I would not do it. Dust collection systems for wood are a potential fire hazard if not made for that purpose. Wood dust is highly explosive. Cabinet shops have spark detection and fire suppression systems in their dust collection systems. I would get a dust collector made for wood and use that, not a household vac system

Thanks, Tom. I appreciate the caution, and certainly don't want to burn my house down!

I have both in my house. Central vacs have high velocity and low volume and smaller pipes. Dust collectors typically should have higher volume and larger pipes. If you could be certain about collecting ONLY dust, you might be OK, but what if you draw in small pieces of wood? They could clog your central vac and then you'd have a big problem.

There have been many discussions about how flammable/explosive wood dust is. Extensive studies by engineers have found almost no evidence of fires or explosions from dust collection in small shops. Large shops create much more dust and use systems that are much larger, which allow dust to stay suspended in the airstream longer.

My persosal opinion (Take that for what its worth) is that there is no chance you'll burn your house down, but I don't think the central vac is a good choice. Even a shop vac is a better idea.

Don

Most residential vac's use pvc piping. PVC piping creates much more static electric than metal duct work. If you have ever used a shop vac with plastic hoses to suck saw dust from say a table saw, you probably received a static electric shock. Commerically once in a while PVC is used but they also install a spark arrestor and grounding appratus. I have seen small shops have fires from dust collectors, in fact, much more often than large shops. Large shops again use spark arrestors in the systems. This detects sparks and extinguishes them before they can flame. This is SOP for large systems.
There is probably a larger chance of a fire in a residence using a residential central vac for dust collection than in the large shops, because of the safety equipment installed in those systems. Fire supprestion systems are standard.

Well then, if the wood dust could ignite when using a central vac, couldn't it also catch fire if using one of those fabric dust collection bags that install on the chute??