What do you use your vacuum for besides the floor?

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I use the attachments for draperies and furniture as well as to dust baseboards and window sills

Reply to
Vox Humana

Hi ggg

I use mine for all kinds of things!

Placing pillows and cushions inside of plastic bags and sucking them down flat and then letting fresh air back into them, plumps them up and makes them smell nice and fresh again.

Using a secondary collection bucket inline or a piece of nylon hose across the tube tube joints, makes the vacuum work to pick up for example spilled beads. The nylon hose across the tube joint keeps them from making it into the vacuum.

You can dry a kitchen floor after mopping fairly quickly using the blower side of the vacuum.

Odd things you can do is build a vacuum box to hold large mouth balloons open in order to put a stuffed animal or silk flower arrangement inside of the balloon.

Tricky, but it can be used to clear out your sinuses also!

Changing light bulbs in high fixtures without using a ladder can be easily accomplished using a vacuum hose and wands with the rubber edged upholstery brush, most of the time you don't even need the vacuum itself, just the wand and attachment.

I could list several other more elaborate usages, but they wouldn't apply to most folks. Planting seeds, spreading fertilizer, packaging, moving heavy items, etc.

TTUL Gary

Reply to
Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr.

Really? How very interesting Gary. Please tell all.

I was a little confused on this one until I realised that the 'hose' is not the vacuum hose but a stocking. I think that's the case Gary dear? I do snip tights and elastic band the toe over the pipe to pick up little things that I've dropped.

A long time ago I had a vacuum that blowed through a hole in the back where the hose could be fitted if required.

Interesting. I can't quite picture this

I can't picture this either! Oh no! How awfully yucky. Please say it's not true

I wish I'd kept my old Vax. It was so handy for lots of jobs like cleaning drains and sucking up spills and cleaning out my fish tank.

Reply to
Mrs Bonk

Shakespearian actors always adjust theirs before appearing on stage.

Good way to coat the wet kitchen floor with dust.

I don't think Gary needs a vacuum to spread fertilizer.

Reply to
Barbecue Bob

message

You wicked man!

Reply to
Mrs Bonk

"Mrs Bonk" verbositized:

I have an old 2 lb Folgers plasti-can from the year they tried packaging coffee in them. I cut two round holes in the top and installed shop-vac fittings into the holes. The outlet hole has a screen on it, and for the intake I have a very lightweight clear plastic hose about 3 feet long with a wide bladelike attachment. Looks like a crevice tool only about 5 times wider at the tip. It works great for picking up all kinds of dropped things, and being clear plastic, you can see when it picks up that lost earring or whatever. I initially made the device when my son knocked over a large size pail of BBs in the garage over a gridlike floor.

Someone pointed out getting dust on the clean kitchen floor. I keep a set of wands and short cheap swimming pool hose just for using the blower feature of the vacuum. In addition, I had a step daughter who was allergic to everything, so when we vacuumed her room, we used the hose on the blower side from the vacuum to the bedroom window, so that particulates that pass through the vacuum filter would blow outside.

It's just a closed box about a foot square with a 4 inch diameter hole at the top and a metal ring about 4-1/2 inches in diameter. Special wide mouth balloons are made for putting stuffed animals inside the balloon. The metal ring is slipped inside the balloon first then pulled up to hold the neck of the balloon open. The balloon is placed inside the vacuum box with the neck and ring sitting on top of the box, the vacuum is turned on and the balloon blows itself up inside the box. Often the stuffed animal is affixed to a plastic disk, but I rarely use this method, just drop the stuffed animal into the balloon and tie the neck shut. Pop out the metal ring, lift the lid off the box and remove the air filled balloon with the stuffed animal inside.

When you get a runny nose that seems to eminate from behind the eyeballs, try it sometime. Use your hand and a hankie as the safety release so you don't suck your eyeballs through your sinuses and into the vacuum cleaner, hi hi.....

That's where having an empty container with a couple of holes in it like mentioned above comes in handy. They also make squeege head vacuum attachments to help get ALL the water up. If you can find an old plastic water bottle like the kind for water coolers, most vacuum hoses will fit the top tight enough, sometimes with a few turns of electrical tape to make it larger and fit snugger. Then all you need to do is make a hole in the side near the top the size of whatever plastic hose you can come up with. You can glue a PVC 90 degree 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inch plumbers elbow into the hole in the side with the inlet pointing downward and to this you can attach most size hoses using various plumbing fittings and clamps.

I do liquid product packaging as a sideline. Over the years I have built a filling machine to fill the bottles, which can now do 12 bottles at once. However, you still have to pick up the empty bottles from the box, set them in the racks, then remove them when filled. To make these two steps quick and easy, I took a 1-1/4 inch PVC pipe, drilled 12 holes in the side and affixed suction cups to the side of the pipe. A hole was drilled into each suction cup in the center. I use a foot switch to turn on the vacuum and just lay the pipe with the suction cups facing downward into the box of bottles, the vacuum holds the bottles to the suction cups while I transfer 12 of them at once to the filling rack. I have a trigger to a flap on the pipe to break the vacuum rather than turning off the vacuum while transferring bottles to and from the filling racks.

