Rutlands 20 Litre Stainless Steel Wet & Dry Vacuum

[MCB]

I've just bought one of these Wet & Dry Vacuum cleaners from Rutlands.

The Instructions are pretty pathetic and don't help me put it together. Can anybody advise please?

Also, can anybody tell me, please, if there's an alternative source of bags?
The bags seem the same sort of price as the bags for the cleaners sold by Screwfix - but buying there would NOT incur a hefty postage charge.

With best wishes and thanks.

MC

 

[DiscoStu]

I can't help with either questions directly but I can suggest using a cyclone such as a dust mite or dust deputy and then you'll only need one bag ever year or so. I use a Karcher wet and dry vac (probably very similar) and it doesn't have bags but I don't need to empty it because my cyclone takes nearly 100% of the waste.


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[MCB]

I can't help with either questions directly but I can suggest using a cyclone such as a dust mite or dust deputy and then you'll only need one bag ever year or so. I use a Karcher wet and dry vac (probably very similar) and it doesn't have bags but I don't need to empty it because my cyclone takes nearly 100% of the waste.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

I've considered a cyclone but unfortunately do NOT have sufficient space in my shed

With best wishes and thanks again.

MC

 

[Eric The Viking]

There are quite a few vendors out there online.

I've got a Lidl "Parkside 1500 B3" which is nominally 30 litres (the motor and filter block takes up a lot of that space!). I couldn't easily find bags deep enough to rest on the bottom of the cylinder. That's a nuisance if you're sucking up building rubble ("Who, me? Surely not, officer."), as the too-short bag gets heavy, sags, and tears apart at the fitting, making a right mess, clogging the drum filter and coating the motor parts with crud.

Of course this has never happened to me, officer.

I was cursing this, and muttering in our vacuum shop round the corner (yes, really). They 'couldn't' order the right bag, so I got some online from Germany at around two quid each -- flamin' Nora!

Meanwhile someone, shamefully, I can't remember who, gently suggested I was ignoring the bloomin' obvious: Put something in the bottom of the drum for the too-small bags to sit on, to take the weight.

The pre-production version was some wadded-up bubble wrap. Worked just fine but got all cruddy, which it then 'shared' everywhere come bag-changing time. So now I have three slices of floorboard offcuts, stacked up in the bottom. They're neat, reasonably clean (you can knock off most of the crud from them inside the drum if you ever need to take them out), and I'm back to using really cheap bags again. The capacity loss is quite unimportant in practice, as they get changed when the suction begins to drop off noticeably and the motor pitch gets too high.

I'll take a pic later if I get a sec, but honestly: measure diameter of drum, get floorboard & large compass, take down to bandsaw, 5 minutes of freehand cutting (for the practice), job done. You _don't_ want a complete disc - it isn't necessary, and a slice of floorboard with rounded ends is much easier to fit in and remove if you have to.

I was even too lazy to use a hand-powered coping saw. Just don't tell the hand tools section!

E.

PS: Yours is probably really similar to mine, so if you're never planning to use the wet suction feature, dismantle the filter cage and remove the cut-off float, as it vastly improves the airflow and the motor runs a bit cooler too. It's a good idea to put a notice on the machine, too, just in case someone else tries to use it wet. I have kept the float handy just in case (and also labelled!), but I doubt it will ever get used.

 

[MCB]

There are quite a few vendors out there online.

I was cursing this, and muttering in our vacuum shop round the corner (yes, really). They 'couldn't' order the right bag, so I got some online from Germany at around two quid each -- flamin' Nora!

Buying by Mail Order doesn't overcome the problem of high postage costs. And how can one be sure that the bags will fit?

Meanwhile someone, shamefully, I can't remember who, gently suggested I was ignoring the bloomin' obvious: Put something in the bottom of the drum for the too-small bags to sit on, to take the weight.

The pre-production version was some wadded-up bubble wrap. Worked just fine but got all cruddy, which it then 'shared' everywhere come bag-changing time. So now I have three slices of floorboard offcuts, stacked up in the bottom. They're neat, reasonably clean (you can knock off most of the crud from them inside the drum if you ever need to take them out), and I'm back to using really cheap bags again. The capacity loss is quite unimportant in practice, as they get changed when the suction begins to drop off noticeably and the motor pitch gets too high.

