shop vac best practices

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Does anybody use a Dust Deputy with their shop vac?
Inquiring minds want to know......
I made my own from a GM truck turbocharger housing. It does work. But it's heavy and bulky.
I bet Dust Deputy spent more time engineering theirs than me.
While constructing mine, I saw a lot of very favorable reviews on the Deputy.
 
Got my shop vac bags today. They have a ziplock package that they come in now. Kinda fancy.

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Nice ! I save the dog food zip bags for open bags of floor patch.

I like supporting the local Ace, but darn those Amazon numbers are substantially lower.

I was all about supporting local until I moved to the boonies and I would go to a store looking for whatever and they wouldn’t have it. Sure they could order it but then again so could I and I’d save money as well as not have to make a return trip to pick the item up. Nothing is close in the boonies so the return trip matters more than the price savings. It was at that point I had to accept the fact that Amazon was going to be in my life.

If you stop and think about it Amazon is just the modern day Sears.
 
I was all about supporting local until I moved to the boonies and I would go to a store looking for whatever and they wouldn’t have it. Sure they could order it but then again so could I and I’d save money as well as not have to make a return trip to pick the item up. Nothing is close in the boonies so the return trip matters more than the price savings. It was at that point I had to accept the fact that Amazon was going to be in my life.

If you stop and think about it Amazon is just the modern day Sears.

We are certainly now in a Walmart/Amazon dominated retail world.

Everything we consider buying is measured against the prices and convenience of using those global corporations.
 
Since I do so little work, it's taken a while since I bought my new shop back, to check out the filter bags.
One came with a vacuum and that's in it now. It survived one carpet job in a rental sucking up dirt staples, and vacuum in the carpet afterwards. I always vacuum behind the tack strip after pulling out the staples, so it got used a lot even though it's just 75-ish yards of carpet. My vac gets used a LOT.
It didn't fill up the bag completely so I'm not sure how long you're supposed to use these before swapping them out.
These are new to me, I've never used one so it'll be a learning curve.
Next time I use the vacuum I'm going to check the temperature of the vacuum outlet where the motor vents itys heat.
I'll check it with 10 or 15 minutes worth of runtime with just the filter on, and then again with the filter and the bag on, to see the difference between the two temperatures.
The vacuum seems to run a little warmer than my last one and I don't know what to blame that on. It could be because I have a bag of filter on or simply because it's a new vacuum and I'm not used to it yet.

That said, my filter looks exactly like yours after vacuuming the floors in a rental while doing a replacement. So far, so good.
Mine are not fancy, coming in a ziplock bag. I bought them when I ordered the vac, maybe 15 bucks for five bags, I can't remember. They weren't expensive or I wouldn't have bought them.
My new 16 gallon Sears vac actually came with a bag, something I've never seen them do before.
Anyway, it's a new experience using bags in the shop back so thank you for bringing the issue to light. Otherwise I doubt if I'd ever tried these.
Thanks for bringing up the topic Mike, I might have gone back to a broom. 😁
 

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I still haven't touched my Dust Deputy yet, and when I do I'm going to do it without the bag inside the vacuum.
I think I'm going to use an old 16 gallon shop vac as a base for the Deputy. It may be a while, I don't have anything coming up but it will certainly be fun to see how it behaves.
 
It works good that way?
I'm thinking of a 16 gallon vac would allow better particulate fallout in a small container.
That said, I'm not a physicist so I'm sure there's stuff going on that I know nothing about. Maybe it's better with the velocity spinning around in a small bucket than in a larger container.
I looked on a Dust Deputy website and they said any container works. I don't see negative reviews on it and it seems to be the top contender for a small volume, relatively portable device.
I haven't even tried attaching it to anything, it's still just like it came packaged.
This seems every day for the last month we've had rain or drizzle or I've been working and just have not found time to mess with it.
 
I just got an idea. A few months ago I bought an endoscope, camera on a stick.
I could drop a light inside two different containers with the deputy attached and stick by camera inside there to see what goes on inside the dust vortex. 🤯
...film at 11:00 they say,
.......I'm not sure yet, what month 😁
If I do make an attempt at this, at the very least, it will show you if size matters. It's a controversial subject I know, but It'll be interesting to finally know the answer. 😁
 
Ridgid does have a filter and vacuum bag combo that’s HEPA rated. Using them doesn’t magically turn your Ridgid shop vac into a true HEPA vac but it’s prolly as close as you’ll get for the money invested.

That setup looks like two 16 gallon Ridgid shop vacs hooked up in parallel that run through two dust deputies hooked up in series. Prolly the most economical way to get 400 CFM, at least on paper, as compared to droppin some coin for a true HEPA vac with that rated capacity.
 
Ridgid does have a filter and vacuum bag combo that’s HEPA rated. Using them doesn’t magically turn your Ridgid shop vac into a true HEPA vac but it’s prolly as close as you’ll get for the money invested.

That setup looks like two 16 gallon Ridgid shop vacs hooked up in parallel that run through two dust deputies hooked up in series. Prolly the most economical way to get 400 CFM, at least on paper, as compared to droppin some coin for a true HEPA vac with that rated capacity.
True HEPA would be when you place all this stuff outside and run long hose inside.
Are there any differences between Craftsman and Rigid other than the color?
 
I put mine outdoors whenever I can, especially when making long seams. My seam sucker is inside in the vacuum is outside. I don't care what the neighbors think because ...they're not my neighbors 😁
 

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