My workshop and gym are in the garage and separated by a curtain. Since I don’t have sufficient dust collection or filtration except a shop vac with a cyclone the wood dust goes to gym area. I suggested to wife to move the gym to basement but she wants to keep the space free for kids. In this scenario if I don’t want to put up a permanent wall between garage and gym, would it help if I installed a property dust control system with tubes to each machine and a dust filter fan in ensuring the wood dust does not go to the gym?
Discussion Forum
Get It All!
UNLIMITED Membership is like taking a master class in woodworking for less than $10 a month.
Start Your Free TrialCategories
Discussion Forum
Digital Plans Library
Member exclusive! – Plans for everyone – from beginners to experts – right at your fingertips.
Highlights
-
Shape Your Skills
when you sign up for our emails
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. -
Shop Talk Live Podcast
-
Our favorite articles and videos
-
E-Learning Courses from Fine Woodworking
-
-
Replies
Many options here, but my preference would be to frame in a permanent wall and install very wide barn doors. You'd retain the open feel and still be able to close off the shop when needed. Additionally, by putting the barn doors on the gym side, you just added a lot of wall storage space to your shop.
Any non permanent way of construction for this?
Yes -- Screw the baseplate into the garage floor using tapcon screws and on the ceiling, use long wood screws (or lags) into the joist or into an installed crossbeam if the joist are parallel to the wall. When it's time to remove it, just unscrew it all and dispose. If you go this route, be sure to measure out the barn door bars and install extra horizontal 2x4's to screw the support bars into. Big box barn doors can be doubled up for extra width and then locked to childproof the shop. The framed wall can be drywalled or shiplapped. There are plenty of how-to's on framing in a wall with a simple opening and installing barn doors.
Tapcon will piece the concrete isn't it?
Tapcon screws are predrilled with special bits using a hammerdrill. They do leave screw holes in the concrete when removed. The holes can be filled with concrete patch.
Collecting the dust at the source is the best option all around, including your health. Adding a full size dust collector and connecting it to the ports on your tools us a big step up from a shop vac.
Any upgrades to the system should make things better, but dust is gonna dust. If the spaces are connected by air the dust will get there. Closing a door will do you good, installing an exterior pre-hung with legit weatherstripping will do you better.
I'm on board with elmaduro... the added wall space in the shop will turn it into a real shop. Swapping sides so the electric service panel is in the shop would serve you well in the long-term, plus you won't have to go through the shop to get to the gym.
Dust collection and air filtration will help alot but to be real there is still plenty of dust in a woodshop. 90 % collected still leaves 10% floating. Dust will, just to be mean, land wherever you wife wants to sit! It migrates and some of it will find a way to get through every nook and cranny. Installing something like even a manufactured patio door would have a minimum impact on your present construction and close the hole and could be removed if things change. You definitely need to close the hole one way or another.
Also, not all dust is equal. I have a monstrous Laguna PFlux 1 dust collector and it really sucks up stuff coming off my table saw (for the most part), planer and jointer. But routers, lathes and hand work all generate wood chips, curls and finer particles. Some hand-held tools (Festool for example) have very good dust collection with an attached vac, but some don't. My point is wood shops = dust and chips. No amount of dust collection will eliminate it all. So even a temporary partition (like room divider wall screens) will be required if you are going to keep the other half close to pristine.
“[Deleted]”