House refurb - Which vacuum is up to the job?

[Stefansay]

Hello all,

I'm undertaking a full refurb on my first house and I need a vacuum cleaner that won't break down at the first sight of some brick dust.

I'm going to be chasing out walls /floors and replacing ceilings, so there's going to be fair amount of mess.

I don't have the budget for a Hilti or Makita so does anyone have any recommendations for a decent, affordable site vacuum?

I know a lot of people who swear by Henrys but would the standard model be up to the job? Like this one:

http://www.numatic.co.uk/products4.aspx?id=1&r=4&sr=1

Any first hand experience or advice would be much appreciated

Cheers

 

[Burnerman]

For approx 100 quid, Henry is the best there is.....I buy a lot of cheapo bags from ebay and change them often.
John

 

[mattylad]

+1 Henry.

 

[Stefansay]

Thanks guys,

I thought as much, seems for £100 you cant beat the Henrys build quality plus replacement parts are easy to find.

I'll be purchasing one of these tomorrow

 

[Jackrae]

If your house is detached (no immediately adjacent neighbours) one of the best things you can do is fit a LARGE extractor fan (as fitted in pubs) into a window opening. Run the fan any time you're doing dusty work and it'll keep the air healthy. Also very good to use in a "finished" house when doing work upgrading a room - it stops the dust spreading.

As to vacuums, my old Rowetta RU44 is highly recommended - but I don't think it's available any more

 

[Lusi83]

I've got the Wickes wet & dry one (£40) with the combined filter (£15). The cloth filter things they come with are a bit rubbish. And they are bagless - so messy emptying - I bought some henry bags to try but they don't fit but maybe could be 'made' to ...
It has handled all the mess from a whole house rewire (plaster dust and 40 years under floorboards debris) fantastically well - and cleaning up the attic mainly bits of loose fibre glass insulation, cleaning out ash from my woodburner and bits of debris from the window replacement left in a flower bed (yep I hoovered soil!)
Biggest problem is the hose is quite narrow and it got blocked up with small chunks of wood (from notching out of joists) etc ...but I think Henry's have narrow hoses/tubes too???
Got this rather than an Henry because it does wet too...
Before I got it I was struggling with an old vac that had a cloth bag - plaster dust meant it blocked every 3 secs so I made a successful but slow and messy water trap from an ash vac attachment for the plaster dust but occasionally water got sucked through (not good!) so was using my vax from home but didn't want it ruined...thought if it struggled with the plaster dust I could at least safely use it with the water trap ...as it was I didn't need to

 

[RF Lighting]

Another vote for henry.

I had one when I worked for a firm, so we really didn't care if it got ruined, but it never missed a beat in the 6 years I worked there.

I now have my own henry, and use the hepa filtered bags off ebay. It performs as well as any vac I've ever used for general cleaning, but it can also cope with building site debris from chasing in sockets etc, and even the horrible fine dust my wall chasing machine produces doesn't bother it at all. I'd love to see someone try and run a wall chaser with an over priced over hyped dyson!

 

[ellal]

Owner of two Henrys...

One 'retired' to the workshop after over 20 years hard labour...

The second house one has only 10 years on the clock...

Both going strong, and I put that down to the excellent thermal cut off as well as the provided filter - since I have never used collection bags and have probably saved enough over the years in doing that to buy several more machines already!

 

[mattylad]

Although I would say that a henry built today is not the same as a Henry built 20 years ago.

Todays Henry is not likely to last as long.

However - is mush more likely to last longer than a hoover.