Hello,
Dad has been wanting to come up with a semi-portable blower fan for his 32x40 shop. Lucky for him, a neighbor just had the HVAC system in her house replaced, and the contractor gave him the old blower assembly (squirrel cage blower and motor). He wants to put it in a wooden box of some kind with a furnace filter on the inlet and use it to draw air out of the shop. He has quite a few windows he can open to draw fresh air in. I don't know exactly how he intends to use it, but at one point he was thinking of setting it in the floor and lowering a garage door on it, with some baffling to seal off the rest of the door opening. Why he's wanting to use this to exhaust air from the shop rather than blow air in is his call but that's his plan.
I don't have measurements handy but given what's in his house, and the sizes of the other houses in the neighborhood, I'd guess this came out of a 2.5-3 ton heat pump HVAC system, with no exterior dimension larger than about 20" on the blower housing.
I was under the impression that these blowers had specific needs about the inlet and outlet plenum they were in, either to give some sort of inlet restriction (overspeed prevention?) or something. I'm obviously not an HVAC guy! I couldn't find any design criteria here or in any of my Google searches.
I've also seen these re-used for DIY airborne dust collection. I have a Powermatic PM1200 hanging from my woodshop ceiling and it's not much more than a squirrel cage and a filter (with a fancy RF remote that is really nice). Most of those homebrew ones don't appear to have much for inlet or outlet ducting or plenum besides just enough to hold the blower housing and a filter (or stack of filters).
Any thoughts on the design of the box I should build for Dad to put this blower housing in? Is it as simple as building a box big enough to hold it and the filter(s) he wants to use? Do I need to make sure the box has a certain shape or volume on either the inlet or outlet side?
He's got a stack of 16x20 filters from his old HVAC unit before that system was replaced, so I think he wants to use that size. We could use more than one in parallel if needed (i.e. two side-by-side).
Any thoughts on this are appreciated.
Dad has been wanting to come up with a semi-portable blower fan for his 32x40 shop. Lucky for him, a neighbor just had the HVAC system in her house replaced, and the contractor gave him the old blower assembly (squirrel cage blower and motor). He wants to put it in a wooden box of some kind with a furnace filter on the inlet and use it to draw air out of the shop. He has quite a few windows he can open to draw fresh air in. I don't know exactly how he intends to use it, but at one point he was thinking of setting it in the floor and lowering a garage door on it, with some baffling to seal off the rest of the door opening. Why he's wanting to use this to exhaust air from the shop rather than blow air in is his call but that's his plan.
I don't have measurements handy but given what's in his house, and the sizes of the other houses in the neighborhood, I'd guess this came out of a 2.5-3 ton heat pump HVAC system, with no exterior dimension larger than about 20" on the blower housing.
I was under the impression that these blowers had specific needs about the inlet and outlet plenum they were in, either to give some sort of inlet restriction (overspeed prevention?) or something. I'm obviously not an HVAC guy! I couldn't find any design criteria here or in any of my Google searches.
I've also seen these re-used for DIY airborne dust collection. I have a Powermatic PM1200 hanging from my woodshop ceiling and it's not much more than a squirrel cage and a filter (with a fancy RF remote that is really nice). Most of those homebrew ones don't appear to have much for inlet or outlet ducting or plenum besides just enough to hold the blower housing and a filter (or stack of filters).
Any thoughts on the design of the box I should build for Dad to put this blower housing in? Is it as simple as building a box big enough to hold it and the filter(s) he wants to use? Do I need to make sure the box has a certain shape or volume on either the inlet or outlet side?
He's got a stack of 16x20 filters from his old HVAC unit before that system was replaced, so I think he wants to use that size. We could use more than one in parallel if needed (i.e. two side-by-side).
Any thoughts on this are appreciated.
