You’ll know your vacuum cleaner can be used as a blower when it has two hose hookups, one for sucking in and the other for blowing out.
The regular vacuum cleaners that most people have in their homes are not set up to be blowers which is a shame.
But almost every shop vacuum is set up to be a blower and a vacuum.
You just need to move the hose to the other side, where the blower port is located. Then you have a blower that you can use around your home and a vacuum when you need it.
Remove Filter When Blowing
It’s best that you keep the filter on and connected to your vacuum cleaner when you use it as a blower.
The motor is not being reversed; you’re just using the vacuum at a different point of the vacuum’s motor. So having the filter in place doesn’t hurt the blowing ability, if anything it could be worse if you remove it.
Plus, what’s in the vacuum’s dustbin will get blown out if there is no filter, so it’s best you keep it in. This can be a big deal if you’re blowing off something sensitive like your car; you don’t want to fling last week’s chips onto your paint.
Use The Vacuum’s Blower As A Leaf Blower
While the blower output of a shop vacuum is quite strong, it’s not anywhere near as good as what a leaf blower will deliver.
They do make shop vacuums that have a leaf blower that pops out and you add some accessories to get it to work. But getting a dedicated leaf blower will always be better.
Vacuums work very well at vacuuming things up; the blower is just a bonus.
You’ll just be wasting your time and energy trying to use a shop vacuum as a leaf blower. It’s best to stick to a real leaf blower if you need to blow bulk outside debris.
Cleaning Computer
You should avoid vacuuming and blowing your computer with a vacuum cleaner.
While it may not hurt every computer to use the blower setting of your shop vacuum, it’s still not best to do.
The filter size for most shop vacuums is 10 microns; a human hair is about 9 microns. So you’ll be blowing small dirt at the motherboard and defeating the whole point. Plus, the shop vacuum pulls air from the inside of the dustbin, and you don’t want to be blowing that on your computer even though it passes a filter.
Also, the filter is not perfectly placed on most shop vacuums either, and some debris can get past it.
Overall, it’s just a bad idea to have your vacuum cleaner or shop vacuum anywhere near your computer.