Squirrel Cage Filter Box

[opaul]

The post made by Mr. Sanders about using a box fan with a filter made me remember I had made a squirrel cage filter box many years ago. In fact, I had it stored in one of my out buildings and it just needed some TLC. So I hauled it to my now air conditioned shop and got it going. I remember I found the building instructions in a Fine Woodworking magazine way back when.
Essentially it is a plywood box with a squirrel cage motor in the bottom. The sides, bottom and top are solid plywood. The front has an opening cut out to exhaust the air from the blower, so the opening is on the bottom (with hardware cloth wire) to protect the opening. The back top of the box is cut out to accept a 15x19 pleated filter. I guess you could make it what ever size you wanted depending on the filter you want to use.
Anyway this thing really works well and I'm sure I could calculate the room air exchanges going through the filter but suffice to say, it's quite a few. I plan on cranking it up when I'm creating dust or sweeping the floor.

 

[EdCaffreyMS]

That very thing is what I built one of the "dust suckers" in my finish shop out of..... mine came out of our old furnace. I have a loft in my finish shop, so I just cut a hole, mounted the blower/motor combo so the blowers exhaust goes through it.....then built a plywood box around it. I left two side of the box open, and built it to accept four 16"x25"x1" furnace filters stack together. I pull the filters 2-3 times a year, blow them out, and put them back. If they get too icky, I just got buy 8 more (that two packs at Walmart).

I also converted a small swamp cooler into a "dust sucker".... same principle.

Here's a pic of the one built with the furnace blower......

And these are the one I converted from an old swamp cooler...... I just removed the "hog's hair" and stacked 4 furnace filters of the correct size in it's place. I also relocated the control box for easy access.