Have you ever had a shop vac do this?

[vacuumman206]

I know it's a somewhat strange topic considering not many people pay attention to shop vacs even in the vacuum collecting scene, but I have the strangest problem with my shop vac. It's a mid 90's shop vac brand 16 gallon. Brought it to a friend's shop to help them with a flood. Took the paper filter out and of course left the foam one in. No less than 3 minutes of running it water was seeping and lightly spraying out the blower/exhaust port. I thought maybe a little water got sucked up into the fan and it would go away. But within a couple minutes of that it was nearly blowing more water out the exhaust than it was sucking up. It does not make sense. It's a wet dry vac that can't do wet pickups. I would almost venture to say it has so much suction that it sucks the water into the fan chamber before it even has a chance to collect in the drum. We had my friend's newer shop vac there and he didn't even have the foam filter in it and it was doing fine.

 

[bvac6]

Ah Ha!

My shop vac, a Dayton branded machine, did the exact same thing to me! There is a reversible "inlet" that a paper bag fits onto that can be changed to dry pickup or wet pickup. For wet pickup that inlet should have the opening facing downward, upward if you are using a paperbag. Sounds silly but it was the whole problem on my machine.

 

[gsheen]

Yep its the inlet deflector. It happens more often than you would think. I have a collection of "shopvacs" but not the actual brand( not available in SA)I love the original metal tank ones.

 

[vacuumman206]

hmmm. I don't believe it has an inlet deflector. Probably fell off at some point so I guess this will continue to be a dry pickup only machine till I find an inlet, however hard that may be!

 

[gsheen]

You can,depending on the size of the tank for space, fit a 90deg pvc 40 or 50 mm water pipe bend. I have done that a few times