Armor All 2.5 Gallon, 2 Peak HP, Utility Wet/Dry Vacuum, AA255 Reviews

There are plenty enough reviews of this vacuum, but I think it deserves another just for its ability to clean out wood stoves.

I finally tired of cleaning the ashes out of my pellet stove with a 30 year old Craftsman shopvac. It’s a heavy duty machine, but it’s huge, awkward in the house on its casters, and howls like a Lear Jet taking off. Emptying it is not pretty, either, requiring a shower afterwards, at least.

The Armor All shopvac is exactly right for the job: easy to tote, plenty of suction, a motor sound that doesn’t scare cats on the next ranch over, and maybe most important, easy to clean. The included attachments are also appropriate and handy.

NOTE: for fireplace ashes and drywall dust, which are extremely fine, the manufacturer recommends an optional fine filter, and this is important, as the powdery dust from ashes will work through a regular filter and burn out the motor.

ALSO NOTE: I called the number for parts in the manual to order that fine filter, and a helpful representative gave me an absolutely super extra tip: mount a regular paper vacuum bag over the inflow tube in the canister and collect the ashes in that. If you do (and I did) hardly any ash gets through to the filter over the motor, and you can simply remove the bag and drop it in the garbage instead of turning the canister over and dumping the ashes in a choking cloud of dust. They carry the bags, too, though I had some leftover bags with a collar gasket that just fit over the inflow tube and those worked well too.)

Ok, I doubt anybody likes to vacuum out their car. Before getting this product I would go downtown to one of those car wash places and poke an endless supply of quarters into a bulky commercial vacuum cleaner. This has never been a pleasant experience since the car wash vacuum cleaners always seem to come with large barely-flexible, cumbersome hoses equipped with an over-wide nozzle ill-suited to clean the hard-to-reach places in your car. And they (don’t) suck! Taking the house vacuum into the yard isn’t an option – it just isn’t designed for this. The Armor All vacuum is incredibly light weight and generates an impressive amount of suction. It comes with a wide assortment of attachments and it does a great job. It works as a wet/dry cleaner. There’s no collection bag – only a small cloth bag/filter that covers the motor intake to prevent sand from ruining the engine. After you’re done you just pop open the top and dump the canister out. (The filter bag is reusable and you can also order extras) Important: Make sure you don’t forget to put the bag on or you’ll ruin the motor! When vacuuming liquids you must remember to swap out the bag for a sponge-ish filter that wraps around the motor intake for wet mode. The power cord is of a decent length, but of course you are still going to need a sturdy outdoor extension cord.