I'll take a pic later if I get a sec, but honestly: measure diameter of drum, get floorboard & large compass, take down to bandsaw, 5 minutes of freehand cutting (for the practice), job done. You _don't_ want a complete disc - it isn't necessary, and a slice of floorboard with rounded ends is much easier to fit in and remove if you have to.

I don't understand why there should be crud inside if one is using a bag.
I actually don't have any offcuts of floorboard but expect that I can make something suitable from offcuts

PS: Yours is probably really similar to mine, so if you're never planning to use the wet suction feature, dismantle the filter cage and remove the cut-off float, as it vastly improves the airflow and the motor runs a bit cooler too. It's a good idea to put a notice on the machine, too, just in case someone else tries to use it wet. I have kept the float handy just in case (and also labelled!), but I doubt it will ever get used.

I'll bear that in mind, Thank you

MC Black

 

[Eric The Viking]

I don't understand why there should be crud inside if one is using a bag.

Give it time... ;-)

I actually don't have any offcuts of floorboard but expect that I can make something suitable from offcuts

I'm tempted to say, 'it absolutely has to be floorboards' but heck - bricks would do, probably, but it'd be a bit heavy - anything to raise the 'floor' so the bag is supported at the bottom: you almost certainly won't miss the extra capacity, unless you're only using it for large-ish shavings, in which case a bag probably isn't necessary anyway.

I have an Earlex in the workshop for shavings, which uses an almost identical filter to the Parkside one, and I use it without a bag. It does need the filter to be "deep-cleaned"* quite often, and to be disassembled to clean the impellor blades. When working MDF in particular, it's alarming what gets through all the filters to end up either in the motor or shoved back out again. But surprisingly the same is true of softwood, especially if sanding it (as I've been doing a lot recently). Very fine but quite 'sticky' dust is produced, that has to be religiously cleaned off fan blades, etc. It makes the noise of the motor change, to the point it gets offensively loud and harsh (I probably leave it too long!).

E.

*Scrubbed in the valleys with a soft-bristle brush, either dustpan-type or a cheap paintbrush, then blown through from the inside with the vacuum hose, until there's no visible dust created when the outside is brushed. All done out of doors allowing the dust to move away downwind. If I was any sort of professional I'd need a much better solution, obviously.

 

[MCB]

I don't understand why there should be crud inside if one is using a bag.

Give it time... ;-)

I actually don't have any offcuts of floorboard but expect that I can make something suitable from offcuts

I'm tempted to say, 'it absolutely has to be floorboards' but heck - bricks would do, probably, but it'd be a bit heavy - anything to raise the 'floor' so the bag is supported at the bottom: you almost certainly won't miss the extra capacity, unless you're only using it for large-ish shavings, in which case a bag probably isn't necessary anyway.

I've used the cleaner once now and am very disappointed.

There's almost as much dust loose in the drum as in the bag and the hose repeatedly became blocked even though I was only trying to pick up shavings around 2 or 3 mm long.

It seems to me that using the bag is a waste of time but the blockages are a real pain.

The shape of the handle on the end of the hose means that one can't drop a broom handle through to clear any blockages.

MCB

 

[banjerbill]

A clue to the poor quality.

" I bought from Rutlands" :shock:

Bill

 

[MCB]

A clue to the poor quality.

" I bought from Rutlands" :shock:

Bill

To be fair, I've bought other things from Rutlands in the past and been satisfied with them.

However, I'm NOT happy with the Wet & Dry cleaner and will have to move my dissatisfaction forward on Monday.

MC

 

[Eric The Viking]

Before you pile into Rutlands (heck, I'm no apologist for them!), you might just double-check the bag was fitted properly:

On every drum-style machine I've had up until now (Numatic, my modded Earlex, Gnat, etc.), the bag just slides over the spigot for the hose, and a bit of elastic forms the seal. The Parkside one, though, has a small ridge/ring around the spigot, near the side of the can. It feels like you've fitted the bag properly, but actually you have to make sure the rubber seal slides right over this (you can feel it quite well when it does), in order for it to stay in place.

I think it's because the spigot tapers more than the Numatic ones do. The first bag I fitted in the Parkside (Lidl), I didn't push it on far enough and it came loose after a week or so. Not completely, but enough to leak a lot of crud into the drum.