Large Shop Vacuum: Tool box tool
28 March 2010
Today I wanted to highlight one of the tools of my Top 10 Most Used Power Tools for Remodeling
the shop vaccuum
(source)
How else are you going to clean up all that mess?
When we first bought our house in Logan we had nothing as far as tools go for cleaning up. We were in the middle of ripping the carpet out of the entire house and had nothing to vacuum up the mess. We asked a friend to borrow a shop vac for a couple of days. I thought that the vacuum that I was about to borrow was going to be powerful and actually helpful. Nope! It was tiny. It was a compact version that I had never seen before. I thought I would give it a shot though. Ten minutes into the clean up I was getting very frustrated. The thing didn not suck! A good vacuum should suck! Right?!
We decided that day to go shopping, afterall we had a whole house to remodel. So, we needed to invest in something bigger and better. We found the perfect match for our needs. A Rigid 12 gallon wet/dry vac is what we decided to purchace.
It works great. The vacuum ACTUALLY works! So well in fact, that I had to re-nail down the floor boards after I vacumed. Just kidding!
It has a lot of strong suction for all those piles of nails, sheetrock scraps, dust, rocks, and water. Yes, water! All you have to do is take out the filter for the dry messes and start sucking up all your wet messes. Spills in the garage, floods in the basement, you name it. It will hold up to 12 gallons of junk if you want it to.
Projects we use it for:
Messes in the garage
Vacuuming the car
Cleaning up demolition
Vacuuming while cutting sheet rock etc. (to keep dust down, one of us will hold the vacuum right below the cut.)
**I haven't tried this, but I plan to I don't have one of those carpet cleaners or steamers, I want to try scrubbing some of my furniture and vacuuming it dry.... I will let you know when I get around to it.
One little TRICK we learned about the filter is to always shake off (outside in your trash can!!!) every time that we dumped it. That way the life span of the filter was extended, the suction stays strong and we could reuse the old one as much as possible. The more clean your filter, the better suction it will have and the longer your motor will last.
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10 comments:
Oh yes! We LOVE the shop vac. Great ideas. I will be curious about how it goes when you vacuum the furniture. Lisa~
We couldn't live without our shop vacs! We have one large one on wheels, one large Hoover GUV that hangs on the wall in our garage - you MUST look that one up - and one mini shop vac that is very portable!
So true. Shop vacs are a must. Larry had a small older one that we use for the car and huge messes. Last weekend, Home Depot had their 9 gallon on sale for $20. Of course he jumped on that sale and bought a better shop vac to replace the older one.
I love our shop-vac. We also use it to dry our motorcycles off after washing them LOL.
Oh and I use it as a 'leaf blower'.
A shop-vac is a must have for any DIYer. I actually have two of them. Once for the shop and then a small compact one for the cars and any small messes that I might make with smaller projects. The one thing I wish I had done for the shop one is to have gotten the biggest one I could. It would have been worth the extra money.
Grover
http://groverwoodworks.blogspot.com
where would we be without a shop vac!? we have 3 sizes for various jobs...they are soooo handy. great tidbit about the filter.
~judi ;)
You just sold me - my husband will be so happy!
We're on our second shop vac in 3 years. We've used ours for dust collection, cleaning the car and even as a pump when our basement was flooding!
I have to say... the shop vac is in my top 3. I even use it to vacuum the leaves out of my flower beds. :)
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