It’s always fun to work with someone else in the shop. Especially when the project can be knocked out in a day or less. For this project I had the help of Shawn Stone from Stone And Sons Workshop on Youtube… or maybe he had my help because we made a project for his shop?? Either way, we had fun and were productive enough to get the job done in one night. Shawn is a fellow YouTube woodworker who likes to make a lot of reclaimed projects. Be sure to check out his YouTube channel and subscribe if you would like to see more of his projects. He actually lives relatively close to me so odds are this won’t be the last time you see him in my shop. The project itself is a homemade shop air filter. Shawn was able to score a couple old furnace blower motors for free and the smaller of the two was to be the fan for his shop filter. The other he gave to me to use later. I’m not sure when I’ll get around to making one for my shop but now I know I have a motor for it. We made this entire project out of one sheet of 3/4” plywood.

The plywood we’re using is PureBond hardwood plywood. It’s made in the USA and formaldehyde free. I’ve been using it since making my miter saw station and have had great results with it. This plywood is heavy stuff though so I don’t like to wrestle a full sheet of it over my table saw. Instead, I like to slide the sheet over one side of my plywood storage cart and make the first cut with a circular saw. Then the much more manageable piece can be cut at the table saw. Step 6 is always the best step. Watch someone else do the work…just kidding! Hard work never hurt anybody ;) The blade was lowered by the way… This project is literally just a box. Well, a box with a couple of filters. It’s an incredibly easy project that anyone can make with a blower motor. Lastly, a bunch of strips can be cut that will later make up the frames. This was a lot of repetition to cut all of the strips to size. There will be six frames total. Two to enclose the exit filter and four to enclose the intake filters.

To make assembly of the frames a little easier we setup a little jig on my assembly table. Not really a jig, actually. It’s just a square chunk of plywood clamped down to the table. This allows two boards to quickly and accurately be aligned at 90 degrees and joined with wood glue and a few brad nails. best spray cleaner for kitchen greaseThese don’t have to be crazy strong as they will eventually be installed into the final assembly and held in place with a couple brad nails. top 10 air purifiers singaporeTheir only purpose is to space out the filters. are portable air purifiers effectiveAs you can tell, I was being very productive here. The intake frames were added first. The frame closest to the blower motor has a couple extra vertical supports to hopefully prevent the filter from collapsing due to the suction.

Mounting the blower will be unique to your specific blower housing. For this particular unit we needed to elevate the side opposite the air exit and also add a small cleat to the bottom of the box right below where the exit will be. The small cleat will catch the bottom of the blower housing and prevent it from backing away from the air exit. Before mounting the motor I cut the exit air hole. This should have been done before assembly though as I didn’t have good access with my jigsaw to cut the hole. I ended up using a drill to make jigsaw starter holes, the jigsaw to make the horizontal cuts, and an oscillating tool to make the vertical cuts. After cutting the exit hole we installed the exit filter frames and tested the fit with a filter. So far everything worked out as planned. We are only working on the construction of the unit here. Shawn planned on finishing the electrical and installing it later while in his shop. But to allow access to the electrical when the unit was sealed we drilled a hole in the back panel for the wiring.

The motor slid in place as planned and we secured it on the top side of the housing with a couple of screws into the exit side panel. Before adding the last piece we loaded it up with filters to get a final check of the intake side. We went with three filters for the intake to reduce the work load of each filter. The two outer filters should catch the larger stuff and the intake filter closest to the blower was the highest rated filter to remove the smaller particles. The last piece to be installed was the front panel. This will be the side facing the middle of Shawn’s shop when installed. Once installed, the unit will be close to the ceiling so removing the top for maintenance would not be possible. For that reason we chose to construct the box in such a way that the front and back were attached to the top and bottom. That way the front panel can be removed easily with a few screws. And speaking of it being installed, Shawn put together an installation video for those who want to see it mounted in his shop.

Be sure to subscribe to his channel if you want to see more videos from him and also check out his website for more info. Join thousands of others who receive notifications of new content directly in their inbox. Your email address will not be shared. Email Me For Every Article 1 Weekly Update Email I’m sorry but when I see the IQair units go for $1000.00 I just can’t justify the purchase when looking for some relief from a Cat allergy. I’ve always had allergy to cats, dogs, barns, hay, chickens, flowers Right now the “load” is causing me breathing problems. (Claritin D, a really hot shower, and introducing moisture into the bedroom by way of a humidifier help) The cat isn’t going anywhere. It will be taken to be cleaned, the room bedding will be washed in extra hot water and everything will be vacuumed as best as possible. So that leaves an air cleaner. So I’m a I bet I can do this better myself kind of person anyway.

The IQaire claim .003 capture but every HEPA “filter” I find for sale claims only .03 microns. So how are these IQ people doing .003? Why can’t I just make my own? I have access to people that fabricate things for a living. I give em’ specs or at least desires and they could make anything. The problem is the filter itself. Where to buy the best filter? I see this as a very simple device… take dirty air and pass it Run it long enough and you should clean the air. With proper placement and a study of thermal air patterns of the room you could plan accordingly. I’ve read some folks stacking some over the counter air conditioner filters together and using them as pre-filters for the HEPA filter. Makes sense to me, the less stuff that the HEPA filter captures the longer the life of the filer. I’ve read webpages talking about making filters for hoods to filter out spores and the such, they used “squirrel”

type blowers to pull the air though the filter setup. (over 425cfm to start) So I think one could make a box with a few cheap filters on the outside and 1 or even 2 good quality HEPA filters in front of a powerful fan and clean the air just as good as the IQ device. (It may be possible to buy a large sheet HEPA filter and then cut it down to a smaller size and stack the pieces behind each other making a “better” filter more Your site doesn’t talk about making your own I may add. Understand I’m only worried about my Cat allergy and not a chemical sensitivity that may well warrant a more expensive system. Though I’m told Cat dander and its dry saliva are among some of the smallest in size to deal with. I still think you should cover building Though one could get some UV bulbs mount them insidemake a deeper box with clear tubing to force the air to stay longer in the box for the UV light to kill whatever it could kill.

