Hi. I’m Bob Schmidt with Home Remodel Workshop. Dust control when doing a larger remodeling project is critically important. That’s the single biggest complaint we have from homeowners when we’re doing projects or even recent home owners won’t do the project themselves, it’s because they don’t want that dust and debris to get into their house where they have to live. With a few simple dust control strategies, you can take care of the majority of this problem and make that space as livable as possible. I’ll show you what you need to watch out for. Let’s get to work.

Your single biggest enemy on your remodeling project is going to be your furnace. During heavy episodes of dust, during tear out, drywall hanging, drywall sanding, floor finishing, you need to make sure that that furnace is shut off. But prior to starting your project, you have to have many replacement filters or know the procedure for cleaning your permanent filters and do it frequently. Depending on the size of your project, your cold air return needs to be taken care of. If you have a single room project, generally speaking, you could just cover that cold air return with tape not allowing any air to return from your workspace. But if you have a large area project where if you cover all the cold air returns, it will disrupt the heat and air conditioning in your house, you need pre filter that air before it leaves your workspace heading back to the furnace. A closed door and window policy is a great policy to keep in effect. You want to isolate your air inside your house as much as possible from room to room and from outside to inside. So keep those interior doors and windows and exterior doors closed as much as possible during the project to keep air from doing natural transfer as pressure inside your house changes.

Over aggressive broom sweeping will bring dust up into the air. What you want to use that broom for along with a sweeping compound which will help collect the finer dust while you’re sweeping is to drag the large debris off to go ahead and get the garbage can, but then go ahead and get the shop bag to get the balance of the small debris. Try to keep that stuff on the floor. You want to bring as little of it up into the air as possible. Many construction materials have been designed to control dust. Investigate these products and use them in your project. Whenever possible, use a fan to a direct vent through the outside and try to take any debris out a window the closest possible to your work project instead of carrying it through your house.

Whether you’re the contractor and you’re hiring subcontractors or you’re hiring a contractor who hires their own subcontractors, what you need to do is you need to find the contractor or a subcontractor that sucks. And what that means is that in many different stages of the process such as drywall sanding and hardwood floor sanding, there’s equipment out there available for dust collection. Now, this equipment isn’t cheap and not all subcontractors use it. Ask those questions when hiring this people, “Do you have a dust collection system with your sanding equipment?” And if you at all possible afford it, hire that subcontractor because that will lessen the dust and debris in your house.

This is very important. Don’t have a defeated attitude when it comes to dust control. I hear many homeowners day one on a project say, “That’s it! I’m not going to do any cleaning. I’m calling off the cleaning people. I’m not going to do anything until after this project is complete.” If you adopt that attitude, I guarantee you, you’re living space is going to become nasty before the end of the project. Even if you take all these safeguards in mind, you actually have to keep it in mind, you really need to stay up a little bit more on dust control during your remodeling project to keep it from becoming overwhelmed.

I’m Bob Schmidt with Home Remodel Workshop. I hope you appreciated these few tips and have a great remodeling project. Thanks.