Thread: Any practical use for a 1hp blower?

Air blower placed in front of a heater to spread the heat around?

General shed Ventilator for those days when you just want to get rid of the dust that escaped duct collection or the warm air just under the roof?

BobL got it right = flushing hot sub-roof air out of the shed. Attic ventilation has to be a relief, anytime.

Thanks all. With summer on the way, I’ll see how it fares as a ventilator. Otherwise, I’m sure there will be some project I can find for the motor.
Lance

I used to have two installed in the wall of my old shop (pre-dust collector days) and plan on adding one again, even though I now have three collectors. I used to open the window in my man-door, fire up the electrical leaf blower and clean my shop. Though my shop is far cleaners these days, I'd still like to be able to rid it of the fines that settle over time.

My AirHandler buff station uses a small one to pull everything tossed by the wheels through Merv 11 filters. A one horse would be overkill, unless it was a three speed, which could be turned to a low setting for such an application.

These also make reasonable sanding station fans. If you build a, for example, 2x3 station with sides, top and back, it will spoil you. Mine runs off one of my collectors and I use it religiously. I even router small items in it and it cuts down the dust problem hugely.
Sanding Station-1.jpg

Thanks for the ideas.

Do you have any pictures of your sanding station? It sounds interesting. Though since learning to sharpen my plane blades effectively, I now consider sanding a method of last resort.

With respect to using it as a room vent, I wonder about its capacity. Every year for a school fund raiser we cook olibolen, a Dutch treat at a local agricultural show from a 6x6 shed. This involves standing over a large vat of 170 deg oil which smokes and is very hot work. This year I decided to take the blower and set it up as an extractor directly over the vat. While it was certainly an improvement, it offered nowhere near the air movement I was expecting. Now my workshop is 6x9, so even larger. Having said all that, it was drawing through a couple of meters of 100 mm flex pipe so would potentially work better with no piping at all which I could easily manage on a permanent install. . Certainly an avenue to consider though.

I appreciate your thoughts on the matter.

Lance.

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Originally Posted by Xfigio

With respect to using it as a room vent, I wonder about its capacity. Every year for a school fund raiser we cook olibolen, a Dutch treat at a local agricultural show from a 6x6 shed. This involves standing over a large vat of 170 deg oil which smokes and is very hot work. This year I decided to take the blower and set it up as an extractor directly over the vat. While it was certainly an improvement, it offered nowhere near the air movement I was expecting. Now my workshop is 6x9, so even larger. Having said all that, it was drawing through a couple of meters of 100 mm flex pipe so would potentially work better with no piping at all which I could easily manage on a permanent install. . Certainly an avenue to consider though.

The theoretical maximum a 1HP DC with no filter can draw though a short length of smooth wall 4" diam PVC is about 320 CFM.
It's not going to do much better if no ducting is used because the inlet and outlet are still 4" in diam and will act as throttle points.

It depends what sort of flexy you use as stiff flexy is less restrictive than floppy flexy.
Now add 2m of flexy and you will lose between 15 and 25% of the 320 CFM flow.

This blower is too small to act as a ventilation for your size of shed.
A 6x9m shed x say 2.7m high = 146 m^3 or about 5000 Cf
@ 320 CFM will in theory take 16 min to remove one sheds worth of air.
However in practice about half the air being removed is fresh air, so it will take 32 min to remove one sheds worth of dusty air.

32 mins equates to ~2 room changes per hour which is a long way from the ideal of 20 room changes per hour.

Of course, a planer can't handle curves and other shapes. Nor can it deal with wide boards [which can be stuck out the back of my sanding station]. For example, I make butter knives, turnings, plagues, this, that and a few hundred other things. Sanders won't be out of style any time soon. Anyway, you can get a clue about its design by visiting the lumberjocks site at Sanding Station - by Kelly @ LumberJocks.com ~ woodworking community

My previous shop was about 20' x 30' and the two fans emptied the air of VERY thick dust in a few minutes. These cages were designed to flood fifteen hundred square foot houses with warm air, so I would be surprised if they wouldn't move enough air to cool a tiny (9x) room. If it doesn't, I must wonder if you are trying to draw from too big an opening into the area. When I used mine, I was drawing through a 2'x2' window.

