Shop Design - Dust Collection

[Ibboykin]

I'm new on here.  I have inherited a large assortment of tools from my late father and it has given me an excuse to build a shop like I've always wanted. 

Having had the daunting task of cleaning up my fathers shop as I moved the tools out, I was overwhelmed at the sawdust. His shop was a selling point for dust collection. 

My new shop will be 24x30. I am dedicating a corner for an air compressor and dust collection. Yesterday I stopped in at a woodworking store and was talking with them on this topic.  The next thing I know, they are trying to sell me a $7000 dust collection system. 

Lets be realistic. This is a one man shop.  I will not have more than one tool operating at a time.  Outside of length of runs for the ducting, do I really need a huge system.  I would rather spend $7000 on tools and lumber but I do want a D.C. System that I won't be disappointed in. 

I initially have been looking at a Grizzly.  The salesman yesterday was unaware of this and he began his sales pitch by bashing grizzly.  

After my initial research was thinking I could get a good system for around $1200-$1500 complete.  Am I off the mark here?

[socoj2]

1 minute ago, Ibboykin said:

I'm new on here.  I have inherited a large assortment of tools from my late father and it has given me an excuse to build a shop like I've always wanted. 

Having had the daunting task of cleaning up my fathers shop as I moved the tools out, I was overwhelmed at the sawdust. His shop was a selling point for dust collection. 

My new shop will be 24x30. I am dedicating a corner for an air compressor and dust collection. Yesterday I stopped in at a woodworking store and was talking with them on this topic.  The next thing I know, they are trying to sell me a $7000 dust collection system. 

Lets be realistic. This is a one man shop.  I will not have more than one tool operating at a time.  Outside of length of runs for the ducting, do I really need a huge system.  I would rather spend $7000 on tools and lumber but I do want a D.C. System that I won't be disappointed in. 

I initially have been looking at a Grizzly.  The salesman yesterday was unaware of this and he began his sales pitch by bashing grizzly.  

After my initial research was thinking I could get a good system for around $1200-$1500 complete.  Am I off the mark here?

You need to define good for us to get a baseline. You could get a chip collector/ Dust Spreader for that, If you actually want to collect dust depending on what tools you want to hook up you are looking at like $1200 for the piping.

Im building a 30x36 shop and getting a Clearvue CVMAx so $2200 for the Dust Collector + pipe. ill be around $3000

[gee-dub]

Kudos to you for putting dust collection at the top of your list.  Due to personal experience it is always my first listed item when folks ask for a list of tools to get started with.

Being realistic means getting the best collection at the source as you can afford.  My system has evolved over the years and will still probably get upgraded yet again if I ever move. You notice the laziness factor has set in; I can't imagine tearing my shop down, upgrading the collector and building it all back but, I'm getting old.

You need to set a budget number and/or a baseline of what you are willing to breathe.  If you don't mind breathing particles that are the size of tobacco smoke, that's your baseline.

Now, all that scary stuff aside, your environment will contribute to what is acceptable for you.  Are you in a garage where you will leave the big door open whenever you are sawing, routing, sanding, etc.?  I live in suburbia and have to (read prefer to) have my door closed.  Are you in a 2, 3 or 4 car garage, an outbuilding or a 15 x 20 foot basement?

All these things will factor in and concessions can be made; without unlimited funds, concessions are nearly always made in the pursuit of the dust-free shop.

Anyone selling anything with a Powermatic price-point is going to trash-talk their direct competition like Grizzly and other colors.  Oneida seems to get consistently good reviews from owners but, are not inexpensive.

This conversation can go on and on (and probably will ) so I'll just toss in what I did on my last go round.  I bought the best cyclone I could fit into the location I had available.  This was a 2HP unit and I have wished for a 3HP ever since.  The 2HP does a good job and the ducts stay clean as a whistle.  In all fairness, the jury is still out until I change my machine ports to 6".

I used ASTM-2729 pipe and fittings which at the time saved me a ton of money, was cheap and easy to reconfigure if I got a new machine or changed layout.  The price of these products has effectively doubled but, I would still have to have a few martinis in me to pay for metal ducting.  Not that it isn't good, its just that the plastic is lighter, easier to alter and shows no signs of wear at all  with near daily use for over a decade . . . availability can also alter your duct choices.

I watched for drop hose and blast gates on sale.  You can make your own blast gates but, I don't know that this saves a lot of money.  It may get you a superior blast gate though .  OK, too much blathering from me.  Time to hit the shop.

 

[Ibboykin]

When I say good, I mean ability to be able to extract the dust from the furtherest point, which will be the table saw, without getting all clogged up due to lack of suction. 

[Ibboykin]

I live in the country and do not have any zoning or dances of any type. It will be climate controlled for the hottest and coldest months. I know better than to think I will have a totally dust free environment. I guess I would say that the D.C. system will be used to extract the bulk of the dust. 

