Thread: Extraction fan/Motor or whatever

How about mounting an extractor or ceiling fan ( round ) inside an upside down 20 L paint tin with a hole in the bottom where you connect it to some big bore ducting, through the ceiling and roof, or out the window. It will be easy to suspend that over the work area from the ceiling and the tin an ceiling ( extractor ) fan should be easily available in the bush. Don't just vent the fumes into the ceiling as it will eventually settle into the other rooms of the house.

G'Day Donn,


I am a Broadcast Radio Engineer and I have seen a small, but quite powerful extractor fan for placement near soldering workstations (as the fumes can be quite irritating).

Both Farnell and RadioSpares (in Sydney) both sell these and they filter the air thru a carbon replaceable filter.

I figure that you could attach somehow, a 4" duct to the rear of these units and duct it out to the outside.

They run from about $250 odd and would probably do the job.

As I personally refuse to buy anything that I could make, I would check out these catalogues for the replacement filters, purchase a 240 volt fan and bung it all together myself for a hell of a lot less coin than these units would cost.

Donn, you could be equally handy and it would not be a big stretch to throw all of the components together...as long as you are comfortable working with 240v wiring....or failing that...use a 12 volt fan and purchase a 12 volt plug pack...all using a similar theme...

Some ideas for you...

On a related matter...and as I am pathalogically frugal....my place of work is building a new radio station on an existing floor and they had to strip out all of the old wiring and airconditioning stuff. One of the things that they were going to throw out was a 15" industrial air extractor.

I grabbed it and thought it would make for an excellent room filter. I purchased 2 20" X 20" X 2" pleated air filters from a filter supply house in Sydney ($15 each) and housed it in a plywood box, where basically it sucks air in at one end (thru a filter) and blows it back into the workshop (thru another filter). The fan unit moves so much air that i worked out that it changes the air in the workshop 12 times an hour.

Not only that but where previously, at the end of the day after a good day in the shed everything was covered in a fine layer of dust...now there wasn't.

I had made one of these units previously with 3 computer fans that did remove quite a lot of airborne dust. But it still left dust on a lot of horizontal surfaces.

And as that dust was more than likely making it's way into my lungs...now it's not.


So for those of you in the market for a workshop air filter unit and your handy with woodworking and electrical, you might want to try a similar thing - seek out your local air-con guys and suss out if they can liberate an old fan unit your way.

Hope this info helps you Donn (or anyone else).


Cheers,


Scott in Peakhurst