muffler for vacuum cleaner?

[mikem]

Still working on my shop "out in the trees". My central vacuum is vented out the wall to the outside and is very noisy outside, but fairly quiet inside the shop. The exhaust is run thru a 2" plastic pipe thru the wall into a metal wall cap. Anybody ever make a muffler for their vac? It needs to dampen the noise without creating too much back pressure. It would be nice if it wasn't too big since it will go where I have to walk by now and then. Anybody have any ideas?

[yf]

I think sears sells a plastic muffler for their shop vacs.

Vacuum mufflers are definitely available from central vac. manufacturers.

If you have a vehicle muffler, you could try it. Connect with a piece of old radiator hose and worm drive clamps.

If you need to conserve space, then put an elbow facing up and then connect your muffler.

If you have some scrap PVC pipe you can make a muffler.

Line size pipe with many cross holes, larger pipe sleeved over with ends capped and stuffed with fiberglass, small pipe emerging on both ends for connecting.

Should work, may need some adjusting to maximize silencing. Just like a suppressor.

Hope this helps.

[Paul Gauthier]

I purchased a muffler for my Rigid shop vac. and it works fine, quite a difference, however I thought it was somewhat expensive. Got it at Home Depot.

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Paul G.

[merf23]

I put a $15 muffler from autozone on the vacuum exhaust for my sand blast cabinet...works really well and doenst seem to alter the performance of the vac

[Oso]

I put the Shop-Vac muffler on my vac, and found it made about a 3dB difference in sound level, Not enough to be worth it. The 3 dB isn;t even cutting the perceived sound level in half.

It did reduce the high frequencies somewhat, but it still isn't very quiet.

I like the Autozone muffler plan. Great idea, if a bit bulky. How about a glass-pack?

[merf23]

I had a glass pack sitting around and tried that first...it helped, but the muffler works a lot better

[Mike L]

Not only can you run a cheap car muffler to quiet down the exhaust, you can run a car air cleaner on the inlet to increase the life of your compressor.

I got an air cleaner housing and filter at the junkyard for $10. For the amount of air moved through the compressore vs. 20-30 thousand miles in a car, it is probably a lifetime filter. And much better than the piece of felt that came with the compressor.

[lightswitch]

my wood shop, has its own enclosure for the vac system, the walls are lined with plain fiberglass insulation, any quiter & id be leaving it on all teh time!