I am, of course, talking about squirrel cages for forced air, as opposed to a dust collector, designed for a different funciton.

Originally Posted by dejure

Of course, a planer can't handle curves and other shapes. Nor can it deal with wide boards [which can be stuck out the back of my sanding station]. For example, I make butter knives, turnings, plagues, this, that and a few hundred other things. Sanders won't be out of style any time soon. Anyway, you can get a clue about its design by visiting the lumberjocks site at Sanding Station - by Kelly @ LumberJocks.com ~ woodworking community

My previous shop was about 20' x 30' and the two fans emptied the air of VERY thick dust in a few minutes. These cages were designed to flood fifteen hundred square foot houses with warm air, so I would be surprised if they wouldn't move enough air to cool a tiny (9x) room.

If you are referring to Xfigio's 6x9m shed that equates to 20 x 30 ft.

Just because air looks dust free doesn't mean it is dust free to within accepted safety levels - especially across the relatively short distances inside a shed.
After researching dust for 30+ years I rapidly learned never to rely on my eyes in the same way humans can't tell if something is hot or cold just by looking at it.
Dust that is visible is not as harmful as the stuff that is invisible.
The worst dust is sub 2.5 microns.
Dust smaller than 10 microns is invisible to folks even with 20/20 vision.
Dust between about 20 and 30 microns may still be invisible to anyone with any sort of minor vision problem especially if they are in the seniors age range.
Dust that is easily visible is usually larger than about 30 microns, which rapidly falls out of the air (certainly within minutes) whether there is a fan present or not.

I missed the "m" and saw only the 6x9, which some people get by with.

Yep, on your dust post statements. That is why I have three dust collectors, a sanding station, an AirHandler buff station and so on. The fans [and leaf blower] are just the lazy man's way of cleaning up what the 4" hose and pipe can't get to, very quickly. When I use them, it's with a good dust mask and glasses. Forty years ago, all us little guys had were vacuums and fans. Collectors and half micron filters were a luxury. when the fan and blower started up, the neighborhood went dark from the dust storm.

Originally Posted by BobL

If you are referring to Xfigio's 6x9m shed that equates to 20 x 30 ft.

Just because air looks dust free doesn't mean it is dust free to within accepted safety levels - especially across the relatively short distances inside a shed.
After researching dust for 30+ years I rapidly learned never to rely on my eyes in the same way humans can't tell if something is hot or cold just by looking at it.
Dust that is visible is not as harmful as the stuff that is invisible.
The worst dust is sub 2.5 microns.
Dust smaller than 10 microns is invisible to folks even with 20/20 vision.
Dust between about 20 and 30 microns may still be invisible to anyone with any sort of minor vision problem especially if they are in the seniors age range.
Dust that is easily visible is usually larger than about 30 microns, which rapidly falls out of the air (certainly within minutes) whether there is a fan present or not.

I regularly post on a US timber milling website and have also been caught out on the imperial-metric conversion a few times. I did my schooling in the 60's so was fairly well versed in imperial but they at university it was 95% metric so I can talk both systems. During most of my dust research work I used cubic ft and cubic ft per minute (CFM) and still think that way now.

I notice you are using 4" ducting which using conventional DCs can at most (i.e. short lengths) carry ~400 CFM. Then if bends and junctions and machines are added its down hill from there. On this forum we are mostly disciples of your countryman, Bill Pentz, and many folks are upgrading to 6" ducting which can carry ~3x that carried by 4" ducting. Similarly 6" bends and junctions are far less restrictive. I did some extensive testing of bends and flexy earlier this year and its all shown in this thread starting about about post #30
Air flow calibration measurements
e.g. 4" 90º bends reduce flow around 6x that reduced by the larger 6" 90º bend

My system is a bit different. The hose off the four bagger is six inch to the cyclone. After the fact, it's four. Solid piping would be insane in my shop - I change equipment around like some gals do furniture and the expense would be enormous.

