HP or suction needs? Dry suction shop vac

JHZR2

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One of my garage buildings has a lot of old dust in it. Probably rodent droppings, pollen, who knows what else. I don’t want to use my home vacs because i want something to keep there.

I have a big and small festool hepa vac, a ridgid 14gal 6hp, a ridgid smaller different shape 5hp, and some shop vacs that I use for wet duty. I don’t know that any one is really better than any other. For just picking up dust and sand, how much suction is enough? I may want to vac leaves and dirt from car carpet, but I can use a different vac for that task too.

So the key is that I want low cost high quality bags, as small a unit as possible, with as much suction as possible.

What’s the right mix?

Low cost quality bags, and small are key, since it’s mainly for vacuuming floors.

I don’t want anything close to a 12-16 gal vac. Way too big. I want to easily carry this around.

Recommendations??
 
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Pneumatic vacuum? Very portable. Only problem with this is you need air and have two hoses to drag around. I don't know if they use bags. They make different configurations of these.

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When I was working with energetic materials, one of the other engineers needed some non-sparking vacuums. He purchased four of these. Very portable. I don't recall if they used bags but I assume liner bags could be used. The only problem with them was the horrendous noise.

Took him months to find an exhaust muffler that would silence but not hinder air flow. The plastic filters looked like oversized 40T10 bulbs. The filter portion was porous like an AC, GF455 fuel filter.

If you have rodent droppings, I would be hesitant to use a vacuum because of turd dust.
 
Pneumatic vacuum? Very portable. Only problem with this is you need air and have two hoses to drag around. I don't know if they use bags. They make different configurations of these.

b01009ac7c3e2d2a2418d459a1fd0791.jpg


When I was working with energetic materials, one of the other engineers needed some non-sparking vacuums. He purchased four of these. Very portable. I don't recall if they used bags but I assume liner bags could be used. The only problem with them was the horrendous noise.

Took him months to find an exhaust muffler that would silence but not hinder air flow. The plastic filters looked like oversized 40T10 bulbs. The filter portion was porous like an AC, GF455 fuel filter.

If you have rodent droppings, I would be hesitant to use a vacuum because of turd dust.

No pneumatics or fancy things, just a basic vac.

I have swept and will continue to do the big things. Essentially it’s at least 30 years of dust, but possibly up to 100 in there… I can only speculate that there is junk from rodents because I’ve seen acorns and whatnot in there, though I’ve never seen signs of anything active, and I’ve set traps.

My Festool vacs are HEPA. So that’s an option. But so would be a dedicated shop vac with bag and HEPA filter, which is my preferred route. And thus the balance of suction and flow…
 
5 gallon shop vac…

 
Note that there are two bags for the 5 gallon versions, a regular bag, 3 to a pack, and a high efficiency, two to a pack…


 
I think the claw is the best accessory you can buy…

 
These NaceCare/Henry vacs are supposed to be good quality HEPA vacs and made in the UK. Compact size and decent motor specs. Tank may not be big enough for your needs though, but I thought the compact size might be worthwhile.


For that money I’ll just use one of my festool hepa extractors.
 
5 gallon shop vac…

But that’s only 2hp. Kind of my point. If I want a superior bag and a better filter, that restricts flow…

At which point Is assume I want more hp.

The ridgid 4 gal 5hp seems like a good option. Of course the HP numbers are all false anyway, so it’s all about inches of water and cfm I guess.
 
The HP ratings on universal motors are a joke. Use for comparison, not performance.

Clean Stream makes a Gore-Tex filter for just about every shop style vacuum out there. About $35. HEPA performance.

Get a shop vacuum you like for size, throw a Clean Stream in it, clean up the unknown dust.

 
The HP ratings on universal motors are a joke. Use for comparison, not performance.

Clean Stream makes a Gore-Tex filter for just about every shop style vacuum out there. About $35. HEPA performance.

Get a shop vacuum you like for size, throw a Clean Stream in it, clean up the unknown dust.

Correct. Cfm and water lift are the better metrics, along side hood old amps.

Generally these scale with the faux-hp values.
 
got a new 14 gal ridgid, better suction + quieter than my very old 12 gal ridgid the recently died, but my fav filters clean stream -gore technology are hard to find unlike when they were on the shelves of home depot etc. no dust gets thru + suck up water + snow from the garage floor without changing anything!! washable + long lasting making the higher cost worth it IMO. searching will reveal many brands are made by the same manufacturer, common these days!
 
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