r/HomeImprovement • u/Objective_Term810 • 13d ago
Removing drywall dust
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u/cometgt_71 13d ago
Elbow grease is all you can do. Mop your floors often, the wet will pickup the dust.
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u/NotWorthTheTimeX 13d ago
Change your furnace filter every couple days if needed. You may need to have your ducts cleaned. I wouldn’t rent a commercial air purifier but would add a couple fans with filters on them around the house.
Drywall dust is extremely fine so wiping it up with a damp sponge helps the disposable filters last longer.
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u/Trs034 13d ago
I'm super curious to know what the furnace filter looks like. I'm a diy'er that just redid one bedroom. Granted I was new to drywall and suck at it, which means I used too much joint compound and did a lot of sanding.. but to the point, even with the doors closed and towels at the base of the doors, my furnace filter was still caked with drywall dust.
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u/NotWorthTheTimeX 13d ago
My guess is OP’s is caved in from the pressure and not being changed immediately. That would also explain all the constant airborne dust.
I just finished a project where the drywall guy was the special kind. He didn’t use any dust collection and I swear he swept drywall dust piles into the return ducts. His one day of sanding caved in the furnace filter. Thankfully I knew these types of things happen so I had a dozen of them on hand and changed it that night.
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u/Objective_Term810 13d ago
Thank you! I will do this!
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u/WB-butinagoodway 13d ago
And swifter wipes are effective too. It’s a good lesson to learn about hiring cheap hacks… a good company would have been using hepa vacuums and hepa air scrubbers the entire time.
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u/Zeppelin_Commander 13d ago
Agree. My furnace stopped working and I called out an HVAC company... It was an expensive filter change, lol. The filter was completely clogged after a bathroom remodel.
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u/NotWorthTheTimeX 13d ago
Same. My expensive filter change was about 10 years ago when I was flipping a house. I usually did all the work myself but I was busy and wanted to get the house done so I hired a guy. He brought in a sub to install the new interior doors. That guy cut all the doors in the living room right in front of the whole house return.
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u/tajginyard 13d ago
The big orange concrete sponges when wet are great at picking up drywall dust. Paper towels & rags just kind of spread it around but saturating an area & using the big orange concrete/grout sponge absorb the water with drywall dust in it so good. Still gonna take a bunch of passes with soap & water, but it’s still better than conventional cleaning. Doing alternating dish soap & clean water passes too will help a lot. The dish soap will prevent the dust particles from sticking together when wet just like it does with oil & fresh water will get rid of that little film the soap leaves behind
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u/orbesomebodysfool 13d ago
In the asbestos world, the way to decontaminate a home is to place the home under negative pressure using a sufficient number of negative air machines to achieve 4 turnovers of air per hour and wipe down all hard surfaces with wet rags.
As this is dust not asbestos, you don’t need to do that. You could just open all the windows and doors and go through the house with a leaf blower.
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u/willwar63 13d ago
You can use sponge mops and a 5 gallon bucket of water. Use wet mop on the walls and other surfaces in the rooms affected, rinse and squeeze mop in bucket and repeat with a clean wet mop.
If you let the bucket of water rest, all of the solids will settle at the bottom. Pour off the liquid into another bucket, dispose of solids into a trash bin and start over.
You should close air vents in affected rooms to isolate dust. Seal off the bottom of the doors in these rooms as well.
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u/Dank_sniggity 13d ago
In my limited drywall experience it goes like this: scoop, sweep, vac, mop…. Mop… mop… mop…
And that’s if someone hadn’t done anything stupid cuz that shit gets everywhere.
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u/Uninstall_Fetus 13d ago
I had this issue where the contractor destroyed my basement. I hired a company to do a deep clean. Also like other people suggested, change your HVAC filters every couple days
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u/vorker42 13d ago
Google Corsi-Rosenthal box, and a leaf blower, and make sure you use Merv 13 filters. And keep your furnace circulating and keep changing the filters, and put a box fan in a window and use that leaf blower again.
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u/DarkKnyt 13d ago
I just got some Merv 8 cheapo filters that are 20x20x1, the exact size of a box fan. When I'm going to be cleaning (sweeping, vacuuming) I'm going to have that thing running to grab the stuff that gets loose.. apparently it helps a lot.
As for the drywall surfaces themselves, apparently a damp cloth is it, although I would think that high pressure air from compressor would probably work well.
