Exhaust fumes in building

I'm looking at a project where I may need to put a crane in a building for a couple weeks. Crane is powered by a 6bt cummins, will be running around 8 hours a day. Building is approximately 300' long, 100' wide, 60-70' tall. There are small walk doors on each side of the building, no roof openings. One opening just big enough to get the crane through.

Will have workers in the upper portions of the building, and I'm worried about exhaust build up close to the roof.

Crane will be probably 100-150' from any of the walk doors. I'm thinking 4-5-6" pvc, laid across the floor, short flex to the engine, and a fan mounted to the far end, pulling the exhaust, but that's about as far as I've got in my thinking.

Its just so far across the floor, I'm trying to keep it economical, and still easy to move- we will be moving the crane to different locations in the building.

They have been doing some work in the building currently with a small zero turn excavator, with no ventilation, but there's no one up in the ceiling right now.

When I'm in there, there will be guys up next to the roof, working with the crane. Its a really big space, but if its not windy out, its going to get smoky in there, and I'm afraid just a fan on the floor isn't going to clear out the ceiling area.

Ideas?

On mini excavators we can put scrubbers on them and it makes it to where we can work in a hospital but that's on like a 1 litre motor I bet its spendy for a scrubber that size

What if you get about 20 to 30 feet of flex pipe the size of your exhaust and the attach that to something like 6 inch corrugated plastic line that comes in rolls it's easy to move

Look at what the tractor and truck pullers use for their indoor runs I would think you could down size that to work fairly easily

I think you and AZ are on the right track, rubber flexpipe(if you can find it) from exhaust to a roll of plastic coil pipe. That coil pipe would be easily moved and isn't gonna cost an arm and a leg. Probably could attach the end to a fan with a piece of plywood and some sheet metal screws.

I'd get some of this stuff, attach it to the exhaust of the biggest squirrel cage furnace blower you have around, and get 10-20' of flex exhaust pipe to attach to tailpipe, then fed into one side of the blower. The other side is extra air to keep from melting the plastic, hopefully.


https://loyal-roth.com/products/silo-accessories/clean-chute-tube.php

https://www.acehardware.com/departm...V0sDACh1luQs3EAQYASABEgLERfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

100' of drain tile, $64. That's about right. How much/ long of a metal or rubber flex would I have to have to keep from melting the tile? Metal flex is kinda spendy.

This stuff handles 375 degrees, maybe a chunk of it 20' or so first?

https://www.amazon.com/Garage-Exhaust-Flare-Lok-Rubber-Black/dp/B005QP99V0

For the fan maybe try to find one the telephone guys use down in the hole? The ones I’ve seen move some air.

You can

Junkyard said:

For the fan maybe try to find one the telephone guys use down in the hole? The ones I’ve seen move some air.

Click to expand...

rent them at the trench safety places... united rentals... to name one.

I don't think the crane exhaust is even going to get warm, if you leave the suck end of the pipe open and just slide the flex from the engine into it loosely the dilution with room air should keep the plastic cool enough.

You know them fancy new SCR engines can run all day in a closed building with no issues

In the olden days we had another solution called "propane", a whole lot cheaper and less troublesome.

A few years back I was in a pressurised environment with a crane, there was a metal flex around 10" to a barrel, which was then vented outside via a 6 inch hard wall pipe. The barrel got plenty hot, and that was mainly idling all day.

If you don't think it will get the pipe hot just get a small section and try it we use our mini's exhaust to 'welt' all kinds if piping and it only takes a few minutes, is very handy for softening PE,HDPE,PVC,etc... for getting some flex to it for making installs go super easy

Ronsii said:

If you don't think it will get the pipe hot just get a small section and try it we use our mini's exhaust to 'welt' all kinds if piping and it only takes a few minutes, is very handy for softening PE,HDPE,PVC,etc... for getting some flex to it for making installs go super easy

Click to expand...

I mean if you take like a 2" metal flex and feed it into a 4" or bigger plastic pipe with a blower sucking at the other end all the room air mixed in is going to keep temperature to a manageable level. I would not directly feed engine exhaust into a plastic pipe with no mixed air. Also the many feet of metal is going to give up a lot of heat before it reaches the plastic.

Yeah, diffusing the heated air will work good as there is a lot of btu's in that exhaust.

Like mentioned, get a roll of corrugated plastic, and a squirrel cage fan.

See if there is a welder rental outfit that has a portable fume extractor like the Marley Power Cat. Hose is spark resistant and good to 300 deg's. from what I could find. A confined space blower is another option and an industrial hose supplier should have the spark resistant hose. They make portable vehicle exhaust extractors but I don't know if you can rent them.

https://www.marleymep.com/system/files/node/file/field-file//zbl-mpcbl_1.pdf

https://www.ducting.com/industrial-exhaust-hose/fume-exhaust

https://monoxivent.com/products/portable-eliminator

Maybe this, too. Monitor at floor and ceiling.

I run a lawn mower engine at idle through 5’ of 1 1/2” metal flex into 4” black plastic flex drain line.
Metal line gets too hot to touch, plastic gets warm (had a hole melt by where where exhaust entered plastic but straightened flow and hasn’t happened again)

Big exhaust fan sucking out bad air out one door and another sucking good air in from opposite end of building. If not making steady picks shut machine off when not in use.

6" roll of solid HDPE - we use it all the time, it's cheap and easy to move around.

I bought this gas powered manhole blower for laying sanitary sewer, on long runs you need to move the air in the pipe in order to keep the laser on target.

https://www.majorsafety.com/product...0OBp0_4e2ScPO04prN9pS5r0bGYr-T7caArREEALw_wcB

Went with the gas powered version due to working where there is no electricity. They make electric ones as well. Hook up your 6" HDPE to the fan and suck the exhaust out of the building.

Expense it all to this job and charge for it again on the next one - profit center.