Am Curious About Lift And CFM When Adding A Vac Booster

[Spooney]

Hi guys,

Got a short story to tell ya, and numerous questions to ask as always.

When I first bought my porty, I noticed it had a hole in the back for a vac booster. I knew sh!t all about portys and vac boosters so I looked on this forum to see what the go was. Whilst reading about vac boosters I stumbled across a post where someone was joking about just using a cheap shop vac for a booster. That was all I needed to read, to then go shove a my $50 domestic vac into the back of my porty to experiment. (See photo below.)

I then connected 100' of 2" hose to the porty and turned just my shop vac on. As you would expect at 100' with a $50 shop vac, there was VERY little suction at the end off the hose. So I switched off the shop vac and turned just my porty vacs and felt the suction. Then I turned on the little shop vac as well, whilst the porty vacs were still on... I kid you not, I was frikken shocked at the difference in suction. How can this be? From next to NO suction with just the shop vac on, to what felt like a LOT more suction when all 3 vacs were combined. What I want to know is, does it just take a little bit more vacuum from a booster to deliverer quite a noticeable difference in vacuum power down the line? I have no instruments to test the difference in suction, but to me it felt like that tiny little vac may have added an extra 30% suction.. This makes no sense because this little vac certainly does not HAVE 30% of the power of my 2 3 stage vacs. At a guess, I might say that the shop vac may have all of 60 cfm and 30 lift lol.. What ever it has, it certainly helped those porty vacs out at 100'. Do you think I'm just imagining it, or is there an explanation in airflow/lift carpet cleaning science? lol. Gotta love how in depth some of these topics go. Just when I feel I'm getting my head around it, someone will say something that turns it all upside down again. Anyways, to cut a long story short, I'm gonna get a shop vac after all to use as my booster lol. A "Henry!" 2 stage amteck vac with 100 odd cfm and blah, blah amounts of lift. It's gotta be twice as powerful as the little vac I used in the experiment, and I can use it to vac out cars and upholstery and so on....

Questions for those who are still reading my long post...

1 My porty is in parallel. Is it bad to add a more powerful vac to the back than whats already in the porty? As in, my vacs are 3 stage 5.7's. Would it be bad to add an 8.4 booster for instance?

2 Just say my vac booster is 100 cfm and 70" lift, will both those numbers be added to my to the overall performance of my porty vacs, or just the cfm's, and not the lift? As in, if my porty vacs produced 220 cfm and 150 lift by themselves, when adding the booster, would it add 100cfm and 70 lift to the porty numbers, or just the 100cfm, and not the 70" lift?

3 Is the suction on my hand from the vac hose caused by lift or cfm? Cause if it is lift, I think lift was defiantly improved from adding even a minor vac booster.

I think that's all I need to know for now, but if I think of anything else I ask ya's soon.

Cheers, and happy cleaning.

Benn.

 

[Ed Valentine]

What is a POWER BOOSTER? Wish I knew more about them darn it!

 

[Common janitor]

What is a POWER BOOSTER? Wish I knew more about them darn it!

ROFL !!! LOL !! What the heck Mr. Valentine , take a chance and see if you can answer the questions Benn has !! Pretty funny !!
Dang near choked on my coffee !! LOL !!
All the Best, Ed

 

[kevinj6121]

Very interesting, i as well am interested in to why such a difference in his suction with just a cheap little shop being used as a booster.

 

[Spooney]

Erh..... are my questions hard to understand?? lol . Dam... was trying really hard to make the words make sense too. lol

 

[Spooney]

Ah... got another question, or maybe 2. Am just curious about this stuff that's all. If any of ya's know how many cfm and lift your porty produces, post it here.

Also, does any one know how many cfm and lift a decent truck mount puts out, or sucks in I should say. I never hear the truck mount fellas talkin bout cfm and lift. Probs cause they are not worried about it. They got plenty a that cfm/lift shiz snizz.

 

[John Rockwood]

Ah... got another question, or maybe 2. Am just curious about this stuff that's all. If any of ya's know how many cfm and lift your porty produces, post it here.

Also, does any one know how many cfm and lift a decent truck mount puts out, or sucks in I should say. I never hear the truck mount fellas talkin bout cfm and lift. Probs cause they are not worried about it. They got plenty a that cfm/lift shiz snizz.

