Recently there was some discussion regarding venting.
This prompted me to address the situation in my studio.
This is my solution. There is a window in my work place.
A kitchen vent fan mounted in a 1/2 plywood panel placed between the
raised window and the sill provides the necessary air flow. A 24 inch
hood made from sheet metal with a 4 inch lip on either side is
mounted above the fan.
with a 24 inch distance from table top to hood it captures 100
percent of the fumes functioning as a dedicated soldering station.
Very inexpensive, whole thing cost less than $100 not including
table. I occasionally use a kiln for lost wax burnout. placing the
kiln on the table takes care of the fumes from that too.
I ended up doing something similar with a window in my studio. I
mounted a 4" hvac vent lead for aluminum duct, but used a flexible
drier hose connecting to it and a soldering fan on an armature, like
that you’d find on a table lamp. I just open the vent on the vent
lead, swing the fan down to my bench, and viola, fume extraction.
It’s smaller than I’d want for large soldering jobs, but for the
scale of work that I’m currently working in, it’s suitable. I hope
to expand to something more akin to a dedicated solder station in the
future. For now, I’m soldering at my bench with the GRS solder
station (love it).
I don’t think I read in any of the posts, about air intake, only
ventilation or exhaust. You cannot take air out of a room without
replenishing it. I was a ventilation man in another life. The
general rule is X amount of air out (for example an 8x8inch duct has
64 sq in of exhaust air) needs X amount of air in. The requirement
for air INTAKE is about 20 percent more than the exhaust area. (64 sq
in. plus 20% about 76 sq inches of air intake. so an air in
requirement is about 9x9 inch) Thats in a perfect environment of
course and we deal in real life shop situations which aren’t always
ideal… but if you want to be safe from fumes, and if you have an
exhaust fan over your work area. and you want it to be efficient, at
least crack a window, preferably on the other side of the room to
create a crossdraft and let air in to prevent the fan from stalling
(fan is turning but not really pushing air out efficiently) and
leaving half the stinky often poisonous vapors in the room. think
about air intake as well as air exhaust… yes some homes and shops
have a lot of air infiltration from cracks and under doors etc. but
its best to be safe with our lives. Air out of a building or enclosed
space… needs air back in too. Cheers.
Very good point, Johnny, about ‘air in’ needing to exceed 'air out’
when venting a studio. I can attest that if you live in a radon
area, as we do, a strong exhaust fan or even a furnace’s combustion,
will pull the radon in from beneath the foundation and draw it into
your house’s bottom level. Been there, fixed that, after newer,
tighter windows were installed in our house.
Radon can be blocked with a high density plastic sheet. The trick is
to find 6 mil plastic that is wide enough to cut down on the number
of seems.
They need to be overlapped and sealed with a strong tape. You can
learn more at Wikipedia. As for letting air in, try installing a
louvered dryer vent so the louvers are on the inside. You can create
your own cover, for when it’s not in use.