Rough and Ready Extractor

[Keithy]

First and foremost, many thanks and congratulations to all on such a good forum and great quality of information and advice on Dust collections.

Having no budget, I have cobbled up a dust extractor as the attached photo, as a bit of a trial to see if the process will work on an old Kirby. Having no spare hose I have mounted the kirby on the lid, and the weight adds nicely to the seal !

It all works remarkably well, given the limitations of the kirby, but I have some questions I would appreciate your comments.

As the Kirby is noisy, I am considering putting the kirby bit up in the garage roof space, and make a hose with UK domestic waste pipe. Will the extended length have a significant impact on performance ( about 6-8 feet).

There is no bag on the "out" of the Kirby just now : if it goes up I was just going to have it directed at some roof insulation to collect dust, but I thing I read somewhere that MDF dust can be explosive - any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Would I double the effect if I put another hoover in the loop, with a  "Y" connector just above the seperator ?

Any feedback much appreciated . ( I will take all comments about bodge jobs and pug-ugly as read :)  )

[Peter]

Others may have a better handle on this, but it seems to me that any time you increase the distance in a tube (hose or otherwise) for the air to travel, you lose something. But as the Kirby is a vacuum cleaner (high static pressure), this may not be as much of a problem as is the overall volume of air being moved. What's the diameter of that hose? <5cm?

[Keithy]

Yes - its just domestic vacuum hose throughout, the extension bit would be made from 50mm waste water pipe unless I can find some more flexible hoses on Freecycle. All my dust output is from small hand power tools, and my main objective is to capture the man-made stuff like MDF and the like, and to pull off the fine dust around the lathe.

[phil (admin)]

A straight shot of smooth pipe isn't going to put much of a dent in the suction.

But you can't just shoot the exhaust at your insultation.  There will be MDF fines that make it through, and you will fill your space with very fine dust in little time.  You need to either vent it outside (through a hole in the wall, for example), or capture the stuff in a cloth filter bag.