Has anyone tried this method with your DC?

[Charles Lent]

Skip,

Where are you located? I'm in Central North Carolina and use a heat pump to both heat and cool my shop. I chose this because it does both and because there is no fire involved. Fine sawdust and fire do not play well together. I get both heating and cooling from one unit without any fire, and the efficiency of the unit is very good. I installed a high quality filter on the air return and it does a fair job of keeping my shop air clean too. If you live in an area where heat pumps will work well for you, consider getting one for your new shop.

Charley

[Skip Camejo]

Charley - Northern New England. From what I understand heat pumps won't work below freezing and other than the 4th of July, that's pretty much the rest of the year up there!!!

[Deb Clarkson]

Air to air heat pumps move a large volume of barely heated air and would be likely to keep the dust airborn, where you'd be breathing it. If you have the option of putting a boiler in a separate room to provide heat in the floor of your shop you can be very comfortable working at a lower thermostat setting. If you have a nice warm floor you could vent outside with less discomfort from the cold air that has to come in to replace the outgoing air. Maybe you could put a duct to bring in the replacement air as close as possible to the tool you're collecting from so you'd be mainly throwing out unheated air.

[Charles Lent]

Skip,

I agree. A heat pump is not a good choice for you, but venting the DC outside is still my best recommendation for your problem. They actually loose efficiency below about 40 degrees and electric resistance heating or a gas fired unit makes up the difference here. I came from upstate NY and -30 deg was possible there, Every Winter involved quite a few very cold days well below zero, so Deb's suggestion is likely the best way to go for you. I would likely have done that in my own shop if I was still in NY. Make an antifreeze/water mix for the pipes to keep them from freezing if the heat should ever go off when you aren't there. Before moving South, my shop was in my basement. When I moved here I made it a point to not have a basement in the house and I put up a detached building for my shop. The shop noise and saw dust pollution of the house were my main reasons for separating them. In the NY house I spent a lot of money trying to keep the shop noise and saw dust from getting upstairs. I managed to reduce both, but could not eliminate it.

Charley

[Chris Padilla]

Put your entire DC system outside your shop in a small shed or put it into its own closet. The idea is to keep you and the point of collection as isolated as possible. This will also help with noise pollution.

Next, put at least 6" pipe everywhere and modify ports on your equipment to handle it. The idea here is the gather as much dust right at the source as possible. Build hoods and shrouds and such. Grab that dust as soon as it is made.

Keep us abreast as to your shop progress. We LOVE seeing shop builds!!

[Brice Rogers]

One area where there was little focus in terms of your post and subsequent comments is on how you are collecting the dust - - that is, the suction end. It may very well be that you are missing some of that fine dust and it just floats off and settles somewhere. Also, I don't recall you mentioning which tools you primarily use and the vacuum fittings that you are using on those tools. I suspect that DC on some tools is easy and on others a bit more difficult.

I have a wood lathe and a DC system. When I'm roughing, the DC system is close to worthless. The chips are propelled 5 plus feet away and in most every direction. When sanding, it works well but I suspect that it may collect 95 percent of the dust. That still leaves a source of dust floating around. I live in a climate where I can use a ceiling mounted whole-house fan to exhaust the area.

BTW, I use a thien baffle and exhaust outside. Because of your climate, I'd suggest that you set up your DC to vent outside when the weather is warmer and, when you are generating dust in the winter, perhaps vent inside through your 0.5 micron filter AND wear a respirator.

BTW2: I made an air cleaner (box fan and two 20x20" filters). I can't numerically state its effectiveness but I periodically need to take it outside and blow off the dust (of which there can be quite a bit). There are some youtube videos on making your own air cleaner (e.g., mathias wendell, etc.)

[Larry Edgerton]

I vented mine outside when I got tired of the dust and emptying the collector. I'm above the 45th parallel. Difference in heat bills in the winter is about $20 bucks a month in the winter. In the spring I clean it up with the tractor.

For me in my location it is a winner.

I use a Modine box heater and filter my combustion intake air. This summer I am going to build a huge filter to draw through for the fan side to turn it into a air cleaner. Plan on six 20x25x4" industrial filters.

[Mike Chalmers]

Charley - Northern New England. From what I understand heat pumps won't work below freezing and other than the 4th of July, that's pretty much the rest of the year up there!!!

I would suggest that more researching is needed. While efficiency goes down somewhat, they certainly do work when the outside air is below freezing. Check out this site.
https://www.sunshinerenewables.ca/ho...-my-heat-pump/

[Roy Harding]

I live in northern Canada (I can see Alaska from here). My two-stage, 3 HP DC is vented outside.

When running the DC for a long time, there is a noticeable drop in temperature in the shop. My shop (1200 sq ft - 10' ceilings, floor raised 6" off the slab and insulated) is heated with a propane furnace. I also installed three small electric infrared heaters (the 1500W type you can get at any hardware store). I placed the heaters on the ceiling, pointing at my larger cast iron machines - this heats the machines, causing them to radiate heat whenever the IR heaters have been on for a while.

It works well. If I'm running the DC for hours at a time, the shop can get cool - but for normal 15 - 20 minute "bursts" throughout the day, the fluctuation is not enough to discomfort me. The IR heaters are hooked into the lighting circuit, so they're only on when I'm in the shop. The propane furnace is controlled by a thermostat - if I know that I'll be running the DC for more than 30 minutes or so, I'll shut it off rather than burning propane to no effect. The heated cast iron brings the temperature back up quickly after the DC is shut off.

It works for me - no guarantee that it'll be suitable for you.