't hit one of the pillars. You can't walk in a straight line from one end to the other except on one side. There is a 55" high by 36" deep stem wall along one of the 80' walls and it goes 12' back under the bedroom. With only 7' to the bottom of the floor joists, it's a tight squeeze. Even in the main room, I have to work around the waste pipes. It also takes a lot lights because you only get so much diffusion at that height.

There are four little rooms: a half-bath sized wood storage room for exotics. With the whole-house dehumidifier that isn't necessary anymore but it's there. Winter or summer it stays around 68 degrees with 36% RH. There is a finish room that goes about 16' x 16', a paint storage room about the size of a regular bathroom (which it was) and another storage room the size of the finish room. The first three are sealed with doors so they either don't get dirty or are easy to clean. With the new bench there are 9 workstations: finish, the new Roubo/Shaker, guitar (tall Roubo with unique vises), metal, sink, sharpening, electronics, tablesaw outfeed (very popular) and a low rolling unit for large casework. Stuff piles up under most of them. The back stem-wall is very handy for storage but behind that belongs to the spiders. We've have an understanding but their lease is almost up. There is unclaimed space under the stairs, where the utilities come into the house and near the sump-pumps. Some space belongs to equipment for my wife's business.

After years, this is the long-promised effort to make it less utilitarian and more a place I don't mind spending time. It will never have Geppetto-like natural sunlight but it's what I've got. And it's time to clean it.

I hope people will add more about lung health. I've scoured the net over the years for wood-specific counter-measures. Most are either how to collect it or avoid it. Maybe you guys do things differently but I've found that unless I keep a dust mask on, I'm going to breathe ambient particles just walking around. I also work with some exotics. Never had a problem with breathing or skin allergies but that doesn't mean they aren't waiting for the right time. Since I'm hoping to be in the shop more, I'd like to make breathing more of a priority.

Thanks again, sh

[Skip Helms]

Follow-up question: I'm seriously considering the exhaust fan and leaf blower remedy and need a hand from one of our more technically advanced members. My basement is 80' long and varies from 30 to 40 feet wide. It is mostly open. The only place I could see mounting a fan would be in the exterior door via some bracing. That or just cutting a vent in the door and putting a blower on a cart made to fit the opening. On the opposite side of the garage is a 16 x 32" window and the door from the upstairs house is towards that end of the space as well. 8' from floor to the house floorboards but 2X10 joists lower the actual headroom.

Any ideas on how many CFM I would need to effective remove the dust I scare-up with the leaf blower? There is a 24" Canarm enclosed fan at 5600 cfm that I could make fit but that is a lot of fan. Smaller units are in the 3800 cfm range. Being on the door it would need a cord rather than hardwiring but I don't expect to use the thing unsupervised or more than a few times a year. Might come in handy for stinky finishes too (not explosive, just lingering).

Thanks again for your views, Skip

[Robert Engel]

Skip,

I have a very open well ventilated shop and I think this is the key. I don't know how you do it in a basement. Maybe a big exhaust fan? Or several air scrubbers (you can DIY them) and lots of good fans to keep the air stirred up? (obviously not while your in the shop).

The dust that is settled on the rafters can be dealt with by blowing with an air hose. This would be my approach: respirator/leaf blower or air hose/exhaust fan. The leave the fan on and evacuate the shop for a few hours.

I am a medical professional, but not a respiratory specialist. The only solution is a good quality full face respirator. Dust masks are no good. And you need to wear it all the while your in the shop. Be aware the suspended particulates are around after you turn the machine off. I think this is a big mistake people make. The take the mask off as soon as the machine stops running.

Major pain doing the Darth Vader thing for hours in the shop, especially if its warm, but if you want to protect your lungs it is necessary.

Also keep in mind some species of wood and materials like MDF are more toxic than others and you may have allergies to certain species. These are the ones you have to be particularly careful about.

Its a huge issue but you are ahead of a lot of guys because at least you are thinking about it.