Lathe to furnace proximity question

[stlmacgeek]

First a little background.

I like woodturning. I used to do quite a bit, but I haven't turned on my lathe in a couple of years because I was using it in the basement and I found out how bad the airborne dust is for people (which is especially a concern since we have 3 kids here at home with us).

We have a very small house I used to just turn in the basement in the "backroom" which is all open to the rest of the basement and the rest of the house.

Since that time I have considered moving everything to the garage (I use the table saw and cut-off saw out there) but the garage is not insulated and not heated or cooled. I have also bought a HF DC and upgraded it with a cartridge filter and Loring's neutral vane. I also have a nice respirator and have plans to build a air cleaner based on an old shopnotes plan.

After long consideration of moving it all to the garage I have decided to keep it in the basement and seal it up from the rest of the house to keep the dust in the shop area and not in the rest of the house. It would take to much time and money to make the garage comfortable and to run the extra circuits to the garage for all the tools. Plus it is just a one car garage and my wife's van gets parked in there every night.

The LOML has authorized me to build a wall to isolate the shop area from the rest of the house.

Sorry to take so long with all of this! Thanks for reading this far!

The area where I will be able to use is right next to the gas furnace and gas water heater. There are no heat or cold air return vents in the area that I will be closing off. So I will not be introducing any dust to the rest of the house through the ductwork. I will have the DC and new Air Cleaner running any time I am working in there. Do I need to be concerned with dust getting into the gas burning areas of the furnace and water heater? Do I need to build a wall to box in the water heater and furnace to keep my woodturning and sanding dust out of those 2 things? I know that the furnace and water heater need a fresh air supply to properly heat I could put a vent between the furnace room and a store room next to that.

Any thoughts, advice or actual experience would be greatly appreciated!

Happy New Year!

Kevin

[LCHIEN]

I think there is probably nothing to worry about. Your concerns might be:
1) explosion/fire hazards
2) Spreading dust into the house
3) fouling the heaters

As to #1 there will not be enough concentration of dust to be hazardous. Mostly fine dust is most explosive anyway, your lathe will provide more coarse shavings that tend to fall on the ground rather than float.
As to #2, the house circulation and the heater intake combustion air are not intermingled (to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning, heat exchagers are used.)
As to #3 any dust sucked into the combustion air will probably get burned with no major effects being small particles to begin with. I guess a wall with furnace air filters filtering dust out of the combustion air will work to keep from fouling the furnace mechanisms, if you wish.

just my 2 cents/

[emsmedic]

FYI:

You may want to have an HVAC guy look at the furnace before adding any walls to box it in. I'm finishing my basement (and new shop) now and when I enclosed the utility/storage room (roughly 14x14) the mechanical inspector made me install an additional air intake from the outside and a mixing scuttle.