The system I have initially been looking at is the Grizzly G1030 which is a 3HP unit with 2400 cfm.  It has three inlets for ducting on the unit so my initial thought was to break things down into three zones, each zone feeding back to the unit independently. 

I have been planning on building on a conventional foundation and having all my ducting run underneath the floor to eliminate overhead clutter. 

Hope this added info helps to clarify my goals  

 

[Tom King]

Get at least a 3hp four bagger.  A cyclone is better, but we get by just fine with a 3hp bagger as our portable DC.  It's a Woodtek because I can drive to where they are sold fairly quickly, and the price is good for what it does.  The bags and clamps are much better than a Grizzly, even though the mechanical guts of it are probably made in the same factory (I also have a 2hp Grizzly, so I have first hand experience with that).   I think I paid less than $700 for it some years ago.

It will service three machines, without blast gates, just fine, but we usually one run one at the time too.  

Having the 2hp gives me the experience to say that it's not big enough for much of anything.  I have it dedicated to a 24" bandsaw set up for resawing, and wish I'd bought another 3hp.

A cyclone can be added to the system later.  I haven't because we use it inside houses, and its' on a wheeled platform that will roll through regular doors, and I haven't figured out how to add a cyclone to it and still be able to do that.  If it hadn't been too large to do that, I would have bought their 5hp model.

[Ibboykin]

I have not eliminated the

idea of a smaller portable unit for use with smaller hand tools such as orbital sander etc.  

right now I am trying to be open minded about all possibilities

[gee-dub]

I should have mentioned in my blathering that my current overall shop solution includes the cyclone for larger machines, a bagger with an aftermarket AFF top bag for the jointer location, two shop vacs with Dust Deputy separators and an overhead ambient scrubber.  Dust collection is a . . . er . . . collection of methods that yield a whole solution.

[Tom King]

Here's the 4 bagger we use-almost daily for probably ten years now.   If you walk in wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, you can very easily get set up with a "Pro" account, and get some sort of reasonable discount.  You didn't list location, so you may be too far away, but I'd buy one of these again.

I'm probably going to try upgrading the 2hp Grizzley with the Woodtek bags and clamps before I give it away.

700 bucks new full retail.  It gets All the dust from a tablesaw, jointer, and miter saw inside a house with no fine dust left on anything with no blast gates on those three machines on their own branch.  When we run a planer or molder, they get a dedicated hookup to it via a 6" flex hose that we can switch back and forth.

For a shop like you're talking about, I'd get the 5hp, and maybe add a cyclone sometime in the future.  The cyclone mainly makes it easier to empty the sawdust, and keeps the bags clean.  The only cleaning our bags have gotten in ten years is beating on them with a flat stick, and it still seriously moves air.

Here's a picture of the 6" branch setup that only served the tablesaw and jointer inside a house we were working on some years back.  The flex hose just gets stuck in the end of that open tee down to the right.  No dust in the house.

https://woodworker.com/3hp-dust-collector-mssu-961-339.asp

[RichardA]

If you live out in the boonies like me, you can vent the fines outside.

[Eric.]

Even a Pentz-approved system won't cost 7k...that's flippin' ridiculous.  A 5HP Clearvue or Oneida plus pipe plus blast gates plus fittings to connect to your machines will certainly add up into the several thousands...but 7k?  What the hell was he trying to sell you anyway?

If your goal is just to clean up the mess, you can do that for less than a grand...I did it.  But if your goal is to create a safe environment in which to work, yes it will be multiple thousands.  You have to decide what your goals are, because there's a huge gap between cleaning up messes and making air safe to breathe.  A HUGE gap.  And it's a costly one.  That 3HP unit you're considering will be closer to the former, FYI.

[Ibboykin]

Regardless of what system one goes with is running the ducts underneath a conventional foundation advisable or not?

[socoj2]

3 hours ago, Ibboykin said:

When I say good, I mean ability to be able to extract the dust from the furtherest point, which will be the table saw, without getting all clogged up due to lack of suction. 

Thats Chip collection your goal of dust collection is far different.

i have a 3 Hp bag system it does GREAT at chip collection. it does spread dust all over the shop though. Hence me moving to a clearvue with the new shop.

 

i agree with everything eric said.

[..Kev]

Clearview with Nordfab could very easily run into 7k.  I know from experience 

 

[socoj2]

Just now, Ibboykin said:

Regardless of what system one goes with is running the ducts underneath a conventional foundation advisable or not?

no, because if you move a tool etc. it sucks (HAH) also if it gets clogged or something gets sucked up and stuck like a File or something.

Bill pentz advises against this as well. unless you have like a crawlspace or something.

[Ibboykin]

There will be a crawl space with plenty of room

[BArnold]

When I built my shop (32x24), I went with a 3hp SDG from Oneida after a lot of research.  I gave them my shop layout and they did an initial duct layout.  I wanted one change, which they did, so we were good to go.  The DC was about $1300 and I bought a few pieces of duct and wyes for another $200.  I didn't rush into running all my duct up front, choosing to wait until I was absolutely certain of locations for different tools.  I added another $2000 or so of duct as I went along.  I used blast gates from Lee Valley for a total of about $200. 

