That Tuesday in November turned me around on using a shop vac on creosote

I always swore by brushing and scraping everything by hand, figured vacuuming just stirred up dust and made a mess. But then I got called to a house over in Danville where the flue was packed with that shiny third-stage creosote, and I was there for 6 hours with hand tools alone. My shoulder was killing me, I barely made a dent, and the homeowner was pacing around because she had guests coming. The next morning I drove straight to the supply house and dropped $200 on a decent HEPA vac with a cyclone attachment. First job with it cut my time in half on a similar buildup, and the mess was almost zero. Has anyone else had a specific job that made you change your whole approach to cleaning?

2 comments

2 Comments

henderson.mason11d ago

...the thing is, with that shiny glaze, did you have to switch bits or anything on the vac? I'm wondering if the cyclone just handled it or if you had to stop and clear clogs every few minutes. Because I tried a regular shop vac on that stuff once and it just packed in the hose and killed the suction, so I gave up and went back to scraping.

thea14311d ago

Watched @henderson.mason try this exact setup at a buddy's shop last month. He spent more time cleaning the filter than actually vacuuming, ended up just dumping the whole thing in the trash and buying a regular dust collector.