I am currently in an older shop space and have a 2000 cfm open exhaust fan mounted on the wall next to my table and is reasonably effective in removing the shop smoke. The space is leaky and there is plenty of replacement air. When it is cold, I curtain off around the table to concentrate the exhaust and limit the amount of warm room air being removed. I am moving to a newer and tighter shop space and know I need to do it differently. My 4x4 Growth has a water table , which I do not use because we cut a lot of small parts that I would need to be fishing out of the water. I am considering adding an inch of water to cut down on some of the smoke and hopefully reduce my exhaust requirements. My questions are: is there a benefit to creating a hood over the table and would it allow me to use a smaller exhaust fan? How do folks supply replacement air in the cold weather (I am in Vermont so you want to hold onto your heat) What is a reasonably sized fan for a ducted hood and/or is it different from a tented area around the table? If a hood is advised should it be over the whole table or attached to the torch head and follow along with a flexible pipe? Thanks for your advice.
I’ve been seeing a lot of people using flexible pipe attached to the torch head to reduce the smoke. Seems to work really well.
How about using the water table up to 1/2” from the plate, no smoke, no cold air being sucked out BUT install a system to raise and lower the water to fish your bits out. Lots of people do this, they raise and lower the water with air using a balloon type bag in a seperate container under the table. Let air out, water table goes down, put air in, water table fills up Larry Cameron RusticMetalArt
