Shop-Vac 9551600 6.5-Peak HP Ultra Pro Series Wet or Dry Vacuum, 16-Gallon

To provide a quick background story. We have had a catastrophic amount of rain recently this year so far; WAY MORE than normal. As a result, many surrounding areas have been flooded to the point of evacuating. Our town, thank goodness, has been fortunate along the way during this time.....to a point. Some homes on slabs have flooded a few inches here and there, etc. which have caused problems.Anyway, we have an 85-86 year old home and even though our home is on a hill, as crazy as the rain has been down South lately, our basement/crawl space still flooded. Due to the incline below our home (pier and beam), we only had over 670 sq ft of an area where water had accumulated towards the back side portion underneath the house. Of course, this water was about 4-5 inches deep, if not more in some areas.As a new home owner, this has been our BEST INVESTMENT EVER so far. We received it earlier today, put it together in no time and started sucking water out of the basement right away after work this evening. Considering how much water we were dealing with, it took a couple/few hours and all, BUT I could honestly say it has easily already paid for itself.....just in one night for one purpose. It was most definitely our life saver today, that is for sure.Not that I want to deal with another "out of the ordinary" crazy rain storm again, I am actually looking forward to using this bad boy again VERY soon....preferably on a different type of project though. HahaWorst case and it happens again?.....This Shop Vac has already proved how amazing it is in one evening.I have no doubt about it being able to handle anything and/or everything we will need it for. One word: AMAZING!!!!!

I own a cleaning business and here are my thoughts on this vac, its strong, the acceries work fine, its not that loud, its a good shop vac and gets the work done when needed which i only used a handfull of times and if that where it it get a 4 star rating. Here's the problem and the reason for the two stars. Not one, two, or three, but all four wheels fall off all the time "could be embarrassing in front of a new client" and tried to glue them on but to much space for glue to adhere too and so in the end i had to duct tape them on. And why? Because every company is in a race to china and craps on quality in the process.

Works good, just felt the construction would be stronger. The connector hose comes out of the attachments while vacuuming. It doesn't screw on, just slides in.

This vacuum is easy to assemble.I use it, with the cannister filter mounted, for moving standing water from an outside location off the basement door -- mosquito prevention. It does a fine job at that, handling both the water, leaves and muddy sludge. It, and the filter, are easy to hose clean, too, although the wet filter has to be handled carefully - it's easy to damage wet. I don't use the tank drain to dump the water because of the location and the debris in the tank, so I have to stop and carry it elsewhere to upend it, before it gets too heavy.The only complaint I have is very minor: if you wrap the unplugged cord on the pegs provided on the top of the vacuum, it may get in the way when you are replacing the top half on the tank and you have to fiddle with it.I've used the vacuum inside, and it's quieter than the 4.5 hp Shop Vacs we use in the house.I could probably vacuum the front yard, although I haven't found an excuse yet to do that.

OK, so as a vacuum this thing is a beast. However, the build quality leaves much to be desired. The piece that clips on the inside of the tank at the spout to allow the hose to be attached snapped off under light use. It never even occurred to me that such a failure was possible. Just having a couple pieces of metal or something sturdier than standard plastic could easily prevent this, but I now have a non-usable shop vac and have received no response from shop-vac customer service.

We bought our first Shop-Vac, a 10-gallon, 4HP unit, back in 2005 and it served us well for 6 years, sucking up water quickly off the basement floor - sorry to say but we get a little bit of flooding from time to time when it rains a lot. And, believe it or not, we also used it to get the sand out of our pool filter a couple of times - several bucketfulls. Well... a couple of weeks ago that unit kicked the bucket, so to speak and we immediately ordered its successor. This one.It's bigger and more powerful which, when it comes to Shop-Vacs that are expected to suck in water and sand, translates to 'better'.Some things worth noting and which I like about this vac include:- 6.5 HP, quiet motor- 16-gallon capacity- Simple construction - it's basically a bucket with an electric motor on top, a big hose and some accessories.- Easy to take apart and reassemble. The hose comes off easily and so does the top.- Nice drain, it would empty the 16-gallon bucket in less than half a minute.- Easy to move around on 3 little caster wheels.- Great suction power - when it comes to water, it fills up the 16 gallons in less than a minute and would remove the water off the floor literally to the last drop.It comes with accessories - and all the accessories from our retired 10-gallon vac fit - and a convenient accessories bag. You also get a cartridge disposable filter and a disposable filter bag but filters are not needed when dealing with water. I liked the fact that the filters that fit this model - their part numbers - are on a sticker on the vac's body so, even if you misplace your manual, which I often do, you'll know what to order.The manual, by the way, it's not the best written one but assembly and operation are so easy, you don't really need one. Some assembly, by the way, is required. It involves attaching the caster feet to the vac's body and then snapping in the casters. You will need a flat head screwdriver.One thing that could be improved is the length of the power cord. I could use more than 18 feet. And it would be nice if the cord could be detached from the vac, making it easier to move it around when the bucket needs emptying._______________________________________Last year, when I wrote a review to mark our first Shop-Vac's 5th anniversary I wrote:[In spite of the little shortcomings, it still gets its 5 stars (translates into "I love it" on Amazon's stars scale) because not only do I love it but I'd probably buy a replacement if the one we have now stopped working. But, 5 years after we bought it, it did NOT stop working. Therefore the endorsement.]Well... that one did stop working and we did buy a replacement. And we did use it today when some heavy rains brought a little bit of water into our basement. We were glad to have the proper tool to address the emergency.