Chuck52
Veteran Member
I decided I needed a new, bigger and quieter Shop Vac to help me clean up my basement. Over a year ago, I had foundation work done that involved drilling holes every 10 feet along my 60 foot basement wall for helical supports. Though they used water cooled drills to cut down on the dust, and though they did some clean up afterwards, I still ended up with fine concrete dust all over the basement, which is about 60x30, plus a 12x12 root cellar. I also had quite a bit of dust from work I did on some dry wall down there, and sawdust, and just general tracked-in dirt, cobwebs, etc. All-in-all a very dusty mess. My old 5gal ShopVac with it's standard filter, just blew the fine stuff back into the air and made it basically dangerous to even try to vacuum it up. Plus it would deafen you to use it in an enclosed space.
I get "miles" on my credit card, which I usually cash in for gift cards, so I got myself some Home Despot cards and bought a new 14 gal Rigid vac in the new quieter design. It came with a blue canister filter which is a step up from the standard white one for general use. I think it goes down to about 1 micron. There's a more expensive pink HEPA filter that goes down to 0.3 microns, but the salesman said he had vacuumed dry wall dust with his blue filter and it did fine. He was right. I can't see any haze down there after vacuuming for a good while, but I sure need to shake out the filter every once in a while. It gets full of the dust and slows down the air flow.
I've got most of the stuff that will come up without scraping....some of the dry wall and concrete dust got wet and are now dry hard spots. But I was thinking I might wet the whole floor down and use the vacuum to suck up the dirty water. You're supposed to remove the canister filter for that, but they do have a "GoreTex" filter, too. It can be used wet or dry. I think it was over #30 for that thing. Since I bet it would cut down on the mist while vacuuming wet, I'm thinking of getting one. Anyone tried those things?
Chuck
I get "miles" on my credit card, which I usually cash in for gift cards, so I got myself some Home Despot cards and bought a new 14 gal Rigid vac in the new quieter design. It came with a blue canister filter which is a step up from the standard white one for general use. I think it goes down to about 1 micron. There's a more expensive pink HEPA filter that goes down to 0.3 microns, but the salesman said he had vacuumed dry wall dust with his blue filter and it did fine. He was right. I can't see any haze down there after vacuuming for a good while, but I sure need to shake out the filter every once in a while. It gets full of the dust and slows down the air flow.
I've got most of the stuff that will come up without scraping....some of the dry wall and concrete dust got wet and are now dry hard spots. But I was thinking I might wet the whole floor down and use the vacuum to suck up the dirty water. You're supposed to remove the canister filter for that, but they do have a "GoreTex" filter, too. It can be used wet or dry. I think it was over #30 for that thing. Since I bet it would cut down on the mist while vacuuming wet, I'm thinking of getting one. Anyone tried those things?
Chuck
