Larry C wrote:
Hello,

I am going to spend some money on a new dust collector for my cellar
shop. I am looking at either the JDS or the Oneida. My longest run may
be 30 feet. I am just a hobby guy so I would only be using one machine
at a time. Not sure of the size of the main run yet, maybe 6".

My question is about location:

I was thinking of having the collector outside in a shed and run the
pipe through a modified cellar window. Since the window is 6 ft from
the floor and the collector input will be 4 or so feet from that I am
worried that I am trying to suck the dust to high (far)? Is it worth it
to put it out there or should I just put it under the stairs. Has
anyone ever had the same sort of setup?

I live in North East Mass if that matters.

Thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks

Larry C



While your situation is vastly different from mine when talking about
heating as I am in a very temperate location, I'd think about putting it
in the shop if possible, because a decent dust collector moves a lot of
air, and if you are exhausting it outside, you are also sending a
boatload of heat out with it. Needless to say, if you exhaust outside
in the winter, you will need to provide makeup air, and you will have to
heat that air or your shop will soon be at outside temperature. The
heating costs can easily exceed all other costs (including electricity
to run tools and the DC, wood, supplies and the like). Thus, you may
wish to put the DC in the shop with you, or provide some way for the
heated air to be ducted back into the shop from the outside shed.

Ignoring the heating problem the real issue is going to be the air flow
of the system, not the height you have to run the ducts.

For any reasonable system, you shouldn't have any real issue with the
"lift". On my last shop, the initial installation had 4" PVC pipe
ductwork at 10.5 feet from the floor, and used a simple 1.5hp dust
collector with a "trash can cyclone" style pre-filter. With the
pre-filter, almost nothing ever collected in the filter bags, so after
awhile I just left them off because it allowed for more air flow. I was
exhausting the air outside, and never had a visible dust on the ground
or outside wall of the shop as a result, so the cyclone was really doing
it's job. The longest run (to a wood lathe) was about 50 feet plus
another 10 for up from the lathe and 5 down to the Cyclone at the other
end, and it really didn't perform as I'd have liked, but lathes are
really difficult to deal with. Table saw and 12" planer were about 30
feet plus the up and down and did pretty well, but If I were pushing the
planer hard I could plug up the duct. At something under $300 including
the PVC ducting, it was a low budget approach to DC and did pretty well
for the cost. Swapped out the DC and trashcan cyclone for a "real one"
without significantly changing performance, though it was quieter and it
did look a lot nicer. All in all, it worked pretty good and I'm not
complaining, but sold the place before I had a chance to move to larger
main ducts. My biggest mistake was not really looking at the restriction
of the ducting I was using.

If you're looking at sucking up small shavings and sawdust, a Dust
Collector might work, but I'd personally not use anything that doesn't
have some sort of cyclone or pre-separator, so nothing but fine dust
ever gets to the impeller... (memories of wood shop and kids dropping
chunks of wood into the ductwork to hear them rattle all the way to the
impeller, and the whack they made when they hit it still make me cringe.
How it ever withstood repeated freshman wood shop classes I'll never
know.)

Since I had some time before I get the space in the new place back to
use as a full workshop, I did some additional homework. One web site
worth visiting is the following:

http://billpentz.com/woodworking/cyclone/index.cfm

He's got a lot of information and some really good points, and even has
plans on his site if you want to make your own from scratch. He took the
approach of determining the needed airflow based on duct size and feet
per minute air flow required to keep things moving, and eventually
figured out a cyclone with an inclined input is more efficient overall.
Most manufacturers don't seem to pay any attention to this, and though
I'm not totally convinced the other ones are that much worse than his
approach, I'm still looking at my total costs for delivery. As I'm in a
"delivery challenged" location, shipping costs can be a significant
problem, so I may be much more sensitive to the shipping costs than
where you are.

The new shop will have a main run with 35' of 6 inch ducting at the
truss level (10') feeding a 3HP cyclone (very possibly the clear-vue).
I would expect it to keep up with all of my needs, as my shop is
primarily also a single man operation. Only occasionally do I have any
help, though I'm thinking on offering some sort of internship to
somebody nearby if I could [con - - -] convince them that learning
sanding first is the real way to learn how to become a woodworker... [sigh]

Good Luck!
--Rick