Thanks to Steve Schlumpf for mentioning that he uses a trash can lid style separator on his DC. I have the same DC and had read that at 1hp it was too weak to work well as a two stage setup. It seems to work fine and I guess that I'm benefiting from the very short pipe runs.

Seems like I read that the DC collection bags reduce performance if they get too full. Since only the finer material goes to the DC bag, that doesn't need to be emptied nearly as often. The trash can is a lot easier to empty than the bag.

It was past time to give the filter cartridge a good cleaning and to my surprise I found a plastic grocery bag inside that had been blocking a fair bit of the filter. Potentially up to about a square foot depending on how it got thrown against the cartridge wall when the blower was turned on.

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