How do you manage the dust?????

GAMMA RAY said:

I know it comes with the territory and I have come to accept that but...I have to dust so much more through the house especially since putting the box fan on the floor pushing into the stove room. I am sure some of you guys and girls may have some tips for me. I was thinking of putting an air cleaner in the main part of the house. Not sure if it would help a bit. I don't expect the stove room to be dust free by no means but it is the dust in the other areas of the house that get to be a pain because I am going through swiffers left and right. All of my floors in the rest of the house are hardwood and some tile so they show the dust quickly. Suggestions other than deal with it? I wonder if it is the shopvac my husband uses to suck up some of the mess in the stove room. I did not think of that. Could that be the culprit?

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Good chance if it does not have a fine particle filter. Cheers!

GAMMA RAY said:

I wonder if it is the shopvac my husband uses to suck up some of the mess in the stove room. I did not think of that. Could that be the culprit?

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Yes. As NH points out, unless hubby's spent some serious coin on that shop vac, the filtration system is usually too course and the connections are leaky to boot. You need a filter that won't allow particles larger the 5 microns to pass. My Fein Turbo II set me back $300 several years ago, they're pushing $500 today. You can't expect a homeowners unit to do a dustless job.

I remember back during the Anthrax scare, sitting in horror as the news was plastered with images of the U.S. Postal service using huge commercial vacuums to "sanitize" mail holding bins suspected of being contaminated. All I could think of was, "Are these guys on our side?" Anthrax spores are between 1 and 5 microns in size. They were inadvertently using the best low-tech aerosol dispersing device they could have come up with.

Get the largest air filtration/purifier that you can afford, one that has a two-stage filter with a HEPA filter on the inside. Don't go with the ratings as far as size requirements, they are like stoves in that the ratings are hyped. You will see a big improvement within days.

EDIT:

Gamma, take it easy on him. Husbands really mean well, we're just a bit dense is all. ;-)

Just part of it. We don't get worked up about it. Dust when we can't stand it anymore, about once a week. But we vacuum daily or more often than that sometimes. We don't have a lot of horizontal landing points anyways, and most are covered with "runners" and such, and those can all go into the wash.. But again, living in the woods with two large in-out dogs, and most of our friends bring their dogs out here to play at least once or twice a week.. cleanliness becomes.. relative. Especially during winter/spring.

The dust is one reason I like let the circulation fan on our house furnace system run on low continuously, it is basically a big whole house filtration system. Also it helps circulate and moderate the temperature throughout the house.
Of course the key to this system is to make sure that you change the filters frequently and buy good quality filters.
To get the most effective use of the filters I use two filters side by side, the first one is always one of the cheap $3 filters which is used to catch the large particles and bulk of the dust that goes through. The second filter is where I use the higher quality hepa type filter. By using the cheaper filters in front of the system the expensive filters don't get plugged up as fast and of course last longer. I'll usually replace 2 of the cheap filters before I need to replace the expensive filter.

Works for me.

GAMMA RAY said:

I know it comes with the territory and I have come to accept that but...I have to dust so much more through the house especially since putting the box fan on the floor pushing into the stove room. I am sure some of you guys and girls may have some tips for me. I was thinking of putting an air cleaner in the main part of the house. Not sure if it would help a bit. I don't expect the stove room to be dust free by no means but it is the dust in the other areas of the house that get to be a pain because I am going through swiffers left and right. All of my floors in the rest of the house are hardwood and some tile so they show the dust quickly. Suggestions other than deal with it? I wonder if it is the shopvac my husband uses to suck up some of the mess in the stove room. I did not think of that. Could that be the culprit?

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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...006&cm_re=air_purifier-_-96-112-006-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...169&cm_re=air_purifier-_-96-113-169-_-Product

I have those. The top one has a HEPA filter but is a bit loud. I use it when Im not in the room. The bottom one is quieter... I dont use the ozone generator on it. I keep it in the TV room. Both to a fantastic job

Multiple Dyson vacuums and a Honeywell HEPA air cleaner.

DonNC said:

I have those. The top one has a HEPA filter but is a bit loud. I use it when Im not in the room. The bottom one is quieter... I dont use the ozone generator on it. I keep it in the TV room. Both to a fantastic job

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I had a nearly identical unit as the one in the upper link and it worked great. Not a large capacity, however. Only worked for our bedroom, and the wife couldn't sleep with the noise or the constant breeze in the room. Finally, the thing stopped working, and she is now dustier but well-rested.

My main solution is to run a 1100 CFM shop air filtration unit during the day. It is installed on the basement ceiling, about six feet off to the side from where the stove sits. It has two-stage filtration, and I replaced the outer filter with an electrostatic filter that can be taken out and washed indefinitely. It's surprising how quickly it gets clogged during burning season.

If you're fanatical, you might be able to put on another hose on the exhaust and stick it out the window.
I do that when I sweep the chimney from inside the house.

