Thread: Air Conditioning and Dust Collection

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Just received an advertising email from FWW Magazine which includes a copy of a Workshop Tip from the just released but not yet received Issue #293 - Tools and Shops 2022.

The writer, Steve Fikar, lives in Florida and his workshop is airconditioned. He wisely chose to locate both the cyclone and canister filters outside his workshop in a non-airconditioned garden toolshed and to route the 150 mm pipes under the floor so he doesn't trip over them. All sound.

However, he has placed the canister filter inside a sound dampenning cabinet which he then vents back into his workshop so as to preserve the cooled air. This seems counter-productive to me as filters are never 100% reliable and some of the dangerously small dust particles must be released back into the workshop.

He does at least get a substantial part of the pressurised side of the DC outside the shed.

The remainder will depends on his filter and filter seal. If he's using something like the Wynn Flangeless Nano Filter as supplied by Clearvue and he has a particle detector and can occasionally check the filters and filter seals he should be OK. Lots of Europeans and North Americans do this, but more for retaining warm air in winter that summer coolth.

Recirculating air back through filters is standard practise in the US and it is one reason for the Clearvue being a long cone cyclone because it does not load the filters like short cones do. In Oz it is not so important because very few hobbyist use filters. I only had two customers who were forced to use filters due to the limitations of their work place, both commercial operators. A lot of the US also has very high humidity problems on top of the ambient temperature so AC is nearly standard equipment.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

… Clearvue being a long cone cyclone because it does not load the filters like short cones do.

Chris, will you please expand on this statement?

By “load” to you mean “apply pressure”? My understanding suggests that any volume of air being sucked in to a system needs to be expelled regardless of the design of the system, and the only variable which will reduce the pressure applied to a filter would be the filter area, so am intrigued by what it could be referring to.

Or perhaps you meant that it applies the pressure more evenly across the whole filter? Or something else entirely?

"Load filters" means more fines are removed by the cyclone so the filters don't need to perform as much filtration as other cyclones.

Graeme keep something else in mind. Most air conditioned homes especially tight ones, bring in some outside air into the house to replace that exhausted from bathrooms, kitchens and to keep it fresh. That air is not filtered to the same degree as a good DC (ClearVue) does so dust will be introduced to the house. Mine has a washable coarse foam filter in the whole house heat exchange unit and came with a MERV 10 filter in the central heating system that also has the A/C exchanger after the furnace. I replaced the MERV 10 with MERV12 but can't go finer because of the resistance to flow. The writer of the article may not be making it any worse and perhaps better than it was in the first place, although the illustration shown is one of the "Harbor Freight" modified setups that are common in the US, a 2hp bagger with the addition of the aftermarket cyclone. I don't have A/C in the shop but wouldn't turn it down if it was given to me.

Pete