Thread: Tiny workshop

Even with a decent vac the main dust problems with hand held power tools will be escaped dust that has to be dealt with by capture OR ventilation.
Regular DCs cannot do the capture very well which is why they are bets vented outside

Unless you can exhaust or vent outside then you are up for decent high volume filtration because a small workshop like that will rapidly fill with dust even when made in small amounts.
It's pointless to put good filters on a DC because any DC filters will be the least of your problems its the DC itself that always leaks fine dust.
A room air filter is one option and should work OK because your shop is so small. You will have to pay close attention to leaks and change / clean filters often.

How far is it from the workshop door to the garage door?

What about venting the space using some large Flex AC ducting that leads from inside the space - through the workshop door and out through the garage door. something you can roll out when needed and put away when finished. It's not ideal but its probably going to be your safest bet.

A 3.8 x 2.5 x say 2.4m shed = 23m^3
To achieve 20 room air changes per hour you will need something that can do 460 m^3/hr or 7.7 m^3/min or 270 CFM - this is not much
Even allowing for the constriction imposed by a lengthy piece of AC flex provided it is large enough (6" is fine) this is doable with an inline fan like those hydroponics fans on ebay. For not a large outlay you could easily double that. With Venting you wont have to worry about filters and winter is not that cold in Sydney.

BobL, Thanks so much for your reply. So informative!
I could open a hole in the partition wall i built and install that. I only need to put a few meters of ducting to get to the garage door.
My ceiling is 2.9m so I am close to 28m3. This means that I would need a fan with 330CFM.
As per your recommendation, I found this that would fit the bill at high speed:
HYDROPONICS 6 INCH VENTILATION KIT 2 SPEED INLINE EXHUAST SILENT FAN DUCT COMBO | eBay
Would I have to have several inlets for such a thing or just the perforation through the wall would suffice?
thanks again,
Leo

Several inlets preferably on the wall opposite the fan would be the way to go if you can. You would need to get the flexy outlet past the garage door by as much as you can otherwise the fine dust will just be dragged back inside the shed. To make up for the extra drag of the extra length and the fact that the manufactures fan flow rates are probably over estimated I’d go for the next size up in fans and flexy if you can get it.

BobL
I went through other responses you have given in the past to other participants and also prepared a couple of sketches with my dust extraction options as I became paranoid as to where the air that is going to be sucked in by the system is coming from. I was hoping you could have a quick look and let me know if there is anything fundamentally flawed in my approach.

1. the two options attached are my best guess of what i need to do to get fresh air.
I have a partition wall with a door before the garage door and another door that leads to the inside of the house. I read in a previous post that you advise for free flow between the exhaust system inlets and the air source so I thought I should place the inlets either on the wall further away from the garage door (option 1) or near the garage door (option 2) depending if i use the access to the garage from inside the house or the garage door itself as source for fresh air. I think neither of them is ideal, however they seem the best options before i start running pipes through the house and get my wife to have a panic attack. Is one option better than the other?

2. I have read your thoughts on shop vacs regarding how they tend to create more fine dust. So I thought I should put them outside the workshop. I was planning to put them 2 in parallel connected to a cyclone that serves all tools. I was thinking of put them in a box and connect them to a PVC pipe that goes out through the garage door. Do you think this would be a good set up? anything that you think could it improve it?

Again, thanks in advance!