Shop-Vac for *inside* the house?

There is clearly something wrong with my house. It eats vacuum cleaners. I just returned a $599 Oreck (claimed to be the best of the best, and not just by the manufacturer) because it lasted all of 25 minutes in my house.

The salesman took one look at it, and said, "Well, you're clogging it up. That's not the fault of the vacuum!", but he accepted my return anyhow.

Clearly, there is something in my house that renders a residential vacuum cleaner worthless.

I'm thinking of going to something more... industrial. Such as the Shop-Vac Model #925-23-10

http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Vac-9252310-10-Gallon-6-5-Peak-Industrial/dp/B00018ALIC

10 gallons, 6.5 peak hp. But the hose is only 1.25" diameter, and I'm afraid it will clog up, too.

Does anybody know more about this sort of thing than I do?

Dyson.

Do you live in a cabin with dirt floors

We have had great success with our Dyson

I am amazed with Dyson. Not so much the capabilities, but how much they retain value. I picked a 5 year old Dyson DC14 out of the trash a month ago, cleaned it and put it on Craigslist and it sold in a few hours for $140. Seemed like a solid vacuum but thought I would rather have the cash. Also, their customer service is great.

No luck with Dyson. Their DC41 "Animal" vacuum didn't make it 10 minutes in my house before it clogged and stopped working. 10 minutes for $650 comes out to almost $4,000 per hour. Too rich for my blood.

Yes, their customer service is great. I told them it didn't last 15 minutes before it stopped working, and they gladly accepted my return.

EvanR wrote: No luck with Dyson. Their DC41 "Animal" vacuum didn't make it 10 minutes in my house before it clogged and stopped working. 10 minutes for $650 comes out to almost $4,000 per hour. Too rich for my blood. Yes, their customer service is great. I told them it didn't last 15 minutes before it stopped working, and they gladly accepted my return.

Dude what is on your floor, leafs, assorted fruits and berries.

It takes some skill to clog a Dyson that fast, even with four long hair cats we cannot clog the darn thing.

We bought one off Amazon a couple years ago that received high reviews as the best vacuum for pet hair. It was right around $100-shipped and has done well with 4-cats, 4-teenagers + 1-dog. I don't remember the model, but I can drag it out of the closet & take a look if you'd like.

I bet you dont actually know how to use a vacuum. Or try vacuuming more often than once every decade.

The couple who used to clean our house used a big shop vac. No reason not to. They work great and are darn reliable. I get frustrated using a regular vacuum. None of them have much in the way of, well, vacuum compared to even my crappy Craftsman shop vac.

When the power head died on our household central vac I hooked up my shopvac to the piping and installed a dual voltage relay to allow it to be turned on and off from the hose handle. Worked great and never plugged up. The suction was better than the best central vac power head and it was less than a 1/4 of the cost. If it worked through a central vac system it should work directly. My shopvac has a 2 1/4" hose though.

RossD wrote: I bet you don't actually know how to use a vacuum.

Quite possible. I looked on YouTube for instructional videos, but didn't find any. Are there classes?

RossD wrote: Or try vacuuming more often than once every decade.

I'd love to, I really would. However, I have not yet found a vacuum that would last long enough to even vacuum my house ONCE, much less once a week.

ok.. now we need pics.. I gotta see what your carpet is that eats vacuume cleaners

Are you vacuuming shag without the proper attachments?

Since most car people are good at tinkering and debugging, have you taken a look at what its ? clogging with? This would answer most of your problems I bet.

I see two options.. 1. The carpet is just filthy.. so DO use a shopvac a few times (like, quickly one after another.. who wants to live in that stuff) and THEN you'll be able to use a normal grade vacuum cleaner.

1. Your carpet is disintegrating. Nothing will help. Pull it up and replace it. Who wants to breath that stuff when you walk.

It's not shag, but it could be pretty old. The house was built in 1968, and for all I know, the carpet could be original.

rickr84 wrote: Since most car people are good at tinkering and debugging, have you taken a look at what its ? clogging with? This would answer most of your problems I bet. I see two options.. 1. The carpet is just filthy.. so DO use a shopvac a few times (like, quickly one after another.. who wants to live in that stuff) and THEN you'll be able to use a normal grade vacuum cleaner. 2. Your carpet is disintegrating. Nothing will help. Pull it up and replace it. Who wants to breath that stuff when you walk.

I'll get the Shop-Vac, then. I'm certainly not going to replace carpet in a house I don't own.

I don't know how you're clogging these things up, but a shop vac isn't the solution unless you don't have carpet. You really need the brushes to get the carpet clean, especially if you have hair (pet or human).

asoduk wrote: I don't know how you're clogging these things up, but a shop vac isn't the solution unless you don't have carpet. You really need the brushes to get the carpet clean, especially if you have hair (pet or human).

Hair is precisely what's clogging it up mostly. The stuff that gets jammed in there looks like a combination of hair and dryer lint.

