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Currently Grinding a concrete floor flat for hard flooring and using an angle grinder with a diamond cup bit and a dust cover.

I have the vacuum like attached to a dust rite separator and then to an old 10 gal rigid shop vac with a regular cartridge filter and the filter clogs fairly quickly. I have taken it off and tapped it.

Can I run the vacuum line outside of the house and just run the shop vac without the filter or will it destroy the vac? Is there a better solution as well?

The shop vac is old and beat up so if its unusable for inside use after, its not a loss, but I would like to finish the work.

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  • You either do it wet, with one helluva dust collector, or you're in violation of OSHA standards making nuisance dust. When you rent a floor machine, the EPA requires you to also take the dust collector with you. Whether you actually use it is up to you, and whether you get shut down is up to anybody who cares about wtf is gong on over there; what is the crap all over my car?
    – Mazura
    Commented Oct 7, 2023 at 16:02
  • Have you considered renting an industrial air scrubber? (There was a brand called Buildclean, now defunct, but there are others.)
    – Aloysius Defenestrate
    Commented Oct 7, 2023 at 18:14

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You can do that but do not expect it to last much longer. The fan typically used in these is an integral fan blower combination where the air passes through the fan and across the motor to cool it. The brushes, berings etc are all in this air stream. Therefore by coating these parts with cement dust will hasten there wear out.

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  • I agree it will kill it, but wondering if the clogged filter and extra heating by reduced air flow will kill it earlier. I will just buy some of those dust collection bags, which is what I should have done. 2 for 15 at harbor freight isn't bad.
    – ChucktheDuck
    Commented Oct 7, 2023 at 6:29
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    If the bag provides additional filtering, that will help. There may be additional filter layers you can add depending on your make and model. A dust separator between the vacuum and the working hose can greatly reduce the amount of crud actually getting into the vac.
    – keshlam
    Commented Oct 7, 2023 at 10:12
  • For most shop vacs I've met, the cooling air stream is exhausted out the top, so no filter will mean dust into the the house, even with the "exhaust" hose out the window. On top of destroying the motor. You might want to try a water-trap type separator in-line, since you already have a separator and are still dusting up. As far as I know you have to home-build those, but I might be wrong about that.
    – Ecnerwal
    Commented Oct 7, 2023 at 12:11

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