{"id":132,"date":"2005-02-16T15:21:55","date_gmt":"2005-02-16T22:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/?p=132"},"modified":"2010-05-28T02:12:04","modified_gmt":"2010-05-28T09:12:04","slug":"itty-bitty-shopvac-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/2005\/02\/itty-bitty-shopvac-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Itty bitty shopvac review"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of our regular contributors, Kevin, plunked down his own hard-earned dollars for a Ridgid mini shop vac. Sounds like he got a good deal. If you’re in the market, don’t miss this review at american woodworker<\/a> either, which came to pretty much the same conclusion. –dan<\/i>
\nWhen I go to the grocery store I’m often tempted to buy the off brands.
\nI could buy Tide for $14, but the Albertsons house brand is pretty tempting at $7. Sometimes I’ve found a good deal, sometimes you get what you pay for. When it comes to shopvacs, I’ve heard that Fein reigns king but at $300… but I thought I’d look around for an Albertsons brand.
\nAfter perusing online articles I went to the Depot and kicked some shopvac tires. To make a long story short, I came with a Rigid 4 gallon wet dry vac and the hope that my $70 purchase would be
\neverything I wanted. What I wanted was a shop vac that was quiet, small, cheap and filtered fine dust.
\nThe test scenario: Finishing my built-in bookshelves in my living room. I hooked the vac to my orbital sander and slapped on some 220 grit. An hour later here’s the verdict.
\nCheap – Check ($70 is cheap for a shopvac).
\nSmall – Check Plus.
\nQuiet – Check minus. It’s not quiet but you can talk over it. The sander was
\nlouder than the vac. I used earplugs but that was more for the sander than the
\nvac. (Compare this to my last vac, it sounded like a fighter jet)
\nFilters fine dust – Check plus. My hardwood floors will show even the smallest dust
\nand they were are almost spotless.
\nOther notes: So it’s small, so what? My girlfriend has assured me that size doesn’t matter. It’s portable and doesn’t need much storage space. (It even comes with a wall mount). Disadvantages, none really. I’ve always needed to empty my shopvac when the filter gets clogged, not when the vac gets full. Since the filter is a standard size the vac still has to be emptied at the same frequency. I’ve had to clean the filter twice but the vac itself has never come close to filling up.
\nThe hose is 1 7\/8 ” diameter. Somebody should get fired for this. Seriously, fired. There are standard hose sizes for shop vacs and Rigid comes up with a new one? No, that’s not even true, Rigid still uses the standard sizes on all their vacs except for on this one. So far it hasn’t been a problem for me, though. My sander is a Rigid and the hose fit. For vacuuming up loose stuff the hose size doesn’t matter but sometime soon this will bite me. They don’t even provide an adapter.
\nThe hoses are *Great* (other than their non standard size). You get a long hose (12ft?) and shorter hose (8ft). The short hose is amazing. It’s sooo flexible, like a slinky. It stretches, it bends… it’s wonderful.
\nSo, overall I’m happy. Rigid’s ‘professional’ line of shopvacs as a whole looks good. I wouldn’t say this one is better than other shopvacs except for it’s size. Overall, it’s cheap, small, and it holds it’s own in all other categories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came home with a Rigid 4 gallon wet dry vac and the hope that my $70 purchase would be everything I wanted. What I wanted was a shop vac that was quiet, small, cheap and filtered fine dust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-woodworking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}