Your 1st question about vac boosters, A booster is not designed to pull air through stationary vac's (meaning turned off). When the primary vac's are not on the booster is pulling air through restricted spaces. Boosters are designed to increase the efficiency of the main vac's to move the air.
TM's are measured by CFM and portables use inches of lift. I wouldn't try to calculate the relationship between the two and how they effect the removal of water unless your an engineer. You will have one big headache in the end. LOL.

 

[CCWorks]

See this video I made. Read what I say about in on you tube, under the video, expanded.

The last test, using the 3 vac setup with wand shows real CFMs and lift when in actual use.
You should see a soaked carpet lifted with 1.5" sq. in. opening on wand head intake, with CFM and lift power working together. Approximately 11 psi of vacuum pressure and 80 / 100 CFM when using a Evolution 13" wand..

 

[Fedri]

See this video I made. Read what I say about in on you tube, under the video, expanded.

The last test, using the 3 vac setup with wand shows real CFMs and lift when in actual use.
You should see a soaked carpet lifted with 1.5" sq. in. opening on wand head intake, with CFM and lift power working together. Approximately 11 psi of vacuum pressure and 80 / 100 CFM when using a Evolution 13" wand..

So Greg when you seal the tool on the carpet that thing inside the lighted tube goes down, does this mean that the lower it drops it extracts the water better then it is higher?

 

[CCWorks]

So Greg when you seal the tool on the carpet that thing inside the lighted tube goes down, does this mean that the lower it drops it extracts the water better then it is higher?

When the ball in tube drops, there is very little air flow or none at all. That is all the ball in tube is showing, air flow and air pressure.

That ball in tube is rated, based on rage, about 7 CFM per inch.

The ball in tube only shows air flow pushing on the ball. The air flow and air pressure move the ball up.
I do not know what the lift is, I only be guessing, based on vacuum motor specks and configurations of motor specks from other testing numbers I have taken.

The last test in the video is approximately a active 8 to 10 PSI vacuum pressure and 80 to 100 CFMs when the wand is pulling the carpet up off the floor.
When I was testing, the rug lifting was just a freak accident I took advantage of in the testing video. It just happened, I was not showing off.

 

[CCWorks]

So Greg when you seal the tool on the carpet that thing inside the lighted tube goes down, does this mean that the lower it drops it extracts the water better then it is higher?

No, not in all tests.
Reason, no vacuum lift to pull air, or push air flow in to the tube.

 

[JRH]

ROFL !!! LOL !! What the heck Mr. Valentine , take a chance and see if you can answer the questions Benn has !! Pretty funny !!
Dang near choked on my coffee !! LOL !!
All the Best, Ed

Three will always be better than two .
The aux port on your airflex is in parallel .... so plug whatever u got into it , an 8.4 , 5.7 or whatever . Dont think u will be making an 8.8 booster when u see the price of the 230v 8.4 . use one of the better electros or a 6.6 perhaps . This is airflexs own booster for that machine .. its a 6.6 in a plastic care basically .
http://www.cleansmartsupplies.co.uk/acatalog/Airflex_Booster_POD.html

 

[comfort carpet care]

If it works use it. You could boost vacs with another 2 5.7s in a tool box set up.

 

[Jan Sullins]

I own a Cross-American Power Booster which is the inline type. With for instance my Jaguar 6.6.
It has a 2 stage 6.6 rather than a single stage which some others are using in their power boosters.
Anyway when I hook it up for instance at 100 feet and add another 50 feet I have basically 3 X 6.6 2 stage
vacuum motors. Each motor rated 625 air watts, 139.5 cfms and 131"water lift. Although my own testing
I did get at least 139 cfms but lift was depending on which day ranged from 117-122"water lift. Setup like that and
my drying times were very fast ! The new design of the CA Power Booster is idiot proof and so simple to hook
up inline..

 

[CCWorks]

HG (vacuum pressure) and PSI conversion chart.
The more area (wand head) that is sucking on a surface increases PSI.
http://www.endmemo.com/sconvert/psiinhg.php

1/8 th .opening, times 8 inches long is about 7 psi pull.
1/8 th. opening, times 16 inches long is about 14 psi of pull.