I abandoned Y's and gates because, even without equipment to measure flows, I noticed a drop. Instead, I have, as I said, three collectors and hoses dedicated to the machines, dust hoods and sanding table. The ends land, of course, at the cyclone and are suspended from the ceiling by way of little pulleys (two hoses to a pulley). They never drop more than a few inches from the input to the cyclone, AND, it takes me no longer to swap hoses than it does to close a gate and open another.

The other three horse collector doesn't have a cyclone YET. It will when it gets raised four feet (closer to the cyclone input) and moved into the garage (in a box, to return the conditioned air). That one has gates at the collector for the edge sander, the drum-disk, the spindle sander and the bandsaw. All four inch hoses, except the spindle sander, are about ten feet or less. The spindle sander collection does great.

The third collector, a Harbor Freight beast, tends only the miter, when it's not out in the yard, with the SDD, collecting pine cones and leaves.

In short, my entire system doesn't much fit the average system, in Bill's world, for layout.

Delta & Cyclone In Yard-1.JPG2Hp Handle and Wheels-3.JPGSDC17991.JPG

Originally Posted by BobL

I regularly post on a US timber milling website and have also been caught out on the imperial-metric conversion a few times. I did my schooling in the 60's so was fairly well versed in imperial but they at university it was 95% metric so I can talk both systems. During most of my dust research work I used cubic ft and cubic ft per minute (CFM) and still think that way now.

I notice you are using 4" ducting which using conventional DCs can at most (i.e. short lengths) carry ~400 CFM. Then if bends and junctions and machines are added its down hill from there. On this forum we are mostly disciples of your countryman, Bill Pentz, and many folks are upgrading to 6" ducting which can carry ~3x that carried by 4" ducting. Similarly 6" bends and junctions are far less restrictive. I did some extensive testing of bends and flexy earlier this year and its all shown in this thread starting about about post #30
Air flow calibration measurements
e.g. 4" 90º bends reduce flow around 6x that reduced by the larger 6" 90º bend

Originally Posted by dejure

My system is a bit different. The hose off the four bagger is six inch to the cyclone. After the fact, it's four. Solid piping would be insane in my shop - I change equipment around like some gals do furniture and the expense would be enormous.

Im not sure what you consider enormous cost but my 6" system fixed PVC cost about $500 for ducting and junctions.

I spent a few years working with a largely 4" flex ducting system and DC inside my shop and then moved my DC outside and went to a fixed 4" system. Given what I now know about DC leakage ad flow reduction in flexy pipe, I would never go back to an indoor flex system. Some flexy pipe is so restrictive that 12 ft is all that is needed to reduce flows by ~ 50%. My testing shows that cyclones on DCs also impact flow but it won't be noticeable on a 4" ducting system which then becomes the flow limiting factor.

When I enlarged my shop and went to a full 6" system and even though I have serious ventilation available I rarely need to use it because the 6" system is so effective. Large radius bends, Y's and gates also have little impact on a 6" systems.

A few years back I measured more than 2 dozen working DCs with particle counters in DIYer sheds and found they nearly leak fine invisible dust, even some brand new DCs leak. The bag housings leak, the filter and collection bags bags leak. The older the DCs are the more they leaked. The most common place is around seals but often its because they towed around inside a shop where they contact other machinery or things crash into them. The only way to really tell if they are leaking is with a particle detector.

I realise that locating the DC outside doesn't work for folks with cold climates but here in Oz most of us try to get DCs outside the shed if we can. In my dust monitoring of DIY sheds, locating the DC outside the shed is the single best thing a DIYer can do for their dust control.

Also wanted to reiterate Bob's comments, I too have spent around $500 (AUD) on fittings for the dusty which services multiple machines (not at the same time obviously).

Looking at your photo's dejure, it looks like you've got leaks everywhere, every spot of dust that you see (especially where your joins) is a leak which under pressure is constantly pumping fine dust out of your dust extraction system.

Also having fixed ducting has significant benefits of once its installed its almost set and forget. I still use flexy here and there as not all machines are connected to the main system via fixed ducting, but dread having to pull out the flexy ducting. Lets just say small shed and ducting running along the floor plus me carrying large slabs doesn't end well.