I’m having a new bathroom installed, and therefore got my studio gear wrapped up in plastic covers for protection against building dust.
Still, a thin layer of concrete dust is visible on everything under the covers! For some reason I can’t figure out, the shit penetrated my plastic fortress and stuck itself to all my hardware synths and… surprise: even inside the computer case. Right on the motherboard, the harddrives – all of it is covered with this shit. A very tiny layer, just enough to be visible if I angle a flashlight on it, maybe 0.1 millimeters thick. Being highly adhesive (due to corrosion), unlike regular dust, it’s also difficult to remove it with compressed air. Now I fear the computer might short-circuit at some point.
It will “help” things to overheat more easily, to cause bearings to stick and wear down sooner, etc. Generally speaking, it is the enemy of electronics and anything with moving parts
It’s usually electrostatic charge that attracts dust more than anything else, so, first disable the power to all of your devices, then do your best to discharge any static that remains, and just really go to work with your compressed air, duster clothes, etc, etc.
Short circuiting is quite unlikely (in my experience), but the wear and tear this crap can put on your equipment is definitely quite serious if you do not take care of it.
I just spent from Nov 1 until Mar 1 this year renovating our house. I ate concrete, drywall and general mold dust for 4 months straight. Only a thin layer of dust? That’s my dream! =)
The only advice I can give you is to turn the furnace fan off so it doesn’t blow through the house, and cover the heat ducts in your room. As far as the dust goes I think you can use compressed air to blow it out.
It’s only a thin layer of dust (< 0.2 mm) inside the computer (on the circuits), but in the actual rooms that are close to the building area the layer’s thickness is at least 3-4 millimeters. The computers were actually protected by plastic covers, so the thin layer of dust bypassed them somehow (I really don’t get it).
The best shot so far has been to cover all door openings with a special product I bought at Bauhaus called “Wolfcraft Dust Barrier (Tape & Zip Door)”.
I’ve lost a computer due to demolishing a wall, and yes it was covered by plastic, I learned the hard way to put my stuff in another domicile before doing things like this.
