[Simon Gerrard]

I've got two new twin vac extractors that I use on cruise ship upholstery jobs. The two vacs are joined together so that the first sucks thru the send but there is no that much airflow at the vac port which I think is odd for a twin vac, I would have expected it to be more powerful than that.
When you put your hand over the port or upholstery tool then you get some suck. What's going on?
Is this the old, airflow versus water lift thing or is there something wrong with the machine?
If there is I can't find it and to be fair it does seem to do the job.
Simon

[*paul_moss]

Can I just say that Simon has just come out of the closet and has been kicked off Truckmounters.

[Simon Gerrard]

Erm, excuse me, by the scruff of the neck, if you don't mind.
And here's me thinking coz I own it I can say what I want.
Knock...knock!

[Ken Wainwright]

Hi Simon

After your high performance T/M's, any portable will feel lacking. It will probably be harder for you to judge the porty's vac performance than someone who uses one day in/day out.

After that, and presuming that your machines are running as per the manufacturers intentions, it does come down, as you stated, to AO v VO. On a twin vac machine, forgetting the " feel at the hose cuff" the performance at 15' I feel is superior with the VO (your set up) At 25' it's about equal and at longer lengths, the AO will take a marginal lead. But to be honest, there's not much in it unless you are running more than 50ft when the AO isn't as bad as the VO. Neither would be brilliant.

I don't know which tools you use for upholstery, but the CFR's, although cumbersome at first, are designed to be used with a single vac, so any twin vac machine would probably work better with this tool at longer hose lengths than a more conventional tool.

Just a final note, some twin vac VO machines I've come across are very sensitive to accurate assembly of the internal vac hoses and fittings. Just a slight error can have an enormous impact on performance. I've come across this with a colleague's Chemspec2000/Hydromist President.

Safe and happy cleaning
Ken

[Simon Gerrard]

Hi Ken,
Thanks for that. Masterful as ever.

Simon