adventures in sawdust

[chhotii]

For some reason, I own a very big industrial-grade wet/dry vac. Why? Did Rich buy this? When?

Anyway, this was very useful when the basement was in the puddle stage. When spring showers brought the seasonal basement puddle in the usual place; when the broken sump pump pipe brought a puddle to a new place; when I wanted to suck water out of the sump pump well to give the repaired pipe a break; sucking lots of water up very effectively is clearly a strength of this wet/dry vac.

Now I need to clean up the room that Kevin was using as a wood-working shop. Kevin left behind a lot of sawdust. I bought a filter for the wet/dry vac this morning. The vacuum works for about 5 minutes, then loses suction until I take the lid off and tap the excess dust off the filter. Not a good design in a vacuum cleaner. Opening up the lid and tapping the filter on the side releases enormous billowing plumes of dust into the air. I resolved that I could not do this until I had returned to Lowe's for a dust mask, for I fear for my health. I went for a walk later, but after inhaling so much dust, I felt kind of short of breath.

I have a really good household vacuum cleaner at home. The home vacuum cleaner does not have this problem. It is good with suction until the bag is filled, and then you take out the bag, no contact with the dust required. Would it kill my vacuum cleaner to deal with copious quantities of sawdust?

Comments

[ceo]

I have two shop vacs and I've never had that problem with either of them. One has a HEPA filter bag and is set up as a dust collector for my woodworking tools, and the other has a big cylindrical pleated filter which I do have to clean when I empty the canister. I stick it way down in the contractor's trash bag I just emptied the canister into, hold it through the plastic from the outside and rattle my fist around the inside of the filter until most of the dust is out.