Need a good vac for demo (old plaster ceilings, asbestos?) and for drywall sanding. Identified two possibilities:
– Fein Turbo II $230 + $75 HEPA filter
– Shop-Vac 5-gal $100 + $19 (!) HEPA filter
Shop-Vac does not have power-on-demand, ok, I’ll learn to turn it on and off. Probably loud, ok I’ve got good ear plugs. Any other reason I should prefer Fein? Suspect Shop-Vac is fine for weekend warrior, but want to make sure before I buy.
Replies
There's a magazine called Tools Of The Trade. I picked one up at the JLC Live show earlier this year. In it they had a tool review of shopvacs in excess of $200. Link to follow. Hopefully.
http://www.toolsofthetrade.net/articles/showarticle.asp?articleid=2092&qu=shop+vac&ct=TOTT
The short story is the Bosch was the favorite, with the PC close behind. ShopVac, btw, was dead last.
Taylor: You won't go wrong with a Fein vac, it will be the last vac you buy. There the quietest on the market place and IMO the best value and longevity of a tool you can get. Also the Fein has two fan motors ,so that the dust from vacuuming will not come out of exhaust when you start up your machine, the second fan is used to cool motor, so less chance of burning out the vac. See link below. Good luck.
http://www.feinus.com/newdustfree/New-955.htm
If you get a vac without power on demand Sears sells a tool activated plug. It turns the vac on at start, off a few seconds after stop. I bought one, used it a year and it failed. I'm hoping I just got a bad one. Since it was only $20 I'm giving it one more chance.
Smile. It could be worse. You could be me working for you.
Just bought my birthday present at HD this past weekend......
Saw an extra attachment there to muffle the sound for $10 but, decided to wait and see how loud the vac was without it. Suprised.... not to bad, tolerable for short trial run, but may consider the muffler when I get the shop setup.
mmm
Also check out McMaster-carr. They have more vacs than you'll know what to do with. They also explain Hepa filters. Watch the cfm ratings and the inches of vacuum pulled. Those numbers tell the real story, not some phony hp numbers.
BTW-I read a tools of the trade article this morning where they picked the Fein as being the favorite.
the fein is definitely fine, but you might be surprised how well a garden variety shop vac works with a goretex 'cleanstream' filter. i have both around here.
also, check out 'aquafilter'(?) on amazon for drywall sanding. it's a complete sanding outfit that runs the vac hose thru a bucket of water to pre-filter it so the vac filter doesn't clog very quickly- in fact, it works so well virtually nothing gets thru to the vac. they're about $50, i think. also capturing the dust while you sand is huge improvement over letting it fall then cleaning it up.
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Thanks all, at the risk of dickless yuppiedom* I might actually go with the Fein....well, we'll see....FYI I read that sticking a HEPA filter on a vac does not make it a HEPA vac, because the rest of the vac will still leak small particles....
* http://www.photo.net/equipment/what-camera-should-I-buy#35mmslr
I use a Shop Vac with the HEPA filter and a drywall bag installed.
Works great.
Jeff