Dust is a big issue… probably the biggest issue people have with restoring their floors. Coming home to a thick layer of dust on and in everything in your home is a daunting thought. Dust on your walls, in your curtains, throughout your cupboards, in your duct work. How does that sound?Until recently, this was part and parcel with having your floors sanded. I’m guessing you don’t really want that hassle.
Why Is There So Much Dust?
The basic answer is that the sanding machines we use are not properly designed to contain the wood dust that is being removed.As the floor is sanded, the dust is collected in a cloth bag tied to the belt sanding machine. This works to collect the bulk of the heavy sawdust. But unfortunately, it’s not very effective at collecting all the super fine dust that escapes. The same with the edgers, which are even less effective at keeping the dust in its small bag.When these bags are emptied, and they need to be regularly, transferring the dust into a big plastic bag causes a huge cloud of micro dust.Other sanding machines, like the buffer, don’t even have a collection bag. You can imagine the mess they make. This micro dust gets into the air and covers absolutely everything, resulting in the mess that so many people associate with hardwood floor restorations.
Why It’s an Issue
Apart from the huge mess to clean up, more concerning is that almost all sanding dust is extremely toxic. The top layer we are removing is basically old chemical filled coatings that were applied decades ago. Who knows what’s in them. I’m sure you don’t want you or your family and pets to be breathing that concoction in.It also effects the quality of the finished result, as any stray dust or debris can land in the final coat and cause lumps and bumps which is also not wanted.
Recent Advancements
For many decades, there was no real answer to this dust issue. Basically, if you wanted to restore your wood floors, you put up with the dust. Yes, you could put up plastic to seal off rooms, but if you were refinishing your entire home, that didn’t help much. You could vacuum up and wipe things down, but that didn’t help if dust entered your duct system, or got into your curtains or closets full of clothing.Thankfully in recent years there have been huge advancements made in dust containment systems. Now you can hook up specialty vacuum systems to the machines and retrofit sanding machines with dust containment skirts to contain up to 97-98% of the dust created. As they are sealed contained units, they greatly reduce airborne dust.
Dustless System
Over the years, as these advancements came out, we researched, experimented with and tested numerous systems. Finally, we have found a great system that is portable, quiet and extremely effective.It has completely changed the condition we leave our clients homes in. The comparison between the old dinosaur way of using cloth bags (that many businesses still use) and our new system is like night and day. We love it and you will too.
