Quiet Shop Vac

[Mark Jerde]

Guess I'm going to have to look for a shop vac that doesn't scream

> like a banshee and doesn't fall out of its wheels whenever I move it.

I have a Sears shop vac and it doubles as a leaf blower. Take the motor off, put an extension and a nozzle on the output, and it works ok for piling up leaves.

When the motor is out, pushing leaves around, it is quite quiet. When it is on the plastic "kettle drum" vacuum base it is as loud as hell. Therefore I suspect "sonic coupling" between the motor and the drum, which could be overcome by good design.

I bought a .1 micron (?) bag and started work on a replacement base for my shop vac, one in which the motor would be sonically separate from the base. I quit working on it because I'm space-challenged in my one-car garage shop. I just wear hearing protectors when using the shop vac and so far no neighbors have complained.

But my experiments make me think this could be a much quieter shop vac. - Remove the motor. Hang it from strings from the ceiling. - Run a 4" dust collector hose from the shop vac motor to the base. Seal both ends well.

Through proper design this "acoustic separation" between motor and drum could be achieved in shop vacs which would look very much like common designs.

Thoughts?

-- Mark

[bridger]

worth pursuing.

[Vic Baron]

You can buy a muffler for it - about $30 as I recall. Makes it really quiet. Check Rockler.

Vic

[Mark Jerde]

I have one and it helps, but IMHO (perhaps) not as much as getting the motor separate from the drum.

-- Mark

[Leon]

I wonder if it is the location or, the strain of having to blow through a filter. I have that vacuum also and it seems to get louder as the canister fills or the filter plugs. With the motor off there is very little resistance. Put you hand over the suction side some time and see how much louder the motor gets.

[Robert Bonomi]

There are at least two things going on. 1) you're _outside_ -- no walls for the noise to reflect off of. 2) the drum _does_ act as an 'echo chamber'.

Design consideration: 4" is _way_ too *small*. duct the _full_size_ of the 'suck' opening on the motor assembly. You want the linear rate of air-flow to be _as_slow_as_possible_. The slower the air flow, the more cr*p that drops out into the drum.

I've got a Rigid 12 gal, "5HP" (snicker), vac. At least the one I have is _amazingly_ quiet, for critters of it's type. *NONE* of the typical high-frequency 'screaming'. Rigid makes a 'muffler', circa $15, which I _do_ have, but it doesn't make any appreciable difference on _this_ unit. The mufflers _do_ tend to be fairly effective on 'screamer' units. Wish I could figure out how to put it on my 'wall hanger' Shop-Vac. That thing is noisier than a jointer under load!

The other thing that is _very_ useful, I've found, is an 'extension' hose (or 2). My 'shop' is *very* cramped quarters, and I really _don't_ have the room to wheel that 12 gal vac around. With the extension hoses, I can leave the unit in the closet, just run the plug out to an outlet, turn it on, and reach the entire room w/o having to move the vac. The contortions one goes through, when the 'shop' is the spare bedroom in a condo! :)

[Cox West]

ShopVac Brand Shop Vacs are very quiet.

I have a Craftsman.. never again.

Dave

[mac davis]

but wouldn't a muffler work by changing to air pattern? does the vac (can't believe I'm asking this) still suck as well?

[Robert Bonomi]

At leat with my Rigid, it changes the air pattern "only a little bit".

Basically, it splits the air-flow along different length paths, and then re-mixes. The re-mix results in the sound waves being 'out of phase', and cancelling.

The 'suckiness' is, for all practical purposes, unchanged.

[Rick Frazier]

Mark:

If you want to have quiet, and still vacuum your shop, perhaps it's time for a decent Dust Collector... A large enough dust collector, plumbed with appropriate tubing (ok, so I used PVC and haven't experienced any problems with explosions yet, check your favorite search engine for the diatribes for and against) will provide quite a lot of "suck power", much like a portable shopVac, but infinitely more quiet... I have my DC located in a separate shed attached to my workshop, and have to have a light that indicates when it's on, so I remember to turn it off ( the air compressor too, as the compressor starting at 3am wakes the wife, and you know how that goes)... As I leave the shop each night, I look for the lights, and if nothing's on, it's ok, it's time to leave.

DCs are very quiet compared to the typical shop vac, and it's an easy task to provide extra "outlets" where you can plug in a typical 2 1/2" shopvac hose to do your vacuuming...

Thanks

--Rick

Mark Jerde wrote:

[Steven P]

How did you achieve your indicator lights? I have my compressor in the garage and have it plumbed into the basement. I put it on a three-way circuit so that I could turn it on from either location. I wanted to set up indicator lights but didn't really take the time to work it all out.

Steve P.

[Daniel H]

Have you listened to vacuums used in hotels? They are very quiet compared to any "Quiet Super Power" Shop Vac.

I th> From abpw:

[Robert Bonomi]

It's trivial. just wire up a light fixture to to the same wiring that goes to the compressor motor. (*before* the compressor pressure limit-switch, of course. :)

The light will be on if power is 'available' to the compressor.

If you want the indicator light _by_the_switches_, that's a more complex issue.

[Mark Jerde]

Thanks. It's sometimes unusual to get encouragement in today's world. ;-)

-- Mark

[Mark Jerde]

My Craftsperson has a little less suction with the muffler, but the noise reduction is worth it.

-- Mark

[Mark Jerde]

On my Sears vac the motor snaps into the lid of the canister, right over the filter. It's sucking air from the canister through a hole maybe only 2" in diameter. A 4" hose is more than big enough, if all I'm trying to do is put some distance between the canister and motor.

I'll keep that in mind if I ever manage to break this Sears vac. ;-)

Ouch. You probably don't do much with 4'x8' sheet goods. ;-)

-- Mark

[Mark Jerde]

I had not noticed that, but I'll be listening for it in the future.

My shop vac also gets used for vacuuming the house. We have a Norwegian Elkhound, a dog that looks like a 9/10ths scale Husky. He sheds piles of hair 11 1/2 months of the year. His long hair plugs up standard "home" vacs, and it doesn't take long to fill the vac's tub with a nasty mixture of hair and sawdust. ;-)

-- Mark

[Mark Jerde]

I have one of those too. (Sometimes I think I'm more of a "tool and clamp collector" than a "woodworker." ) I use the DC on the jointer & planer. My router table and table saw predate the DC and the shop vac works reasonably well on both. I also use the shop vac for general shop clean up -- it's not going to get a nail in the impeller.

My DC is a fairly small two-bagger, one upper and one lower. (My shop is

110v only.) The DC works great on the jointer and planer but I'm underwhelmed by its dust collection when choked down to shop vac size hosing. The shop vac just gets more dust through shop vac sized hose than does the DC.

-- Mark

[Mark Jerde]

Thanks.

-- Mark

[Mark Jerde]

No, I'm not familiar with hotel vacs specifically. However during one of my "financially challenging" times (c. 1984) I did have a 2nd job as an evening janitor. I helped clean a bank and a grocery store while most folks were piling up z's. ("See that toilet? I'll bet the bank VP took a dump there today.") At that time there seemed to be just three differences between our commercial Kirby vacs and the Kirby vacs my mother and mother-in-law had. 1. (Perhaps) More suction. 2. A much longer cord. 3. A higher quality bag, a bag that did not require an internal paper bag. We emptied these commercial Kirbys by removing the bag and shaking it in the dumpster.

It didn't seem to be any quieter...

-- Mark