In my old shop I had my single stage DC parked in a corner of the shop. I used a Thien baffle on top of a metal trash can that seemed to do a very good job catching the larger saw dust and chips. My DC is a Grizzly and came with the cloth bags on it. I retrofitted it several years ago with a Wynne filter on top and plastic bag on the bottom. Even with this setup I can tell I'm still getting fine dust in the air.
I'm in the process of building a new shop and I gave half a thought to exhausting the DC outside. However, I live in the frozen north where I heat the shop for 4 months out of the year with a Modine Hot Dawg heater. I don't want to pull my heat out of the shop and blow it outside all winter so I think the exterior exhaust is a non-starter.
I read several posts where other woodworkers alluded to having put their DC in a closet to cut down on noise. That got me thinking...I'm considering building a box around the filter end of the DC and mounting a couple high quality furnace filters on the box as a second stage of filtering. I figure by doing that I keep the heat in the shop while (hopefully) significantly cutting down on fine dust getting into the air. I do use an air cleaner mounted on the ceiling but I want to stop as much dust as possible before it even reaches the shop air.
Has anyone done anything like this? Pros/Cons, lessons learned?
Thanks