Industrial vacuum cleaners can cope with virtually any waste from solids to liquids. Think about what you’re going to be cleaning up and choose the type of industrial vacuum cleaner accordingly.

Here we look at some of the basic features of Dry Only, Wet & Dry and Wet Only industrial vacuum cleaners.

Dry Only Industrial Vacuum Cleaners

Will you ever need to suck up water or other non-volatile liquids into your industrial vacuum cleaner?

If the answer is a definite no, then a Dry Only industrial vacuum cleaner is the ideal choice.

Dry Only industrial vacuum cleaners, as the name suggests, handle dry dust, fluff and damp solids but not liquids or slurries.

When using a Dry Only industrial vacuum cleaner to suck up damp solids, remember to empty it frequently and as soon as possible after use. Leaving damp material inside the drum of a Dry Only machine can damage the filters and the motors.

Sucking up liquids into a Dry Only industrial vacuum cleaner is very hazardous - they’re simply not designed to handle it. Doing so could severely damage your machine and will pose a serious electric shock risk to the user.

Wet & Dry Industrial Vacuum Cleaners

Wet & Dry industrial vacuum cleaners give you the best of both worlds. They will handle dry dusts, as with Dry Only machines, as well as liquids and slurries.

Wet & Dry industrial vacuum cleaners have two different filter systems - a wet filter system and a dry filter system. Use the dry filter system when sucking up dry or damp solids. When sucking up liquids, use the wet filter system. This has an overfill protection device which will stops the machine from overfilling and  stops liquids entering the  suction turbines.

The motors and cut-out controls in a Wet & Dry machine are also totally different from the Dry Only machine - they”ll cope with water getting into them without damage.

Finally, Wet & Dry machines usually have a safer method of emptying the liquid - it can simply be discharged from the bottom of the drum. This reduces the risk of spillages or of the operator injuring themselves by lifting the drum to empty it.

Wet Only Industrial Vacuum Cleaners

If you’ll be sucking up liquids and slurries only, then a Wet Only industrial vacuum cleaner. These machines will suck up solids, but avoid dry dust - the filters just aren’t designed to cope with dusts and it will blow out of the turbines, blocking or damaging them.

Wet Only industrial vacuum cleaners usually have heavy d1uty wheels and chassis to cope with the extra weight and their electrical control switches are waterproof.

They may also have more sophisticated ways of emptying out the liquids, such as internal pumps that pump the waste liquid out into drains or containers.

Sieves that site inside the unit are also available to separate out solids that are sucked up with the liquids. These are always found in Wet Only machines with pump-out facilities to prevent debris entering the pump.

More sophisticated engineering machines offer very large capacity sieves that can separate out large quantities of solids (metal swarf) from the liquids (machine suds).

Some Wet Only machines will will also allow you to pump water out of the drum whilst sucking water up - these are ideal for cleaning up after a flood.