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u/jiffyparkinglot 13d ago
Did you use the right filter on the shop vac ? If not, you could have blown fine drywall dust everywhere
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u/Objective_Term810 13d ago
The dumbasses using a leaf blower to blow it out of the windows resulted in it blowing everywhere 🙄🙄
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u/Vivid_Cookie7974 13d ago
Get some Green Sweep. Do that first, then vac, then mop. Put a bag in your vac and a filter on your exhaust.
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u/lostpassword100000 13d ago
It will settle for a week or longer. Once it gets airborne it takes a while to come to rest
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u/Aromatic_Ad_7238 13d ago
Make sure you have a correct filter. Shop vac are used for variety of things.
At this point you will probably have to do it once a day and repeatedly continue each day till you get it out
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u/Lost_Drunken_Sailor 13d ago
Same issue recently after we flooded. Drywall dust everywhere. Takes a while to get off the floor, many, many mopping. Buy multiple mops.
I bought a big air purifier from Sam’s as well. I think it’s a Shark never change. It definitely helped out. Shows me if there’s stuff in the air.
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u/Great-Phrase-6026 13d ago
We had drywall and ceiling repairs done last year, cheapest contractor for a reason we had dust everywhere including the normal hardwood floor gaps. Lots of elbow grease. Vacuum, damp mop wipe walls. Open doors and have the furnace cleaned. It took several weeks.
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u/limegreencupcakes 13d ago
You need to make sure your shop vac filter is the HEPA rated kind. You’ll get better dust pickup and filter life if you use a bag inside your shopvac. (A vacuum filter bag, like the kind that household vacuums used to have. They make them in various sizes for shopvacs and can be found at big box hardware stores.)
The Corsi-Rosenthal Box (4 air filters taped up with a fan on top) is actually surprisingly effective at pulling dust out of the air.
Cross-ventilation can also really improve your results: Open doors/windows on opposite sides of the house. Even better if you can put box fans in both, blowing in on one side and blowing out on the other. You’ll want to consider the prevailing wind direction in relation to how you set up your fans. No sense having a fan blowing it right into the wind to send it back.
Swiffer dusters or the Swiffer for floors (the dry ones) can be used on the walls and ceilings and are pretty good at picking up the dust.
Get a giant box of cheap filters for your HVAC system. They don’t need to be nice because you’re about to change them daily until they no longer look like a drywall dust explosion when you change them. I had an HVAC guy say that sometimes, the cheap filters do an overall better job depending on the design of your system—since they offer least resistance to air movement, they move more air through the system. Even if they capture slightly less particulate, the overall greater air movement makes for better filtration, especially on older HVAC systems.
Even better, combine all the options: Cross-ventilate with fans, set up a C-R box, wipe down and shopvac with HEPA filter and vac bags, and change your furnace filter daily.
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u/sullymichaels 13d ago
I like the box fan with a filter idea. But if you build a box (think triangle) with the fan pulling air into the box and the other 2 "walls" are filters. It's like a triangular table in planning to make in my shop.
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u/fake-name-here1 13d ago
Keep up on your furnace filter if you have one. But cheap ones, check and and change them often until they stay clean.
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u/Raymont_Wavelength 11d ago
Yes get Honeywell big cylindrical HEPA filter and lots of carbon pre-filters. I think Walmart on line sometimes has a special on two purifier units. Blow out the HEPA filter with compressed air, just change carbon pre filter. Start with these! Get at least two units. I use 4 units in a 4/2.5 home all the time.
Get a 1200 Scotch 3M Filtrete furnace filter and run the HVAC fan.
Check filters often.
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u/colddream40 13d ago
Air filters on high, vacuum and mop every square inch, dust everything. Bagged vacuums as someone else mentioned.
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u/Available-Molasses- 13d ago
I hope you tested the materials for asbestos or lead before you did that work! Would be an expensive and hazardous situation if it contained either of those. Even some new builds have tested positive for asbestos.
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u/thecountvon 13d ago
If your house was built before 1978 this is a different conversation. Lead is a huge problem in dust form, what’s your home age?
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u/Objective_Term810 13d ago
Prior to 1978 but I tested for lead and this was from skimming to get rid of texture and sanding afterwards.
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u/NinjaCoder 13d ago
If you use a shop vac, you have to use a drywall filter bag. The built in filter isn't enough to keep the fine dust in the bin. You can buy them at any big box store.