A question I”m often asked before I start a job is “How Dusty Will it be?”

In truth you can never say there will be no dust, the floor sanding process creates a lot of dust as does any form of sanding, but machines these days contain most of the dust which is sucked into a bag on the machine by a vacuum created by the belt that spins the drum or a DCS (Dust Care System, basically a huge vacuum) which does eliminate a huge percentage of the dust,

however smaller hand tools such as rotary sanders and corner sanders and even hand sanding creates a small amount, also sloppy operators who let there bags fill far too much before changing them causing the dust to not pass through the machine,can create an unnecessary dusty atmosphere.

On the whole it’s not that epic tale you’ve heard about the dreaded hire sander a colleague or friend once used and filled there whole house with 2 inches of dust, which took weeks to clear and they still eat an occasional particle now! I’ll discuss the perils of hired drum sanders in a later post, but for now, rest assured the dust should be minimal and contained to the room being worked in. If it’s not then ask your contractor why.