Also, the bigger a wand head opening the more air flow, to a point or max physical limits.

So many variables in hose size and length.
Can your vacuum system keep up with opening contact area?
Can your vacuum system handle the water output from the wand jets?
Have fun
So if you have 4 sq. in. of contact area, on the wand head, the pulling power of vacuum pressure will make the wand harder to move, over a 3 inch opening.

Find the sweet spot on CFM and Water lift / HGs. with out having to use a monster power source.

http://www.endmemo.com/sconvert/psiinhg.php

 

[CCWorks]

I should also mention that when I tried to stop the airflow by covering hose opening. The water lift was stronger than what the machine was made for. I had tape on hoses, glued the cuffs to hose and check for air leaks. I could not stop all the air leaks, That is why when the vacuum motors were in series, the ball in tube did not drop like a rock, as it did in the 2 vac parallel set up test.

 

[Spooney]

See this video I made. Read what I say about in on you tube, under the video, expanded.

The last test, using the 3 vac setup with wand shows real CFMs and lift when in actual use.
You should see a soaked carpet lifted with 1.5" sq. in. opening on wand head intake, with CFM and lift power working together. Approximately 11 psi of vacuum pressure and 80 / 100 CFM when using a Evolution 13" wand..

I'll watch the vid now, thanks.

 

[Spooney]

Three will always be better than two .
The aux port on your airflex is in parallel .... so plug whatever u got into it , an 8.4 , 5.7 or whatever . Dont think u will be making an 8.8 booster when u see the price of the 230v 8.4 . use one of the better electros or a 6.6 perhaps . This is airflexs own booster for that machine .. its a 6.6 in a plastic care basically .
http://www.cleansmartsupplies.co.uk/acatalog/Airflex_Booster_POD.html

Yeah, I've seen the Airflex booster in the link you gave me. have contacted cleansmart, but they won't ship it to me, and the place I bought the airflex from in Australia only do an order with cleansmart every 2 years or so, so I'll have to figure something else out. Also, I know you guys say it's easy as.. to make a home made booster box, and I've looked at photos and threads that are on this forum about them, but I can't see me being able to build one. I can't get a clear view at all the components in the photos, and am not handy at that sort of thing. It's frustrating because I know that in my case, I only need the one vac in a box. It would have to be very simple and cheap to build, but I just don't know how to go about building it. Hence, my thoughts about just getting the most powerful shop vac that I can get my hands on, which seems to be the "Henry" 2 stage amteck. Have justified it to myself that it is quite cheap, quite powerful, and can be used for other things outside of it's job as a booster for my Airflex.

 

[Spooney]

If it works use it. You could boost vacs with another 2 5.7s in a tool box set up.

Yeah, I'd love to do that.. but how the hell do you build those booster boxes? Can anyone give me a dumbmies step by step on how to build a booster box? I would just want the one 5.7" vac in it though. What are all the components/bits and pieces that are required. My brother is quite handy at that sort of thing, but I'd need to relay the information to him about what is required.

 

[Spooney]

I own a Cross-American Power Booster which is the inline type. With for instance my Jaguar 6.6.
It has a 2 stage 6.6 rather than a single stage which some others are using in their power boosters.
Anyway when I hook it up for instance at 100 feet and add another 50 feet I have basically 3 X 6.6 2 stage
vacuum motors. Each motor rated 625 air watts, 139.5 cfms and 131"water lift. Although my own testing
I did get at least 139 cfms but lift was depending on which day ranged from 117-122"water lift. Setup like that and
my drying times were very fast ! The new design of the CA Power Booster is idiot proof and so simple to hook
up inline..

Hi Jan,

That sounds like an awesome set up. So, is your porty in series? Is that why you use an inline booster instead of a booster at the back of the porty like in my case?

So, does that mean you get a total of 320 lift at the end of the hose because your porty is in series?

And in my case, if I add a vac booster with 100" of lift at the back of my porty, would I get 100" of lift at the end of my hose? Or does a vac booster mainly just raise my cfm's, as my porty is in parallel?

I hope what I wrote sorta makes sense lol.

Thanks Jan!