Static while vacuuming mill room

[Woolsocks]

We use a big Shop Vac to vacuum excess grain dust out of our mill room. We've had some static electricity issues on the shop vac hose itself, which are obviously a safety issue when dealing with explosive dust. Is there an alternative Shop Vac hose that doesn't create static, or some other way to eliminate this?

[TGTimm]

Oh, man....

Google "dust explosion". What your shop vac is doing can be much worse than just nasty shocks.

There are "explosion-proof" shop vacs, but the cost is astronomical. A better approach is a dust-collection system, which catches the dust at the point of origin. Be sure that everything that moves grain, grist, or dust is very well grounded!

Use brooms, wet rags, etc. for cleaning the mill room. With a decent dust collection system (search around this forum for some ideas), costing well less than $1,000, you won't have that much to clean up.

The potential for damage, injury, and death from dust explosions is no joke. Don't take the chance.

[dberg]

As Timm pointed out, they are expensive. But here's a link if you are interested

[TGTimm]

And here's one with the price listed: http://www.grainger.com/category/cri...%3Db%26ssf%3D3

Just the price of a fair-sized new fermenter... and check out the accessories....

[TGTimm]

Oh, yeah--here's a link to the post showing our mill room dust collection system. Works great, cost less than $1,000 including labor: http://discussions.probrewer.com/sho...451#post131451