You'll get all kinds of thoughts about specific duct, but I used standard HVAC stuff, except for the wyes that have to be crimped opposite of HVAC wyes.

[Ibboykin]

Being that I don't live in an extreme cold winter climate, houses here are a mis of slabs and conventional foundation.  Being that I work on concrete everyday and fully understand how hard it is on your feet and joints, I am doing the conventional foundation with crawl space.  So I wanted to prehang any ducts as I don the floor joists.  Taking a hint from BArnold I can run most of the ducts and wait on the final until I determine final tool locations. 

[Tom King]

With a crawl space, you're fine running the ductwork underneath.  I did that in the first shop I built here, and it worked out fine.  It needs to be high enough to get back under there if you need to though.  I don't remember ever going back under that shop since it was built something like 25 years ago.  It is a lot nicer not having ductwork everywhere inside the working space.

The building where I have the big bandsaw and 2hp Grizzly does have sawdust in it, but that is more of a problem of the bags sealing on the unit, and it not moving enough air.  If I put another dust pickup on the saw, and use a larger DC, I could improve that situation a lot, but I have a large door on both ends, so I can blow it out when the wind direction is right, and we don't do a lot of resawing anyway.   If we get another shingle making job, I'll invest in improving the DC on that machine.

We do almost no sanding, so we don't end up with sawdust on anything in the houses we work in.  I expect it would be different if we did machine sanding.  The only machine sawdust we have is from a table saw and sliding miter saw.  All the fines get sucked up.  There are always some of the larger particles left on top of the table saw, and in the box for the miter saw, but no dust anywhere.

My rule of thumb is that the largest motor running needs to be the dust collector.  I must have forgotten that when I bought the 2hp DC for the 4 hp bandsaw.

[mdbuilder]

On 4/16/2017 at 1:52 PM, TIODS said:

Clearview with Nordfab could very easily run into 7k.  I know from experience 

 

Absolutely, 24*30 is a big shop.

The first pass through estimate for Nordfab type ducting in my smaller shop was approximately $4,500. We went back and forth, I scrutinized every drop and eventually got it down to $2,300 by capping off one branch as a future expansion option (DC on the drill press and little used bandsaw is nice but...) and combining 3 drops to a little used 2nd planer, router table and drum sander into 1 drop with a ball joint and a movable hose. The $2,300 got me 1 drop with blast gates to a cluster of table saw / overarm and J/P combo machine, 1 drop with ball joint to cover a second planer / router table / drum sander, and 1 drop to a radial arm saw. The extra $500 + some leftover pipe and clamps got me the extension to the drill press and band saw + a floor sweep with 2 blast gates.  

Once I received and installed all that stuff I had enough bits and pieces left over to go back and do the band saw + drill press for another $500 or so. 

Anyway, in a 24*30 shop with a table saw, chop saw or RAS, band saw, jointer, planer, drill press and router table you could easily hit $5K on Nordfab type ducting, another $2K for a cyclone and you are there. Spiral pipe or PVC should be much less. Stay away from HVAC pipe unless you don't mind throwing it out in 4 or 5 years and starting over - I di LOL! 

 

[Eric.]

As awesome as Nordfab is, it's totally unnecessary.  I wouldn't recommend it unless you have money to burn.  You can do it for WAY cheaper without sacrificing very much efficiency, if any.  I'd spend the big money on the cyclone and good blast gates and buy whatever duct you can get cheap.  PVC if you have to.  A wise man once said...

 

[..Kev]

The Nordfab is very expensive.  It's also very quick and easy to install and move as needed.  It's definitely a trade off but, if you know for sure that you're not going to add or move tools then, the less expensive options out there are a better choice. 

[mdbuilder]

I was not saying Nordfab was the only way to go. Just a response to the 7K estimate and how could it be that high? Easily ;). The pipe is actually not that bad, it is the Wye's and all the clamps that add up quickly. 

PVC might be my second choice, it would give an equally airtight system I'd think. 

 

[Eric.]

25 minutes ago, mdbuilder said:

I was not saying Nordfab was the only way to go. Just a response to the 7K estimate and how could it be that high? Easily ;).

Yeah I get it.  If I was a millionaire I'd have a Nordfab system too...because it's cool.  Otherwise I can think of a lot of other things to spend that money on.

A CV1800 with filters is about 2k...another grand for generic pipe and wyes, another $500 for blast gates and miscellaneous fittings...and you're about half of that 7k estimate and about 99% as good for sucking dust.

[Ibboykin]

Getting into dust collection is a daunting task. More complex than one would think. Y'all have provided a lot of food for thought so to speak.  Greatly appreciate all the input.