Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There are plenty enough reviews of this vacuum, but I think it deserves another just for its ability to clean out wood stoves. I finally tired of cleaning the ashes out of my pellet stove with a 30 year old Craftsman shopvac. It's a heavy duty machine, but it's huge, awkward in the house on its casters, and howls like a Lear Jet taking off. Emptying it is not pretty, either, requiring a shower afterwards, at least. The Armor All shopvac is exactly right for the job: easy to tote, plenty of suction, a motor sound that doesn't scare cats on the next ranch over, and maybe most important, easy to clean. The included attachments are also appropriate and handy. NOTE: for fireplace ashes and drywall dust, which are extremely fine, the manufacturer recommends an optional fine filter, and this is important, as the powdery dust from ashes will work through a regular filter and burn out the motor. ALSO NOTE: I called the number for parts in the manual to order that fine filter, and a helpful representative gave me an absolutely super extra tip: mount a regular paper vacuum bag over the inflow tube in the canister and collect the ashes in that. If you do (and I did) hardly any ash gets through to the filter over the motor, and you can simply remove the bag and drop it in the garbage instead of turning the canister over and dumping the ashes in a choking cloud of dust. They carry the bags, too, though I had some leftover bags with a collar gasket that just fit over the inflow tube and those worked well too.)