There Are at Least 101 Uses for My Shop Vacuum!

I have used shop vacuums at home and work for so many years that I have come to the conclusion that this is one of mans greatest inventions ever. You can use a shop vacuum to do so many projects around the house, some of which most people would never have thought of. Here is my first in a series list of the many uses I have for my shop vacuum.

1) Removing bees from walls, and ground hives.

This bee thing has happened to me twice, once there was a hive in the wall next to moms chimney, and another time the yellow jackets had taken over a mole hill in the yard. These guys were swarming me while cutting the grass. I also helped a friend remove two colonies last year, one in the corner of their porch under vinyl siding, and another in the grass on front lawn.

2) Removing water from toilet tank and bowl in an emergency repair situation.

When you have a toilet that is broken and the water level will not go down, there is a better way to empty it than the bucket brigade, that is with a shop vacuum. You just need to make sure the ball float in the vacuum is set to wet duty and not dry. Nothing worse than having an overfilled shop vacuum that does not know when to shut itself down.

3) Removing water from flooded basement, this job is made easier with the shop vacuum model that has a pump built in.

My small half basement floods occasionally in the spring due to snow melt and rain, and the safest thing I find when it is time to remove the water is to set the shop vacuum up on the steps leading to basement, turn the switch on and then plug the unit in from the top of the steps. The water never goes over a fraction of an inch, but the idea of standing in it while turning on electrical equipment is not my idea of a fun time.

4) picking up broken glass so that people do not get cut by handling it.

I dropped an entire box of glassware in the back room, and the shards were everywhere. The shop vacuum does a great job of finding even the smallest particles of glass. You just have to be patient and take your time.

5) emergency skimmer to remove debris from your swimming pool.

If your pool skimmer breaks and you need something to use right now I am here to tell you that any shop vacuum rated for wet operation is going to help you save the day. Just remember to be patient and have it pick up the leaves and not the water.

6) Removing debris from under the hood of your stored car once the chipmunks have found it.

Occasionally we have a car stored while it is either being worked on, or it's final disposition has not been determined yet. The trouble with living in the woods is that there is stiff competition for available living space. The chipmunks love to live under the hood of a car that is sitting around for more than a few weeks. A shop vacuum will pick up all the little bits of nuts seeds and debris that they leave behind.

All things considered the shop vacuum I own is one of my more reliable tools, and I find new ways to use it every time I tackle a new project. There is nothing more exhilarating than discovering a new use for an old tool. Some of the most interesting solutions that I have ever come up with have been under fire.

One word about mixing the wastes that you pick up with your shop vacuum is that if you intend to keep the debris separate then you will need to clean out the shop vacuum every time you use it. Once I cleaned up a cat litter pile that was used to soak up some oil that was spilled, and forgot to clean out and went to suck up some wet debris and the two merged into such a sticky mess that it took an hour to clean up the shop vacuum.

I will pretty much use my shop vacuum for anything that a regular vacuum is too small to handle. Warning, never use a plastic shop vacuum on anything hot; they sell metal bodied vacuums for that kind of job.

Mother in law once cleaned out a recently fired wood burner with the house vacuum then went to bed; dad woke up to a house full of smoke and a vacuum on fire!