You could add stages for special chemical removal filters. The sky’s really the limit of what one could do. Next would be to augment a forced air system to include a HEPA filter. I’ve heard arguments from HVAC guys that they hate HEPA filters because it screws with their flow numbers and it requires them to oversize the blowers on account of the airflow loss the HEPA filter 2nd question: What about whole house systems like the Build your own homemade air purifier? Hey, I'm also a do-it-yourselfer. My home was built of 90% recycled materials entirely by yours truly. I do all my own auto maintenance and as a young man fantasized building a car There is nothing stopping you from constructing your own air cleaner, but I doubt it will be more effective or efficient than what is available in mass produced $200 air cleaners at your nearest big box retail store. You can buy many of these used from When you see IQAir advertising the .003 micron efficiency, it's about the 99.5% capture rate.

Any HEPA will capture some .003 micron particulate, just a lower percentage. .3 micron is the most difficult particle to capture, so the HEPA engineering standard uses it as the benchmark. There is no way any build-your-own purifier will come anywhere close to an IQAir. By the time you assemble the parts for the homemade air cleaner, you will have spent enough cash to just buy a decent air purifier, though not an IQAir. But for do-it-yourself guys like us, it ain't always 'bout the money, I know. I recommend beginning with some simpler homemade air cleaners and working up to the experimental HEPA. I use two "po boy" dust collectors made from $15-dollar 20-inch box fans from WalMart with 1/4 inch polyurethane foam AC filter sealed with tape, on the front or back. I have tried attaching MERV-rated furnace filters with zip-ties, but the additional pressure causes air to circulate within the housing rather than through the filter.

My poboy works better with triangular pieces of cardboard taped to the front corners to reduce counter-flow air escape. amounts of visible dust in the 20 micron and up range. A simple dust collector made of a plywood box, squirrel cage blower, a MERV-7 to 13 furnace filter, and polyurethane prefilter would be pretty easy. present in do-it-yourself woodworking and other shops. I would add a couple layers of polyurethane air conditioner filter as a prefilter, otherwise a pretty sharp build-your-own project, hanging from his shop ceiling. But these efforts are nowhere close to HEPA standards. Realize that these shops are trying to filter sawdust with particle sizes mostly larger than 100 microns. A piece of no-se-um fiberglass screen will catch most of this macro-dust. I think these shop dust catchers represent what can reasonably be expected from build your own homemades. Congrats to the builders. You could try home-building a UV photocatalytic setup, with less backpressure than HEPA.

However, when you start to build your own true-HEPA air cleaner things will get more complicated rather quickly. HEPA is an efficiency standard, not necessarily a type of filter. It just turns out that only pleated paper type filters perform to spec, confusing the public into believing HEPA means This opens the door to marketers who sell "HEPA-type" air cleaners - they are NOT HEPA. Over the years, gigantic engineering resources have been invested in true-HEPA air purifier design. More recently, Chinese government financed teams have carefully reverse engineered every top selling product in the world. The result is a glut of cheap but serviceable air cleaners. We homebuilders will NOT out-perform these guys, not to mention the world class engineering talent at IQAir. HEPA filters require significant backpressure, which means tight sealing to prevent bypassing. True-HEPA filters also require powerful fans - the squirrel cage won't cut it.

Some Chinese-made air cleaners, the cheapies, still use squirrel cages, with their inherent balance issues. Out of round fans are the chief source of returns or dumpster deaths of these Fan design is an engineering specialty in itself, I doubt if your machine shop can produce the balanced impeller found in the IQAirs. We can scratch-build our own go-kart, even a dirt-track racer, but not a twin-turbo BMW 335i. It is very difficult to force air through the box, some air always tries This is why "HVAC guys hate HEPA filters" - the furnace fan is not designed to support the backpressure. its own side circuit ducting and never achieves the efficiency of a room Whole house/HVAC systems are fine for the affluent, but not cost effective for the majority. I think the best approach there is to focus on keeping the interior - ducts, pans, coils, fans... - of the HVAC system clean. This pressure will burn up inferior fans. Engineering teams struggle to build mass

produced air cleaners - the Hunters, Holmes, and other department store brands - with just the right mean time between failure at marketing price points and warranty claim budget targets. The best thing to do is to choose a widely available existing rectangular HEPA filter with strong edging, and build your project around it. Many filters are built with floppy, weak edges, too-thin cardboard. Note the sturdy polyurethane edges on the IQAir filters. But be aware that filter availability is declining during the great recession - choose a widely sold purifier for the filter donor. It will be difficult to seal the gap between the filter and the box - anotherMaybe caulk the gap semi-permanently, and use a knife to remove expired filters and caulk. Good prefilters will allow long enough HEPA life that build-your-own guys will not mind the labor at filter change time. The motor-fan assembly is the heart of HEPA. I think you would do best