Vacuum cleaners have become an integral part of our life. They clean the messes we leave behind, help make our floors shiny and pick after our furry friend. With robotic vacuums currently in vogue, you could program your model to do its work even when you’re away.
Despite offering so much utility, there’s one thing we don’t like about modern cleaners.
They cost a fortune. That leaves you with no choice but to blow a hole in your pocket if you want to buy one of these for your home. So, as useful as they are, not every person could afford them. Hence the reason why we decided to come up with these three homemade vacuum cleaner plans.
Without costing you an exorbitant amount of money, these cleaners would rival their traditional counterparts in their effectiveness. So you count on them to do everything which your neighbor’s cleaner does – and that too at probably 1/5th of its price.
1. Make Your Vacuum Cleaner from Plastic Bottle
As hard as it is to imagine, you could easily make a vacuum cleaner from a plastic bottle. Doing that would give you two benefits. First, you’ll be getting an inexpensive version of a vacuum cleaner that might be available in your local shop. Second, by using plastic, you’d be saving the environment.
List of components:
Before getting in on the project, make sure you have the following components at your disposal:
| – 2x plastic Bottles
| – Thin metal sheet
|
| – Plastic spiral conduit
| – DC adapter jack
|
| – 12v DC motor
| – Glue Gun
|
| – 12v adapter
| – Hot needle
|
Step 1: Make a Dust Collector
- Take the smaller of the two bottles and create a hole in its cap. The shape of the hole should be similar to that of a ring.
- In the same bottle’s neck, make few holes using a hot needle.
- Put the cap back on the bottle, and close it tightly.
- Take a knife, and use it to cut the large bottle into two pieces right from its neck.
- Using the glue gun, paste the smaller bottle inside the bigger one’s neck. Placement should be such that the small bottle should be easily removable when required by unscrewing the cap.
- Take the spiral conduit, and attach it at the large bottle’s mouth. Later on, the homemade vacuum will use this conduit as the dust’s pathway.
Step 2: Create a propeller mechanism
- Place the large bottle on the thin metal sheet. Draw a circle around the area which the bottle’s bottom occupies. Then cut the circle using a pair of scissors.
- In the circle that you’ve just cut, draw another circle close to its center. Now, draw 8 lines in this circle, each at a 45* angle. Cut the sheet along the lines that you have just cut to create 8 sectors. Then bend each of these sectors to create a propeller.
- Take the 12v DC motor, and attach its shaft to the propeller.
- Take the large bottle’s cap, and make a hole at its side. Then, fix the motor to the same cap using a glue gun.
Final Step: Create the body of the cleaner
- At the body of the large bottle, make few holes. They will allow the air to go out.
- