Festool Vacuums for general dust with rubble?

[Popeye_ali]

Hi all

I am in the market for a new vacuum that will be used for mainly brick dust plus other plumbers waste including on the odd occasion water.
What are Festools machines like for this or are they only any good with sawdust?

what model would be best suited?

Thanks for your advice

 

[neth27]

A Henry hoover  [big grin]

john...

 

[aas]

Henry's don't do water, even occasionally. I've got a couple and they're great vacs, one of them is well over 30 years old and still going strong. Other models from Numatic are worth looking at.

For builders rubble, I have a cheap 90euro Karcher vac with a stainless tank, also does water. Sucks well, pretty solid too - a 60+kg wooden beam fell from 3m onto it, popped all the wheels out in pieces, bent the stainless tank, cracked a bit of plastic on top - still working well.

 

[roblg3]

if that's all you want it for there's many less expensive just as good options.  You'd be paying for a tool activated switch and variable suction.  I doubt those are needed for that type of work.  If you indeed want a festool dust extractor for this they will work great!  They auto shutoff when full of water as well.  I like the expensive buy it once bag that you can empty yourself.  I never run out of bags at an inopportune time.  I just dump it depending on what i've been collecting i usually fill my mulchbeds with "free" shredded hardwood mulch dust.  I use my DE on my 15" planer so there's usually quite a bit of body to the mulch...

 

[7sec153]

Only one I can even imagine would work would be the ct 36 autoclean

 

[peter halle]

I love my CT-22 but draw the line when it comes to cleaning up a dog mess in the house or something similar.  In that situation ShopVac rules!  Certainly my CT could suck that up but I have a general issue - even though I believe in using my Festools versus babying them - with using a $600+ tool to suck up stinky stuff or other wet junk when a $100 almost disposable tool to me would do.

Peter

 

[SoonerFan]

Welcome to FOG!

For general clean up including water I would get a ShopVac.  I kept mine for that very reason.  Don't use it much but when there is water clean up I pull it out.

 

[Holzhacker]

I currently have 2 CT's, had another but that's another story. Love my CT's but for what you are talking about I wouldn't recommend it. Not that they can't handle it, its just that the tool is too expensive and the bad set up isn't ideal.
On the cheap end I would just cycle through cheap shop vac on special at one of the big box stores.
On the higher end I would recommend one of the Fein turbo vacs. Comparable to the CT and doesn't give a damn about bags or water. i love my Fein turbo.
Hope that helps.

 

[WastedP]

The CT can handle a lot more than sawdust; I've done tile tearouts where the CT sucked up broken grout and mastic like it was nothing.  Same for broken plaster and drywall.

I own an old, old Craftsman vac, a Fein 9-11-20 (mini turbo), and a CT 36.  I have used the Craftsman to vacuum up some unholy messes over the last 20-odd years.  Wet, dry, and disgustingly inbetween, I've used it with the Gore-Tex wet/dry filter with no real problems.  If I ever needed to vacuum scale out of a hot water tank, I'd probably choose the Craftsman, but that's because it's an option.  If I didn't have it, I'd use the CT. 

The Fein didn't last very long vacuuming wood floor and drywall/plaster dust before it had to be overhauled.  Now I only use it with bags and a filter.  I'll probably sell it soon because my wife is the only one that uses it, and only to vacuum her car.  She hasn't tried the CT yet.

My contest video compared all three vacs:

 

[jnug]

I missed a CT26 that went up for sale just about 150 miles south of me. It looked to be in very very good condition.....gently used over a short duration I imagine.

Not even sure a 26 would have been right in my case. It would tag along behind my router and my TS75 track saw for the most part. I suspect that the CT36 or even a discontinued CT33 would be a better option for those tools.

 

[MM]

I use a ridgid vac with a 5gal dust deputy for demo clean up.
With a dust deputy you should be able to clean up at least one room of demo before cleaning the filler.
Even that combo reduces hose size to the point where I shovel the site up first.
My midi hose is just too small to deal with more than dust/saw dust.