ThomD
>I thought the vac would burn out too, but the guy who showed me said he had the cheapest Shop Vac and it had lasted hundreds of 8 hour cycles. I was scared leaving the vac running would start a fire and burn the shop down. I should mention that to use a regular vac you need some breather holes, 4 x 1/4" or presumably some similar area. These do not affect the pressure much, one of the advantages to vac cleaner is it's higher volume of air movement effectively means one can suck down a leaky bag. That isn't an objective but it can be an occurance. In the end I never had a problem, and eventually burned out the motor on a drywall job, which is a whole other story.

Another thing I do is check to be sure the vac is relatively clean so it won't be sucking air through clogged filters. if nothing else one doesn't get a cloud of particles every time one turns it on.

I wish I had had my current small vac when I did all the bagging. It is a QSP, which is the quiet model. My old version was a banshee. I don't think SV still makes the model I currently have it had reasonable suction and didn't make much noise at all.

Unfortunately Pam, it takes a comparatively complex system to suck and hold air. I marvel at the ads they have for systems that suck down clothing for long term storage. It takes a dense bag, perfect seals, a one way valve, a pressure switch, a storage tank, and so forth. Compared to the simplicity of what I propose that is hundreds of dollars of gear.

I'm guessing the small vacs are in the 5 amp range, and cost about 80 cents to run for a cycle. I always wanted to live near a fast river or have a windmill that would provide free suction, then I would really use vac for everything from replacing post-it notes to squeezing orange juice.