Clean Fire Pit with ShopVac?

Great idea.  Poor execution.  

We have a fireplace in our home.  No mystery to anyone who knows us.  When we burn, the ashes remain in the fireplace, but we have a trap door and we can scoop the ashes into a pit below (in the basement).  All is good and well until said ash pit fills up.  It's full now.  Last time it was cleaned out?  20 years or more.  So yep, we got a lot of ashes down in that pit.

Instead of opening up the door to the pit down in the basement, scooping out ashes into 5 gallon buckets and hauling them out through the house, I got the great idea that I could vacuum them out. So I took the top off my ShopVac (TM) vacuum and installed it on top of an old trash barrel.  I cut a hole in the lid and used duct tape to make a good seal.  I cut a hole in the side and stuck in the hose.  It worked, but it lacked power.

Please note that I set this contraption Outside, in the back of the Gator and then ran just the hose through the window.  My goal was to keep all the ashes and dust Not in the house.


My jank / homemade giant ShopVac


Hose running through window and into fireplace.

Next, my hose was not long enough, so more duct tape to another hose (differing sizes).  All is going well until I hear the motor start to whine.  Thinking it's full, I use the fireplace poker to reach out the window and shut off the vacuum.  I then inspect the barrel.  Nope, not full at all.  Barely 2" of ash in the bottom.  But now I have all that ash inside the vacuum motor and circuitry.  The on/off button barely moves at all now.  Well done, I say to myself.  

Next plan is to hire some young kid to start scooping ashes out of the basement pit...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cleaning Winchester SX3 / SX4 Shotguns

Image
The Winchester SX4 is my Go To shotgun for everything - clays, doves, ducks, geese, pheasants, whatever.  It is an awesome firearm.  The drawback?  There are multiple moving parts and a few of them like to collect carbon.  And this carbon sticks as if it were put on those parts with super glue! Specifically, the magazine tube and the gas piston are the main carbon collectors.  Those parts come out more black than silver & gold. The inner components of an SX3 / SX4 with highlights where carbon will form So what is my trick for cleaning those bits?  I drop the gas piston into my Hornady sonic cleaner.  Inside the cleaner I put in about a cup of Hornady's One Shot Sonic Clean Solution for gun parts, add some DI water, a couple squirts of Dawn liquid dish soap, and then top it off with a dash or two of the citrus version of Dr. Bronner's pure castile liquid soap.  I have found that the citrus Dr. Bronner's is awesome at removing grease and oil.  All of that bakes in the son
Read more

Winchester SX4 Trigger Assembly Update

Image
First, you need to read the post immediately before this one to understand why I had to take my Winchester SX4 shotgun apart - all the way apart - specifically the trigger assembly. Second, my bad.  I had neglected to clean the gun after returning from last October's pheasant trip.  I had about one bale of grass seed inside that gun, which in the end, may have kept the #8 pellet from getting out on its own.  Shame. Finally, I did not give up.  I watched four different YouTube videos on how to disassemble and reassemble the trigger group.  Sadly, no one did the SX4, only the previous version, the SX3.  Close enough.  Why did it take 4 videos?  Because no one explained HOW the damn sear goes back in.  Everyone either ASSUMED we all know how OR in two cases, the reassembly process was out of the camera frame.  Aggravating! The key, and this is more for me to remember, was on the fourth video, the author said, "The sear kinda slides down into a channel in the housing."  Bam. 
Read more

Determine Sex of Deer from Tracks

Image
It IS possible to determine from a set of tracks whether the deer you are tracking is a doe (female) or a buck (male).  And, it's actually pretty simple if you know a few facts about deer. First, you have to know what a deer track looks like.  Deer leave a track that looks like the outline of a heart. Next, you have to know the direction of travel.  Deer are moving toward the "pointy" end of the heart.  So in the above example, the deer is traveling toward the top of this post, or up. Here is an actual photo of deer tracks in the wild so you can get a better idea.  Again, this deer is traveling up, or towards the top of this page.  (It is also clear that this deer was STANDING, not walking - well clear enough to me.  Read on to find out why I know that). Sometimes if the ground is soft or if the deer is traveling really fast (jumping), the track left will show the deer's dew claws at the rear of the direction traveling, like so: The two little "
Read more