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How do you clean your shop?
QUESTION:Any workshop SHOULD have a certain amount of chips, dust and shavings on the
floor just to let folks know that its a real shop. However, even a shop
with a dust collector occasionally needs to have a decent cleaning. My own
shop is in the basement of our home, sharing the basement with an adjoining
garage. The walls and ceiling are actually sealed off from the rest of the
house, except for HVAC ducts and a large return air filter/grill. There are
windows on one side, as well. The dust collector is located in the shop,
but inside a large cabinet, which is vented outdoors. While cleaning, I also
wear a filter mask.
My own technique, when the dirt finally "gets to" me, is to first do a
go-round of the exposed flooring with a broom, collecting the debris in a
stand-up dustpan and dumping it in a big trash sack. While doing this, I
run the DC full bore, with all the blast gates open. I also make darn sure
that all doors to the house are closed. I also am darn careful to make sure
the thermostat to the HVAC unit is OFF. The effect it to create a slight
negative pressure inside the shop, preventing air/dust from reaching the
civilized parts of our home.
After cleaning up much of the stuff on the floor, I open the door to my
shop, and place a large fan in the doorway. While the DC is still running,
I then start at the top of the shelves and blow them off with blasts from
the air hose. Most of the larger stuff goes onto the floor, but some finer
stuff naturally gets into the air as DUST. This is also a darn good time to
blow out UNDER machines, such as the trunion area of a table saw and the
safety housing of the band saw.
I then promptly leave the shop for about ten minutes while the dust clears.
Naturally a lot settles down on the horizontal surfaces, but much of these
surfaces are the floor. I repeat the blow-down about 3-4 times, including
blowing out from the toe space of cabinets, under benches etc. I also open
cabinets and drawers to blow them out. Its surprising how effective this
blow, let it settle, re-blow technique works, since after 3-4 blow-downs,
little dust remains on tool and bench tops. What hasn't been exhausted by
the fan/DC is on the floor, where it can be swept then vacuumed up.
ANSWER: I am allergic to dust so I have to clean my shop often. My shop is about
20 x 20 feet so a broom and my smaller shop vac are the main cleaning
tools. I have a box fan with a pleated furnace filter taped to it that
gets a lot of the airborne dust. I clean the furnace filter with the
shop vac. By the way I installed Cleanstream filters in both of my shop
vacs which turned out to be a good move because they trap all particles
larger than 5 microns and they can be washed clean with a faucet or hose.
The larger shop vac is used to collect the dust from my table saw and
Jointer.
I do not blow the dust off anything because that would induce an allergic
reaction even if I am wearing a dust mask. I use the brush attachment on
the end of my shop vac hose instead.
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