Shop Vacuum Question

[CFLBob]

I was going to call this a newbie question, but I'm not really a newbie. Somehow I missed learning anything about this shop vacuum related question.

How do I clean out the hose on the vacuum? I have a 2" Ridgid vacuum with the pretty common 2" flexible hoses. I use both water and oil on my machines (lathe and mill). If water, I usually let it dry out before I vacuum up the chips. I have chips caked up inside the attachments but even worse is chips caked up inside the hose. I can wipe out a narrowed down nozzle, but the hose is noticeably heavy and seems to have metal chips stuck to the tube by the oil. The inside of the vacuum has a bag that I swap out when it's time to clean out the chips.

I don't have anything I could soak it in, or pour into the hose to let it soak, so I'm open to suggestions. A big diameter brush with a super long handle?

 

[user 284]

I'll have to assume you have the almost standard corrugated type plastic hose that makes it flexible? If so, that's where the issue will be trying to pull or push anything through it and clean the residue at the bottoms of those corrugation grooves. Even a brush if you can find one large enough in diameter isn't going to remove the oil film on the inside of the hose, so it will start to collect and create the same issues in a short time. If it were me, I think I'd just take the hose to your local self serve car wash that has those wands, spend $1.00, then take 5 minutes blowing the hot soapy water through it. It might not come out like brand new, but that will remove most of it. There is a few manufacturers around who make aftermarket shop vac hoses with a smooth inside bore, with those, then just sucking a balled up rag through it once in awhile should keep it clean enough. Do a search for smooth bore shop vac hose and you'll get lots of hits.

 

[CFLBob]

If it were me, I think I'd just take the hose to your local self serve car wash that has those wands, spend $1.00, then take 5 minutes blowing the hot soapy water through it.

Bingo! Thanks, Pete. Never thought of that. I looked at hose brushes on Home Depot's webpage and they're like $27 for a kit to get started. An experiment for a buck or two sounds like a good idea.

It is a corrugated flexible hose and I've vacuumed up enough of the blue paper shop towels to know they aren't enough.

 

[Richard Hed]

Bingo! Thanks, Pete. Never thought of that. I looked at hose brushes on Home Depot's webpage and they're like $27 for a kit to get started. An experiment for a buck or two sounds like a good idea.

It is a corrugated flexible hose and I've vacuumed up enough of the blue paper shop towels to know they aren't enough.

wallyworld has brushes on a stick in the household cleaning area. the brushes are long enough that you can twist them up and then turn them inside the hose.

 

[stanstocker]

As dumb as it sounds, I've had pretty good results laying the connected hose on a table top with the vac running and drumming along the length with a pair of one inch or so dowels. Not perfect, but it seems to get the crud the break up a bit and the airflow can get under the hunks of crud and suck them into the canister.

I like the car wash idea quite a bit, once Pete wrote it like many good ideas it seems so obvious. Wonder why it's only obvious after reading it and not during all these years fooling with dirty vac hoses!

 

[CFLBob]

As dumb as it sounds, I've had pretty good results laying the connected hose on a table top with the vac running and drumming along the length with a pair of one inch or so dowels.

I noticed that the hose would lose chunks of that swarf when I dropped the hose, so I tried repeatedly dropping it. I never tried a more disciplined way of doing it like you describe. Maybe that's why it never seemed to be really successful.

That said, Iike the car wash idea. The hose is 6' long and I have two - one is far dirtier than the other. I could put the two of them in plastic garbage can and take them to the self-serve car was a couple of miles from home. Garbage can to keep them from dropping crap in the car.

The dryer vent brushes I was looking at seems like it might work. It has 12' of brush extensions. I'd use a drill to turn it. I'm just not sure it would be reusable. It would have to be cleaned after use.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/EASTMAN-Lint-Wizard-Large-Duct-Dryer-Vent-Cleaning-Kit-60768/315232986

 

[ShopShoe]

I don't know if your hose is short enough, but I have used a broom handle. I also have one of those cleaning gizmos that combines garden hose water with compressed air and detergent that is way short of a real power washer, but better than the garden hose nozzle spray.

I also have a garden sprayer that is never used in the garden that I use to apply detergents, bleach, etc. to objects that will be cleaned by other steps in a process. You can also get wand sprayers from farm supply companies that you can put on the end of a sprayer hose: Some of these are longer than regular garden sprayer wands.

I have also taken garden-hose blank end caps and modified them to create custom nozzles for special needs: See your well-stocked plumbing-supply business.

--ShopShoe

 

[Gordon]

I have always been able to unclog mine by just jamming a rod through it. Once you get a hole through it lets the rest break up.

 

[CFLBob]

I have always been able to unclog mine by just jamming a rod through it. Once you get a hole through it lets the rest break up.

It's not clogged like that. It's just heavy with chips cemented along the walls. It's usable for now.

 

[user 284]

The real ongoing issue with using a shop vac for chip cleaning is the cutting oils and / or coolant most of us use. It starts to dry out on anything it's left on or inside. Look at any manual industrial machine tool that's had long years of use, there usually coated in dried sticky cutting oil, coolant and way lube. Obviously the same is happening with CFLBob's vac hoses. Logically and due to those internal grooves in those cheap blow molded hoses, most mechanical cleaning methods can't really remove what's causing the chips to stick in the first place. You have to use something that will remove the residue, hot soapy water in a car wash will get most of it, but over time it's still going to do the same again. So it's still a pita maintenance item. My shop vac and small air compressor sit outside in a small garden shed that's right outside one of the exterior walls of my shop, mostly so I don't have to listen to them, plus they don't take up any room in my already too small shop. Either can be turned off or on with a simple wall mounted light switch. Then I plumbed the inside perimeter of my shop using a couple of those clear tubing kits meant mostly for wood workers and added hard air lines with multiple connection points. So that gives me a dedicated central vac and air system just for the shop. With those hard line vac kits and since they have smooth internal bores, not much sticks in them so far. But those pipes and fittings are meant to join together with a friction fit, so when / if they need cleaning it's not all that hard to do. For me it's been well worth the few hundred bucks verses the convenience, time and space saving.