We have three stoves, two in the actual house and one in an attached greenhouse which is often open to the kitchen through French doors. I use a Dyson vacuum and have three BlueAir air filters running 24/7. We still have dust, though with six golden retrievers, how much of it is from the stove's I cannot say. Oh, yes, we have a fireplace, too. I have given up. If I wipe of the kitchen range at night, I can see a haze of dust on it the next a.m. I can write my name, legibly, on top of the range after one day. I am not getting rid or either the dogs or the stoves, so we live with it.

I can say that prior to the air cleaners [10 years ago] and the switch to the Dyson, we have much more dust. Each of the BlueAirs has three filter elements, and I blow them out with compressed air every couple weeks, a process which produces clouds of dust from each element.

You can buy a HEPA filter for a shop vac. Costs about $35.

http://www.shopvac.com/shopvac-acce...e-HEPA-Small-Cartridge-Filter__903-41-00.aspx

I've never used mine for ash, but it's great for sheetrock dust. Supposedly the definition of HEPA is that it stops 99.97% of the particles 3 microns or larger, which sounds pretty good. Once I used the shopvac to clean up sheetrock dust but I hadn't put the filter back in. Boy what a mess!

My dyson vac is great for the little bit of ash that spills out the doors of my stove.

We don't get a lot of ash very far from the stove. A little on the window sills nearby, but not into other rooms. Maybe that's because we only use the ceiling fans to distribute the heat.

I do have a horsehair push broom that I use regularly. I also have a hand held horeshair (masonry) brush that I use on the hearth every day or two. I figure if I clean it up at the source regularly it will be less effort overall.

One day there were a bunch of us ladies chatting about housekeeping, and one asked, "We just got a woodstove, and now there's dust all over everything! What do y'all do?" The only other woodstove gal and I looked at each other and burst into laughter. "That's what spring cleaning is for!" I said.

Well, that dissatisfied lady got rid of her stove, just couldn't stand all the mess. To each her own.
casey

liston said:

One day there were a bunch of us ladies chatting about housekeeping, and one asked, "We just got a woodstove, and now there's dust all over everything! What do y'all do?" The only other woodstove gal and I looked at each other and burst into laughter. "That's what spring cleaning is for!" I said.

Well, that dissatisfied lady got rid of her stove, just couldn't stand all the mess. To each her own.
casey

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Really. I somehow missed out on whatever the propagandizing or clump of genetic material or whatever it is that makes folks freak out about dust, wood debris, etc. I vacuum my floor every six months whether it needs it or not! (However, I have neither small children in the house nor allergies.)

It a well known fact that dust will cease to accumulate if you stop looking at it. ;-)

for me i run the furnace on with out the heat just turn on the fan and it helps to suck up the dust around the house all that dust goes on that furnace filter which i use 3M filters i run it about few hrs every few days or so...

szmaine said:

It a well known fact that dust will cease to accumulate if you stop looking at it. ;-)

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What dust?

Just go to Home Depot and buy the HEPA filter for the shop vac and let him keep helping!

Yeah, he was performing a voluntary act of cleaning - very praiseworthy. Just get the right equipment to do it.

gyrfalcon said:

I somehow missed out on whatever the propagandizing or clump of genetic material or whatever it is that makes folks freak out about dust, wood debris, etc. I vacuum my floor every six months whether it needs it or not!

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I don't have the dust phobia gene. With a full woodworking shop in the basement, heating with wood is the least of my problems. My wife's nicknacks start to look like Chia pets after several months with all the fuzz they have growing on them. That's why I have all the dust collection and air filtration stuff in the first place. Doesn't rid us of all of it, that's for sure. I still need the cobwebs in my shop to help trap some of it. Oops... I'll bet the same dust haters don't let their cobwebs accumulate, either. :coolsmirk:

Battenkiller said:

gyrfalcon said:

I somehow missed out on whatever the propagandizing or clump of genetic material or whatever it is that makes folks freak out about dust, wood debris, etc. I vacuum my floor every six months whether it needs it or not!

Click to expand...

I don't have the dust phobia gene. With a full woodworking shop in the basement, heating with wood is the least of my problems. My wife's nicknacks start to look like Chia pets after several months with all the fuzz they have growing on them. That's why I have all the dust collection and air filtration stuff in the first place. Doesn't rid us of all of it, that's for sure. I still need the cobwebs in my shop to help trap some of it. Oops... I'll bet the same dust haters don't let their cobwebs accumulate, either. :coolsmirk:

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Yeah, the cobwebs are great dust-catchers! Makes them more visible, too, so you don't accidentally walk into one face-first.

We have a huge dust problem year around. Most of it is living around a bunch of large farms in a dry climate. In the spring when storms die out at night we get huge wind storms that will bring a mile wide cloud of dust. Around the stove I do notice a lot of ash mixed in with the dust, in the bedrooms it looks mostly like clothing fibers. In the bathrooms it looks like paper fibers probably from toilet paper or tissue.

We have hardwood floors and leather furniture so the dust has not where to go. Carpet is good at absorbing the dust that lands on it. You guys brought up a good point about a shop vac. I have a small one that we use to vacuum the wood floors. Next time we go to town I am going to get a HEPA filter for it and see if it helps any.

I don't mind cobwebs in the house, or spiders for that mater, I just like to keep the dustbunny population under control.