Furniture, Wood and Cabinetry Finishing - Good Vacuum Cleaner for Lead Paint Abatement?

I'm soon to be stripping and re-finishng the trim in a turn-of-the-century house, and I want to make sure I handle the clean up safely and properly.

All the door and window casings are dead-flat in this house, so I'll probably scrape as much as I can before I resort to paint stripper and steel wool... And with all that scraping I'll generate a ton of SUPER LETHAL lead paint chips.

What's a good model and brand of shop vac or vac I can use that will safely vacuum all this stuff up without redistributing the lead dust into the house? I've heard that a standard consumer vac with a hepa-filter is not sufficient to do the job.

Thanks in advance.

-Fu22

fu22ba55,

I believe most of the experts would suggest to go ahead and use the strippers(paste) first. Using a stripper would contain the lead paint and not put it airborne. Paste stripper to hold and allow dwell time and a plastic putty knife will not gouge the wood.

Most medium to large shop vacs only have pleated paper filters,
but they are all strong enough for most jobs.

fred

i watched a progarm on the tube, i believe it was "this old house"
where they were stripping a fireplace.

they would apply the stripper and then used a material to cover the stripper. it kept the stripper from drying out and then they just pulled off the material. sorry dont remember what the material was they layed over the stripper.

i wonder if simply using a couple layers of newspaper would work.

when i have flat cabinet door fronts that are painted i will apply the stripper to the back side and then the front on the first door, then i lay it to the side and start on the next door front which i lay on top of the first one. when i have applied the stripper to all i go back to the first door and pull a putty knife towards me, thereby scrapping the paint off without gouging.
doing it this way keeps the stripper from drying out and keeps it working untill you scrap the paint off.

its quite messy.

It seems to me that a filter that is rated to some standard, would be the same as any other filter rated to the same standard. Otherwise, the standard would be meaningless.

I use a shop-vac with a hepa rated filter to vacuum all manner of fine dust.

i have a porter cable random orbit sander that has a small dust collector.

i took off the dust collector and duct taped an old vaccum hose to it that just fit over the discharge tube. then i duct taped that hose to the larger hose of my shope vac. it really keeps the dust down. still i wear my half mask when sanding.

there are many web sites regarding this subject (lead removal), try a google search.

for the home owner it seems that using stripper is best for dust probs.

still you have to sand , so?

Thanks for all the tips.

I was going to try to scrape as much as possible, just because it's often quicker and all the moldings in the house are dead flat. I wouldn't attempt scraping otherwise.

I used to stip furniture for a living, so I'm pretty handy with both stripper and scraper. As long as the scraper stays sharp and you go with the grain you can make pretty good time. I will wind up sanding afterwards anyway...

All the reading-up I did on lead abatement (after it said "don't do it yourself") said that vacuuming can often re-distribute the lead unless you have the right vacuum. I guess a really high-end shop vac with a hepa filter is the way to go?

Thanks