Hi everyone, first post here and on these forums in general. I've been slowly building up a collection of tools over the last 5 years on an as-needed basis to work on the house and a bit of landscaping. Starting to cross over into rudimentary woodworking as a hobbyist, but the dust situation is getting out of hand.

My garage is roughly 3.5 m x 6 m, has an open gable roof ranging from 2.1 to 2.7 m in height, for a total volume of ~50 m3. There's a roller door at the front, a sliding window towards the back, plus an access door that's been nailed shut towards the front. The garage is at least 10 m away from any of my or my neighbour's doors and windows.

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The back half of the garage is a home gym, while the front half is reserved for whatever project is going on at the time. The "workshop" area is right by the roller door and is always wide open when I'm working in it. There's also an uncovered 4 m x 4 m area in front of the roller door where I try to do all of my dusty work unless its raining. A few attempts at cutting in the garage on rainy days has resulted in fine dust spreading over nearby surfaces, and has become a semi-permanent fixture. There's a bit of a wind tunnel effect down the driveway which causes fine dust to float in when I'm working outside the front of the garage, but there is no other suitable place to work on the property. Opening the window and running cooling fans helps cross ventilation to a degree, though the fans are mounted to the back two corners of the gym and aren't optimally placed for dust removal.

I've got a cheap 20 L Ryobi shop vac currently, which also sees use as a wet vac on the odd occasion. The major chip and dust generators at the moment are:


  • Jobsite table saw - 1.25" port - open bottom, but just purchased a Milescraft Dust Cutter to try and catch some of the chips
  • SCMS - 1.25" port - desperately needs a hood
  • Various power tools with and without 1.25" shop vac ports
  • Plans to build a router table in the next 12 months
  • Drill press


I generally spend around 15-20 hours a week out there, of which I'm only generating sawdust for 2-3 hours (if that). The bigger concern is using dust covered gym equipment and flooring that has gets vacuumed every 1-2 weeks. The dog has also been sneezing up a storm this week after rolling around in chips ejected from the bottom of the TS on the driveway last weekend, which has finally prompted some kind of action. I impulsively ordered a dust cutter to help with this issue immediately. However, reading around here and Bill Pentz's site now has me wanting to do more than fix a cosmetic problem.

My thoughts in the short term are to work with the wind tunnel rather than against it and improve cross-ventilation before considering a dust collector in the next year or so to allow me to start working indoors. I've seen a number of references to centrifugal hydroponic fans, and am of the opinion that placing one in the gable space and facing the garage door from the far end could work well in my case. An additional benefit would be to keep the gym cooler on hot summer days, because the regular fans aren't really cutting it, and catch loose chalk.

The external cladding looks to be asbestos (externally sealed and in good condition) so I would much prefer to run ducting down to the nearby window (~4 m including verticals) and fix it into the open side of the window permanently. This would require four elbows to achieve. To be on the safe side, I'm leaning towards 12" models to "theoretically" void the room 38 times per hour, rather than 10" at 22 times an hour. Assuming these figures are overstated by the supplier, 22x is way too close for comfort.

My questions about this approach are:


  • Would I be making the problem worse by encouraging dust to flow into the room and through it?
  • Is a 12" model for this size work space excessive, and would downscaling to 10" give any noticeable benefits in terms of noise reduction while still maintaining adequate air flow?
  • Would two smaller fans (2 x 8"?) spaced apart be a better approach?
  • What would be the most cost effective method of ducting (4 m, 4 x 90° bends)?
  • Is cleaning settled fine dust out a shed with compressed air still a completely stupid idea if I wear a dust mask and leave the room with the ventilation left running for 30 mins?
  • There's a 70 mm gap between the roof panels and the long wall top plates. How far from the gap would an exhaust need to be in order to avoid excessive recirculation through this gap? If this distance is not achievable, would a downward facing exhaust hood mitigate this adequately?
  • Some of these fans have a leather jacket, which I doubt will hold up to 40°C summer temps in the long run. Will the performance of the fan diminish if the leather degrades over time, or does it serve another function like noise suppression?


Sorry for the rambling, but I wanted to provide as much relevant info as possible. Any advice on the above would be greatly appreciated. It's fantastic that there's a detailed resource for this subject that isn't driven by profit; the last few days perusing this sub-forum have been very informative. Thanks and keep up the good work!

Cheers,
Gary