Hey guys, does anyone have an idea how i could remove smoke that gets in the air when welding or grinding. When im working in the garage on the 55, after awhile the air is filled. I would just open the garage door.......but it is like 23* outside. I would like to keep the heat in as well. So any ideas???

 

An exhaust fan is the only thing I can think of like the ones in your bath room or kitchen. I've seen them in garage ceiling & in the wall. I use a regular 16" swivel fan however, I don't work in 23 degree weather so that will not work for you.

 

About all I can think of using is an exhaust fan which will need a fresh air supply to function properly and this will cause your heating system to work longer to try and maintain the temperature.

 

I've seen smoke eaters in bars but they aren't cheap. I don't think you need an outside source of air to circulate through them. That's the only idea I can think of.

 

Here's an idea.
My dad has a soda blaster with a fan, that connects to a hose. Kinda like the air playpen things. But instead of putting air in it pulls it out, along with all the soda and what not.
If you opened the garage door a bit, taped some plastic to it, and the floor, then put the fan in a hole in the plastic pulling air out. May not work the best.
That or an exhaust fan. If you get a big one that will do it. Used to have one in the house. Open a window in the kitchen or the door, turn that on, you could feel the breeze all the way thru the house.

 

I used to work in a mfg. plant and the welders had large flex hose(about 8-10" in diameter with exhaust fans) to position where they were welding to pull the smoke out of the building. I think you could make something like that with a box fan and some flexible ducting.

 

I use a bathroom exhaust fan from Home depo and vent it out the window. I took a 12" wide piece of foam insulation, cut it to fit the height of the window and put a hole in it to fit the exhaust hose from the fan. Close the window up to the foam and you have a draft free exhaust port. When I'm done for the day I just pull out the foam and close the window. I've been working in the shop with outside temps to -30.

 

Hi Roger,
Unfortunately, anything other that a simple exhaust system is going to be an expensive proposition at best. The smoke scrubbers mentioned above are basically electrostatic air cleaners. Having one large enough to clean and recirculate the air would be a very large device with multiple grids and power supplies. There are other reasons to opt for a simple exhaust system. The most prevalent being the removal of harmfull gasses and compounds that scrubbers will not remove. Lately these compounds have been linked to cancer and Parkinsons.

The down side of an exhaust system is that it has to bring in a source of outside air to replace the smokey air being removed. In the Winter that means cold air. There is a way to help this problem. You can build a simple heat exchanger using the vent or chimney of you garage heating system to warm the incoming cold air.

My shop and garage area is under my house and I have to use an exhaust fan when welding or doing anything else that creates odors. If I don't, I get severely scolded by that woman I live with. The exhausted air is replace by air that finds its way in from outside around the not so perfect door seals on the garage doors and some of it is pulled in through the house above.

You can buy welding exhaust systems from a number of sources that use a big 8" or 10" flexible duct with a small positionable hood that can be placed in close proximity to your welding. I believe that HF even has a cheap system. You can even make one of these but in either case remember that the exhaust has to be vented to the outside.

My exhaust fan is a simple and cheap attic exhaust fan designed to be places in the gable end of an attic. I have it mounted high in an exterior wall with a plastic louver system that closes when the fan is off thus preventing the outside air from coming back in when not in use.

Hope this helps...

Later Man...

 

Good friend of mine is a welder. He has a length of power vent pipe with an elbow, a flared out end piece (6"x9" or whatever it is), and a piece of rope holding it above his welding table looped through an eye hook in the ceiling, and tied off by the table. He can pull the rope to lift it up, or loosen the rope to lower the "hood". The other end is on a flexible dryer vent hose, and is attached to another power vent tube running out the wall, and a 90* elbow facing down with a screen to prevent mice, and wind backdraft. He has a small squirrel cage fan inline just before the wall. Turn it on, air is sucked outside. The trick is, he is isolating the air he wants out, not the whole room.

 

I didn't think of this before when I posted my first reply. I have a 6' steel cube, it's an old control panel, that I use for a sandblasting booth. When I blast I connect my shop vac to a piece of 2" PVC tubing I have sealed into the back door and exhaust it out a small service door or window. If you could build a pyramid shaped hood over your welding area you could connect the peak to a shop vac and do the same venting.

I know vaccuming blasting dust is going to ruin my shop vac, I kind of toasted one already but I'm planning to build a dust collector on the exhaust using plans I found on the Ford Barn site. I would think it could work for smoke too, maybe:

http://www.fordbarn.com/aforum/memberpage/SKfilter1.jpg

http://www.fordbarn.com/aforum/memberpage/SKfilter1.jpg

 

Hi,

Here's an idea that kind of adds to the comments above. I made this thing when I sanded the walls in my house prior to painting to get the "orange peel" texture off. (and dry wall dust is a big pain too)

Go to Home Depot and get a 12 inch diameter concrete footer form tube - the kind you bury in the ground when you want to pour a round concrete footing - they are made of HEAVY cardboard. They are about 4 feet long.

Get a little 12 inch house fan (or if you want to put up withthe noise you can use the shop vac) and cut the end of the cardboard tube so it fits over the suction end of the fan - duct tape it on. Then, get a little fibergalss insolation - maybe about a 4 inch thick piece 16x16 and fluff it out, then gently lay it over the end of the tube opposite the fan so air can get past it - hold it on with a rubber band or string. Set it on the floor and turn the fan on LOW! It will help circulate the air around - putting out clean and pulling in dirty.

If your smoke is very fine, you can replace the fiberglass with a damp piece of cloth-a "Terry cloth" towel would work.

WALLA, safe shop air filter. It sucks - tee hee. When the fiberglass gets all plugged up, toss it. You could probably use a heater filter on that end as well.

This is probably going to be very close to what Bob suggested above.

J!

PS. Not for use when painting - Kaboom!

 

Hello, as a hvac technician i can tell you that the correct way to exhaust the air is with a proper exhaust fan and make up air unit you see if you simply exhaust the air from your garage without introducing new air into the building you will create a negative air pressure in the garage this may cause the air from outside to come into the garage from the cracks and seals but most likely from the furnace stack now this is very dangerous because of the carbon monxide if the furnace is on at the time all you need to do is be sure to shut off the furnace before you start the exhaust fan as make up air units are quite costly a make shift way is to run a duct from the outside to the return of the furnace put a damper in it and open it when the exhaust fan is on this way you can preheat the air before it goes in the garage it is hard on the heatexchanger but can be made relatively cheaply hope this helps contact me for ore info woody

 

I should note that my friend's set-up is in an enclosed room with a cold air return vent and hot air intake up high using a squirrel cage fan again. It is seperate from the woodstove in the garage portion of his pole building. So in reference to negative air, yes, make up air is good.