Evans house should be the proving grounds of vacuum cleaners.

I'm all for an indoor shop-vac, but I'd go with this model since it has the mulching attachment you seem to need for your house.

http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Vac-9639000-6-5-Peak-Horsepower-32-Gallon/dp/B0043235NK/ref=sr_1_9?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1358229052&sr=1-9&keywords=vacuum+with+mulching

In all seriousness though, I don't know why people still spend money for really expensive vacuum cleaners like Dyson or Oreck's stuff. It's like some weird household status symbol.

I've used a bunch of the expensive ones, and especially in homes with pet hair, they all seem to surrender equally fast. Then they require more maintenance, filter changes, and they never seem to be as impressive as they were new.

My weapon of choice, whatever the nearly bottom of the line Bissell vacuum cleaner is that Walmart sells, the one that has ALL WASHABLE FILTERS.

The first few times we vacuumed and carpet cleaned our new apartment, we filled up the canister time and time again with leftover dog hair, and it finally warranted a total filter cleaning, which brought the thing back to its as-purchased suction levels.

Now, as long as I field-strip the thing monthly and clean it all out, it performs as well as vacuums ten times the price.

Hope you find a vacuum that REALLY sucks.

Racer1ab wrote: I've used a bunch of the expensive ones, and especially in homes with pet hair, they all seem to surrender equally fast.

When I got my first apartment I got the cheapest Hoover I could get. It was all metal and looked like it was designed in 1958. Looked pretty much like this:

It did weigh quite a bit, but I thought it was great. Pretty much bullet-proof and if something did break you could get parts. I lugged it with me to Memphis and then San Francisco. My wife didn't like it. Out it went and so began a litany of various vacuums, one after another.

I just checked the Hoover site. Of course, there is nothing like that being made anymore. It looked like a throwback when I got it in the early 90s. Shame.

where does it clog up? brush, hose, motor?

i "fixed' a 2 year old upright vacuum cleaner for a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago.. she was getting pissed because it wouldn't pick anything up.. i pulled the cover off and the brush was frozen in place with a bunch of her long hair and the motor had melted thru the belt.. i made her cut her hair off the brush (because, ewww..) and go check to see if it came with a spare belt.. she found a spare belt with the owner's manual, and she was back up and running in no time. she had her ex husband look at it a week earlier, and he told her that it was broken and unfixable because he's an abusive dick that wanted to make her spend money she didn't have on something she didn't need.. she was pretty happy to be able to vacuum again- which seems to be a rare trait to find in a woman these days...

I don't know the answers to very many questions on GRM but I know the answer to this one

I have a lot of experiences with vacuums, the top of the line household ones and the top model shopvacs. The short version is shopvacs!

The long, household vacs are like American cars, if they don't break the manufacturers' won't have a job once everyone buys one. I had a boss that would buy a new top model house vac for his restaurant about every month, he started with the cheapest ones and worked his way up. The servers took turns breaking them routinely, and I in turn had to unclog them. This started my understanding and contempt for the house vac.

Everything inside these vacs that should be metal is plastic, every passage way that should be mandrel bends and straight is snake kinked. The rollers and brushes jam and burn out the motor with long womens' hair wrapped (along with a thousand other things like thread and straws) tighter than emission plumbing in a California only car. The vacuum leaks are worse than a counterfeit ebay made turbo 240sx...

Now the shopvac style vacuum isn't perfect but you suck anything that it will pick up without fear of breaking the thing (maybe not petrol). Some less conventional things which you might not be thinking about includes water and drain clogs/floods, loose change, mice, marbles, gravel, broken glass jars mixed with the condiment of your imagination, pet crap... (Anyone of those things would mean instant death to mr house vac.) Really the shopvac will pick up anything that fits in the hose, get the biggest hose. If it does ever get clogged with something it will most likely be paper or something. When that happens just disconnect the hose take it outside and twirl it around like a lasso. It will make a cool Helmholtz resonance when it's clean. The SV are also cheaper than the HV especially if you shop around, $45 at Lowes will get you some serious vacuum

The downsides of the shopvacs are that hepa filters are hard to come by for them if anyone has allergies to dust (I guess everyone actually has them to dust mites). The suction powered roller brush attachments are also hard to come by, without them cleaning carpet can get annoying getting stuck every couple of feet. And last the shapes of the shopvacs get awkward as most of them are short wide and heavy...ie my wife got sick of hauling the SV up and down the stairs, and they won't sit on one step (extra hose legth helps with this). Last the filters like to dissolve in water, so you have to take them out before you vacuum up say the flooded basement. The instructions might say that but I figure no one reads those.

Do what I did. Get rid of the carpet and replace with hardwoods/tiles

Grtechguy wrote: Do what I did. Get rid of the carpet and replace with hardwoods/tiles

wouldn't it be easier to just bring the air hose in from the garage and blow everything out the door?