Cleaning pleated paper DC filters...

[Reed Gray]

During a recent down time with my dust collector, a 3 hp Oneida that had a capacitor go out, I was faced with cleaning the paper filter out. Most of the time I use an air hose as just tapping the sides doesn't do much. Well, I wondered how a water hose would work on it. I used a pressure nozzle, not up to the pressure washer pressure, and hosed out the inside. This worked far better than the air hose, and didn't blow dust every where outside the house. Main concern would be that it would destroy the paper or poke holes in it, but no problems at all since the DC got back up and running. Any one else ever try this one, or hear of some one who has tried it???

robo hippy

[Al Launier]

I've no experience doing that, but I'm wondering if you might have enlargened the pores in the filter causing the filter to no longer be as effective???

[Eugene Dixon]

Reed, I've done that multiple times with the paper filter on the shop vac. The key there is not to reassemble it before it dries. Something about dark and damp being a mold farm. DAMHIK.

[Grant Wilkinson]

FWIW, I use a Wynn canister on my dust collector and Wynn says on their site not to use water to clean it.

[Keith Westfall]

Vacuum blower on the outside or air. Not too much direct close pressure with air hose. I've vacuumed the inside of mine (wynn filter) numerous times...

[Richard Casey]

Reed, I took mine to a company that washes the filters for earth moving machinery, they wash them with solvent, worked like a dream.
Rgds,
Richard.

[Jeffrey J Smith]

I'd think that cleaning would depend on the media, but, in general, Wynn Environmental reccommends using air at 40 - 60 psi from the outside to clean when necessary. This is for their MERV 10 and 15 filters. They also reccommend the diy gauge that Stumpy Nubbs had a link to so you can tell when they need to be cleaned. I haven't gone there yet.

[Larry Frank]

Using a pressure gauge to determine when to clean the filter is a great idea. You can also use it to figure out if your cleaning the filter was effective.

I clean my filter with my air compressor but have only done it once with my cyclone.

[Randy Heinemann]

If this is an Oneida filter, I'd call them and ask. They would provide the answers for best way to clean the filter and what you absolutely should not do.

I have an Oneida V1500 with an external HEPA filter. The Oneida recommendation is compressed air. However, I don't have a large compressor and my small one won't keep up with the volume of air and time period required to blow out the whole filter. I recently purchased a small Dewalt cordless leaf blower. With a 5ah 20V Max battery attached, I can generally blow out almost all of the dust from in between the pleats while the filter is mounted on the cyclone. The filter has an attached cup on the bottom so all the dust falls into the cup and then emptied out from there. It usually takes about 2 cycles of blowing to get it all out, removing and emptying the cup each time.

I have also taken the filter completely off and blown it out with my regular gas powered leaf blower outside. I wouldn't use the blower around the outside of the filter, though, because there is too much air movement from a high powered gas blower. Since the filter is an open cylinder once removed from the cyclone I just blew the remaining dust out by blowing air through from one open end to the other. That works well, but you just need to be careful not to damage it because of the high volume of air from a gas blower.

So far I like using the small cordless leaf blower without removing the filter from the cyclone. I don't get 100% of the dust out but alsmot all is blown out.