Dust Free Ash Pan Dumping

You may have seen my other thread with attempt to cut down on dust from dumping ash into my ash can. It worked well but still oozed some dust out of the gaps. I'm sure it was from air expansion in the can pushing dust out since I dumped hot ashes..

Ash Can Modification

Anyways, I've since taken things a bit further and added a negative pressure system. Eh-emm (phlem), please excuse my crude design since I whipped this up in short time.. I used a piece of 90 degree conduit pipe running into a 5 gallon pail. My shop vac sits outside and I just plug it in to turn it on. The vac pulls air thru the ash can and then into the water in the pail. The negative pressure in the ash can prevents any escape of dust during dumping of the ash pan...

The whole rig is designed to prevent hot embers from being sucked into the shop vac, which of course wouldn't be good..

Nice lee! How old is your house , down here field stone cellars are not too common pre 1850-s mostly, not enough on Long Island to meet demand

Very good idea
On my side, I never went out to empty the ash pan. I took the old kitchen vent (having a squirel cage fan), made a support to fix it vertically and made a cage to deflect the ash toward it, placed an old furnace filter 5" X 20" in front of it. The clean filtered air is returning back to the filter, making a sort of loop. No dust in the place.
When I did that it was only a test but it works so good I never try to get it ""beautiful""

ShawninNY wrote:Nice lee! How old is your house , down here field stone cellars are not too common pre 1850-s mostly, not enough on Long Island to meet demand

Thanks .. If I remember right, the main part of the house was built in the early 1900's (maybe lol) but has had additions made to it since then..

Nice set-up bro, excellent crude design. I know you already have "VAC II" bouncin' around!

Nice, Lee.

You made the big version of the spackle sanding system I bought at the paint department at Home Depot. Comes with some plastic hoses and a one gallon bucket - that gets half filled with water - and it all gets hooked to a shop vac.

Tired of the dust with the 6 gallon can that my range ash pan won't fit into, I bought a 10 gal steel ash can it will fit into. I was going to make the sectioned flip-open lid like yours, but so far, only used it a couple of times when it was bad weather. Since then I find I get less dust if I just walk out to an area of the driveway, or low spot in the yard, that needs more ash fill, . . . . gauge the wind direction, . . . and then tack into the wind as I empty the ash pan ! Old sailor advice - always keep "it" to leeward !

Paul

I'm going to start calling you "professor" Lee. (Now if you could only get us off this island.) Well done. Almost at perfection, when is the patent?

You guys are great! Thank you for the nice comments.

Joe q, we have a guy at work Nick named "The Professor". He has an uncanny way of making bone headed mistakes. I laughed out loud when I read that!!

Nice set-up there Lee! The water could be an improvement on the cyclonic separator concept.

I haven't tried it out with coal ash but I made 2 of these Thien dust separators that I use in my home shop.......

With all those plastic parts, just don't try it with hot ashes lol.. Nice job on those. I like the design!

Lee, that is a VERY good point.......

A house in Springfield just burned down, from someone storing wood ashes in a 5 gallon plastic bucket. Wood ashes can smolder for days and reignite. Not sure about coal ashes.

Lightning wrote:You may have seen my other thread with attempt to cut down on dust from dumping ash into my ash can. It worked well but still oozed some dust out of the gaps. I'm sure it was from air expansion in the can pushing dust out since I dumped hot ashes..

Ash Can Modification

Anyways, I've since taken things a bit further and added a negative pressure system. Eh-emm (phlem), please excuse my crude design since I whipped this up in short time.. I used a piece of 90 degree conduit pipe running into a 5 gallon pail. My shop vac sits outside and I just plug it in to turn it on. The vac pulls air thru the ash can and then into the water in the pail. The negative pressure in the ash can prevents any escape of dust during dumping of the ash pan...

The whole rig is designed to prevent hot embers from being sucked into the shop vac, which of course wouldn't be good..

Then, after the small pail is full of ash/water slurry, you use it as a topping for your hot dogs? A true coal efficienado(sp?) ! Inventive setup. 10 pts for Gryfindor!

davidmcbeth3 wrote:Then, after the small pail is full of ash/water slurry, you use it as a topping for your hot dogs? A true coal efficienado(sp?) ! Inventive setup. 10 pts for Gryfindor!

Hey thanks!! I think..
It's been performing well, this is my second heating season using the dust entrapment contraption..