Bastardising a room air cleaner into an enclosure.... ideas?
Hi All (and probably @BobL!!)
I've been having a few thoughts about dust collection recently. Let me rave and wander in my usual ADHD way....
The studio has a 2hp 6" DC with a huge pleated filter.... It is very good. I love it. There is also a 2nd hand Jet room air cleaner. It is the same as the model from Carbatec (they are generic, it seems).
Now the PF on the DC is rated at 1 micron. It seems excellent. I've used it a great deal for a while now and the area around it remains completely dust-free, even for very fine dust. (I'll buy BobL's dust sensor off eBay one day!).
For the Jet room cleaner, the supplied filters... well, look pretty ordinary. Jet and CT are silent on the specs, plus when asked, CT said they didn't know AND weren't going to find out. Since its second hand, I bought new filters from the USA and FilterTech AU.... A MERV8 (G4) pre-filter for the front (6 pack @ ~$50!), and ordered a MERV13 (F7) 500mm deep multipocket bag and a rear MERV15 (F9) post-filter that is 4" thick. I paused the order on the last two.....
The bugger is, the room cleaner uses a fantastically weird size filter... as does EVERY other room cleaner out there. They are 505mm x 605mm, to use a nominal 20" x 24" cartridge filter size.
600's, or 24x24 are cheap, plentiful and readily available, right up to MERV15/16 (F9) .... but 20x24... hahahahahaha! Hens teeth, plus first-born-child prices. All custom made (with a $190 price tag and 3 week delay)
One must order them from the USA. Postage is obscene.
FIRST, my thought was to take the Jet apart and make a 600x600 MDF/ply box that would fit the easily available 24x24's. It isn't a huge challenge... plus I can make it look rather nice with some "coolness enhancements".
SECOND thought was to remove the damned thing from the studio entirely and bolt it to the wall outside. I could run some 8" HVAC duct from within the studio to the inlet, plus another 8" back in. Cover the lot in insulation! This would eliminate much of the noise, plus free up space.
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Has anyone done such a thing with an air-cleaner-only setup? Ive seen plenty of DC's put outside, but never an air cleaner.
I like the idea of a 1/3rd HP motor puffing away all day cleaning constantly. Certainly much nicer than the noise of the DC!
LASTLY, since this is an easy-to-do exercise... making a box with a blower and popping in a few filters, we could make it Open Source and promote it on the forum! An el-cheapo, but most excellent room dust filter, for every woodworker! Neato :)
Thoughts?