I've been on browsing the forums for a while now and I like what I see. I see that many other members have great ideas that have made me think "I can do that". The old adage "Necessity is the mother of invention" really speaks in these forums. I'm a retired Sheriff's Deputy who is now a self-employed contractor. I am in the middle of a building remodel. I am converting an old (historic (built in 1898)) bank building into a coffee shop and bakery. The project has been a bit of a challenge. My latest endeavor is to cut away the bottom 6 inches of the safe door frames to make way for floor to wall coving (plastic baseboard). The challenge is to eliminate the grinding dust inside the building. I have a shoe string budget on this build so I looked at the forums for shop air filters. I decided that the shortest point between to 2 places is a straight line. Instead of building a large system, I would keep it simple and portable.
I purchased a 20 inch x 20 inch box fan ($20) and attached a pleated 20x25x1 inch furnace filter ($4) to the box with masking tape. I could not find a 20x20x1 inch furnace filter where I bought the fan, so I used a 20 x 25 inch filter and taped off the top half. 20 x 20 filters are available, just not where I live. I found some online for about $5 ea in a 6 pack. Other members had posted the same idea as responses to other shop air filter build posts, but I did not see any photos, or builds like mine.
You can see in my photos that the filter does the job pretty well. The nice thing about the filter system is that I can easily move it from room to room, as well as take it to other jobs. I have yet to sand down the wood floors in this construction project- which will create a lot of dust (even with a vacuum attached to the sander). When the filter gets dirty, I take it outside and blow it clean with compressed air (while wearing a respirator of course).
The photos are a before I cleaned the filter and after. I put the filter back to use and within 1/2 hour it was ready for another cleaning. I did not take any photos of the front of the fan because I figured most everybody has seen the front of a box fan. I can post photos of the front side if anyone wants to see the filter from the front.
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