Does Dust Control drywall compound work?
The short answer (in my experience) it’s not. I used it a couple of times when it first came out about a decade ago and I haven’t used it since because I just don’t find that it saves me any time or money.
The dust does indeed fall mostly straight down. On some of the older boxes and buckets, they used to say 70 percent less airborne dust and I do believe that’s true most of it does fall. But here’s the rub that other 30 % still creates pretty much just as much mess as you had to deal with before. If you have to protect your job site from dust even 30 percent of dust is still too much dust in a customer’s house.
Basically, you still have to do the same amount of work for dust protection whether you’re using Dust Control or regular mud. That is my experience is why this stuff isn’t worth it because it doesn’t save me any work.
I’ve also found that when sanding this mud that it tends to clump up in the sanding pad and make your sanding go slower. What’s the benefit in that I’m going to be spending a little more time sanding anyways and possibly not doing as good a job because it’s getting all clumped up.