I've also been working on something else, using blowing air instead of pegs to align the caps for the bottles in the right direction for the capper. My old home brew machine for setting caps in the right direction was simply just pegs along a dowel rod, caps in the right direction would stay on the pegs, all others would just fall off. This worked great when we were loading the capper by hand. I even came up with a vacuum wand similar to the one mentioned above to pick the caps from the pegs and set them in the capper rack. Trouble is, I got a new capping machine that uses a cylinder feed instead of a rack feed so my old system would not work, unless you loaded the caps by hand. Having them in the right direction did save time, but I wanted it a little more automated. So, using the blower side of the vacuum I have this little jet nozzle that blows against the caps. By adjusting the distance from the home brew cap lifter to the air jet, caps the wrong way catch air and blow off the lifter, caps facing the right way stay in the slot. It helps that the caps are top heavy, being dispenser caps. My little home brew lifting device looks sorta like a ferris wheel, but instead of seats has short 3/4 inch long pieces of PVC pipe that are cut in half lengthwise forming a trough. These are screwed to the edge of a round piece of plywood forming the wheel. Only about 3 inches of the edge of this wheel sticks into a hopper and as it turns it picks up caps in the pieces of pipe screwed to the side of the wheel. The wheel turns fairly slow and passes the jet of air which blows off caps not facing the right way back into the hopper. As the pipe holding the cap reaches the top, a piece of coathanger placed at an angle across the pipe slides the cap out of its seat and into the capper cylinder. The only thing I haven't quite worked out yet is how to flip the caps back into the hopper if the cylinder is full, but I'm close. I affixed the piece of coat hanger to a door hinge so it won't bend if the cylinder is full, instead it just moves back out of the way. And on the floor I have a bucket that catches the unused lids as they fall out of their seat as the wheel makes it's rotation. This has been working OK, and I think if I install a couple of cups on the side of the wheel, it could pick up the caps and dump them back into the hopper.

That's what I meant by I use the vacuum cleaner for a lot of things that wouldn't normally be used by most folks.

TTUL Gary

Reply to
Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr.

Past the nozzle, would the air flow in the hose be fast enough to life BBs? Did you ever hear of magnets?

Why would you stockpile a large pail of BBs in your garage? Are you afraid the FBI will storm your house? What are you hiding?

What's a gridlike floor? Did you mean griddlelike? Do you make pancakes in your garage?

Someone whose name is well known to discerning diners. If you won't plug me, I won't plug your House of Garage Floor Pancakes.

With a good mop and wringer, a kitchen floor should dry in minutes. If you need air, a fan will move a larger volume for 2% of the electricity of a vacuum.

Did it ever occur to you that her allergies were caused by stress, such as the constant noise of drying a kitchen floor with a vacuum cleaner?

Do you remember to check the bag for gray matter? I suppose if it occurred to you at all, you'd forget.

You must be a troll from alt.vacuum.repair. Any droplets that get into a regular vacuum cleaner are likely to be harmful. Wet-or-dry vacs and carpet cleaners are designed to do that without all your jury rigging. My carpet cleaner has a cannister eighteen inches in diameter, which means it would be a lot easier to find a missing item in debris and dust than it would be with your coffee cannister.

I though you Knoxville folk put your liquid product in milk jugs. That explains why you stockpile BBs. You're expecting a raid by the ATF, aren't you?

Speaking of raids, readers know that if they raid their refrigerator and find it empty, they can come on down to Barbecue Bob's.

Reply to
Barbecue Bob

Clever, clever, man! I hope you've patented your idea. I can see a use for this in industry. My, what an asset to this group you are!

Reply to
Mrs Bonk

Barbecue Bob verbositized:

I don't know about the lifespan of BBs, but BBs come in all different types for different usages. The low end BBs used in most airguns are steel often with a copper coating. The could be picked up by a magnet! But lead BBs with a Teflon coating as used in professional air-charged target rifles cannot be picked up with a magnet as the material of construction is non-ferrous. The velocity of air in a small diameter vacuum hose to a collection container is more than sufficient to lift the lead spheres.

That's the ONLY way they come, in a 25lb pail, which is about the size of a 3lb oleo tub.

Gridlike as I said! The work area of my garage is covered with a number of interlocking cushion pads of a grid type design. Beats standing on hard concrete. I chose the grid design rather than the solid top design because things like sawdust fall between the cracks and you don't track dirt and sawdust into the house on your shoes. And with the vacuums I do have, it's easier to keep clean than using a broom on concrete.

Well, I didn't want to disclose that we stored your food by products, delivered by the humane society, in the corner of our garage where the waste lead pellets are stockpiled.

True! But I've never figured out how to get the motor started on a mop. So I just dump a cup of water with a teaspoon of bleach on the doggie piddle, vacuum it up with the squeege then blow the spot the rest of the way dry with the hose at the other end of the vacuum.

Doubt that, she had the allergies already when I got her at 7 years old. She considered her room a safe haven most of the time. About the only place she could go where allergies didn't bother her.

So that's WHERE it went!

All of my vacuums except one are of the shop vac variety (not the brand), I still don't like water getting into them though.

Since moving, I'm working at a disadvantage. I have not installed all the amenities I had at my old home yet. Such as two central vacuums, compressed air to crafts room, garage, and even the den. Oxygen lines to bedroom, den, bathroom and kitchen areas were in my old home. Kept tubing from being all over the place.

Actually, I'm a born and raised St. Louisan, just moved to Knoxville a little over a year ago. In any case, down here they use the good old fashioned jugs with a large ear for the thumb. The Moon Shines East and the Moon Shines West, but me Great Grandpappy made the Moonshine BEST!

They wouldn't find it EMPTY if you hadn't cobbed all of their green science experiments from it.

TTUL Gary

Reply to
Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr.

"Mrs Bonk" verbositized:

Thanks! But don't tell anyone I've cobbed their already patented ideas, hi hi.....

TTUL Gary

Reply to
Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr.

Mrs Bonk should make sure the hankie is damp so she washes every trace of brown off her nose.

Reply to
Sweep

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