Dust in your pump room seems like a small inconvenience when you factor in all the other issues you can run into from chemical storage to gas boilers, but dust can present hazards and hassles from downright dangerous, to costly and inconvenient.
The first thing we need to know about dust is that it is everywhere and it can be made of about anything. So how dangerous can a bit of dust be right? So, I went to the Firefighters Insider website and this is what they have to say:
“Most types of dust are flammable, though it will depend on the type of dust. Due to the extremely high ratio between the surface area of the particles and their total volume (because dust particles are so small), it is often very easy to get dust to burn, even when the material is not otherwise very flammable”
Dust has been the cause of one of the biggest mine explosions in history (China 1952) with 1500 miners dead and grain storage silos have self-ignited (Kansas City 1919) a number of times.
Well, you ask, what has this to do with my mechanical room?
This blog does not suggest that you should be concerned about a deadly explosion, but you should be concerned about the dust you have accumulating in the mechanical room. If the Firefighters Insider has validity you might want to be concerned about exposed wiring, and junction boxes.
As a supplier of chemistry controllers and other microprocessor based equipment, we have seen the damage that dust, over time, can cause with sophisticated electronic parts, which can cause down time and costly repairs.
I am not suggesting that you start to wear white gloves, but I do recommend that you keep your pump room and equipment as dust free as possible, venting to the outside is smart on many fronts and a clean pump room allows for efficient operation on many fronts.
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