how do you prepare dust-free environment?

[q_x]

I'm going to move to small flat (all must fit in 32 square meters). There is alite stove (feed with coil), my girlfriend earns with sewing and we have wooden floor. So there will be *tones* of dust. And me in the middle - coating some carbon ot gum bichromate sheets.
Any good ideas to clear the air? Washing the floor, boiling the water - ok (rather pouring it boiling into trays i think). Anything else I can do?

Cheers,
Luke

 

[numnutz]

my main room I live in is very dusty - I try to avoid dust on cameras, negatives etc. by vacuum cleaning just once per fortnight. When I am doing anything photographic I take care to not disturb any dust so putting it in air circulation.

Most cleaners suck in dust, filter it, catching the large bits and then recirculating the rest in the air. So let the air settle before working. Some people recommend air Ionisers I have tried these they seem to collect dust in their immediate vicinity. This may help.

So I say keep the place as clean as you can but don't disturb any dust that is laying, when its in the air it will want to settle on something.

hope this helps

nn

 

[nworth]

Making a truly dust free environment is extremely difficult. Industry spends millions on a single dust free room and still has problems. A coal fired stove makes your problem especially bad. But you can do some things to minimize the problem. Regular use of a mop on the floor is probably the first step, along with damp dusting of surfaces where dust might collect. Keep things that may be sensitive to dust in sealed containers - e.g. cameras go in closed up camera bags, negatives go in sleeves made for them. Equipment that is left out (scanner, enlarger, etc.) should be covered with plastic or cloth when not in use. A plastic drop cloth can minimize stirring up dust from the floor in your work area - just put it down during your work sessions. Be careful to clean your equipment regularly. Use a soft blower brush to remove dust from negatives before printing. A zippered garment bag makes an excellent dust free drying chamber for either film or prints.

 

[RobC]

There is a theory that if you don't bother to clean then after 4 years it doesn't get any worse. Dust is not a problem if you don't move it about.
The best policy is to have a fan blowing air INTO your space and filter the air coming into the fan. If you have a fan blowing air OUT of your space, then it will suck the dust out of the cracks between the floor boards and the dust in from every crack or air vent in the walls and in under every door and in through every window. i.e. keep your space at a slightly higher pressure than the outside and all the dust will be blown out and not sucked in. And you only have to filter at one point which is the fan.

 

[keithwms]

Steam up the room, go away, come back. Keep the air still after you steam it up. The steam will pull all the dust out of the air and onto the floor/surfaces. Steaming up a darkroom is an old trick used by many for ages. A lower-level verison of this is to get a couple humidifiers or just get a lot of water boiling on the stove. As humidity goes up, dust gets immobilized on surfaces.

In my lab, where steaming up the place isn't an option, and I can't fit my lab equipment under laminar flow workbenches, I made a plexiglas (perspex) mini-cleanroom. That stuff sucks dust to it because it's staticky, it's great. You just wet-wipe periodically. After a few weeks the air inside is very clean.

Air flow is the enemy when you have stuff laid out; I wouldn't use blowers/fans etc. unless you go all out and get a HEPA system and let it run for quite a long while.

 

[q_x]

First of all: thanks, this is really helpful.

nworth:
garment bag - do you mean made of thin foil? I was thinking to make myself something like this to hang, with rings on top and bottom

keith:
How big it is? Or is it just aquarium-like with a kind of lock to prevent new dust from occuring?

Thanks all for advice.
I know that problem is quite obvious, but I'm sure I would not invent all this written above things by myself.

Regards,
Luke

 

[keithwms]

keith:
How big it is? Or is it just aquarium-like with a kind of lock to prevent new dust from occuring?

It's huge, it's a walk-in enclosure that we built with 4x4s. But you can make any size you want.

 

[nworth]

First of all: thanks, this is really helpful.

nworth:
garment bag - do you mean made of thin foil? I was thinking to make myself something like this to hang, with rings on top and bottom

...

Regards,
Luke

Garment bags are protective bags used to keep clothes clean and neat in the closet. They are usually made of plastic or plastic treated fabric. The kind I'm thinking of have fairly rigid rectangular tops and bottoms with a rod to hang the clothes on. In the US, they are fairly common items available in home stores and some clothing outlets. You could probably make something, but these bags are quite inexpensive.

 

[q_x]

Well - if you move every coin is worth a lot. My hobbys always were "El-cheapo", but summer/outumn break (moving, painting, making the furniture with own hands - as we can't afford the new) looks scary. We are actually there between connecting electicity and plumbing, having only walls, floor, celling and stove. However - I know the bags, my girlfriend is sewing a lot, so maybe we could afford two or three to use both for "strategic" clothes (probably with drying paint) and drying films. If you say this is OK, I'll try.