In the beginnng of year 2000 I started the enlargement of our home by 52 m2 (two bedrooms and a dining room).
The new rooms were built as the rest of the house (dated 1952): timber frame, glass wool insulation, galvanized sheet metal on the roof.
We had already moved in during 1999 and the construction work didn't affect home cleaness as it happened merely ouside.
At the end of year 2000 the new rooms were ready and "usable".
Year 2001 went with the transformation of one old bedroom and the original kitchen into a new, larger one. The two rooms were completely dismantled,
including the basement and a chimney. This time I was on the inside: plastic walls and rag seals had to be very accurate. Yet, I experienced several "dust leaks" that resulted in many
hours of dull vacuum cleaning. I guess the cleaning of a large bookself full of books from gypsum dust was the worst episode...
I quickly learned that a slight underpressure in the work area is almost mandatory to keep the finest dust from propagating into the rest of the house.
But how to arrange that in a reliable way?
Year 2002 was spent building the little porch, covering the house footing and painting the wood cladding. No dust, luckly.
For year 2003 the modification of three stockrooms and a miserable shower corner into a utility room and a decent bathroom was planned. This included:
construction of a self-supporting vault floor
concrete floor with embedded water, radiant warming and sewer pipes
dismantling of a brick wall and extension of an existing one
construction of aerated concrete (Siporex) walls for the bathroom
chipping of an old chimney
lift hammering through a concrete floor (obvioulsy wire mesh reinforced)
This was going to produce a lot of dust! And it was going to be for months and months, not just once! I needed a much more clever solution than a plastic curtain...
After a lot of thinking, chatting and surfing on the internet I came up with a solution that, even if not cheap, proved to be a working one.
The solution
Before getting to the solution (a kind of Columbus' egg, I admit it), please consider the premises:
I live in Finland: here electric tools are expensive, dust extractors are not for everyone, nor for everyone's pocket.
I live in Finland: here building or renovating by yourself your home is still an option.
I live in Finland: here heat recovery ventilators (HRV) installation has been very popular
since at least ten years ago. All new houses nowadays employ one.
My solution addresses casual builders, not professionals. Professionals usually are allowed to spread as much dust as they want, as long as they protect their own lungs.
If you call the bricklayer or the tiler, it's you who will have to cleanup the mess they'll leave.
Even if using my solution, you will still have to wear proper lung, ear and eye protection.
I am sorry if what follows is not usable in your particular case.
Anyway, I hope it will give you some good ideas about how to implement a solution suitable to your needs too.
My solution is a four-step arrangement:
1. Seal all what you can
Seal all doors that can stay closed or need rarely to be opened. Use plastic sheets and packing tape.
If possible, use staples or hardboard slices and nails to keep the plastic sheets tightly in place.
2. Arrange some underpressure
A slight underpressure in your dusty workplace is a big plus. For many scandinavians this is very easy to arrange through one of the HRV intakes,
usually in all bathrooms, bedrooms and stockrooms. All right, should you suck all that fine dust through your pipes into the HRV filter!? Well, yes!
I think you have two choices:
Accept it. Better to clean or replace the HRV filter and, at completion, clean the pipe section than to continuosly clean all your home. More, that kind
of fine dust will easily damage your vacuum cleaner.
Build a small cyclone as I did. As the typical HRV suction is quite limited and you are aiming at catching only fine dust, a small cyclone will be more
than adequate. Most of the flying dust will be trapped there. If you want to learn more about cyclones, how they work and how to build one, please check
my cyclone links.
Thanks to the underpressure, all the small leaks that are left from your sealing will be used to suck clean air into your workplace instead that for pumping dusty air
into your home. Please, note that here I am referring to the fine dust that keeps flying in the air even 30 minutes after you have stopped to drill, grind or hammer.
On the right you can see my small cyclone, which took about four hours to be built. A common plastic bucket is used to collect the dust. The suction flex hose leaves
from the top and reaches the roof, were the HRV intake is located. Air enters the cyclone from a rectangular aperture on the side. For a better picture,
click here
3. Buy a wood dust collector
The cheapest wood dust collector would probably be a miserable choice if you were doing serious woodworking, but for sucking stone, brick, gypsum or wood dust
from your working spot will be just great. And much better than those barrel vacuum cleaners. Here I am talking about a suction of about 1000 m3/hour and a
motor power of around 1 HP.
I purchased the cheapest dust collector here in Finland (on the left) from a well known German chain-store. The beast is Made in Germany and costed a little less than 300 euros.
Using this machine consists in keeping the intake hose near the spot you are working on (the hole you are drilling, the wall you are grinding, etc.) by, for instance,
a rudimental pedestal. You can also "vacuum clean" the floor from dust, garbage, sand, wood chips, etc. This thing is a real "sucker"!
The problem with this configuration is that the upper bag (the "filter") in practice lets all the finest dust pass through. This might be not a big issue if you are
doing woodworking but as you start sucking concrete and stone dust you'll find yourself in an very unpleasant situation.
The workplace will get quickly foggy and full of flying fine dust: this is just what we were trying to avoid!
This finest dust is very dangerous for your lungs, even if it were wood dust.
4. Build an exhaust
In order to get rid of the fine dust during "vacuum cleaning", I removed the upper bag and replaced it with a round cap of the same size of the filter bag. The cap is made of
plywood and has got sheet metal around it. I used the original spider collar to achieve a tight fit. In the center of the cap I arranged a 100 mm hole with two 100 mm galvanized
flanges mounted back-to-back. On the inner flange I mounted a 40 cm section of gray PP sewer pipe. On the outer flange I connected a length of flexible hose going outdoors through a slightly open
window.
The sewer pipe section extends into the collecting bag: when hit by the exhaust air flow, it creates a powerful vortex. The bag therefore works now as a rudimental cyclone,
collecting solid particles and coarse dust, while the finest dust is pumped outdoors through the flexible hose. Luckly my nearest neighbors are located some 50 m from my place.
Some will speculate that, in winter, the workplace becomes chilly while the dust collector is in use, as you quickly replace all the room warm air with cold one from outside. This is
partially true. Usually when lift hammering, drilling, etc. with heavy power tools in an inhabited place, the problem is that it's too warm, not the opposite. A chilly temperature is only welcome. And I suppose
you are not doing this 8 hours a day: when you are not producing dust switch off the dust collector and close the window, as the underpressure will do the job.
This arrangement has been working very well for me, daily, for about 6 months. I have been able to angle-grind tile walls without being all covered with red dust.
I have even been sucking expanded polystyrene chippings and all were captured into the bag. When the renovation is completed, the dust collector can be re-assembled with
its original filter bug, cleaned up and resold for a more traditional use.
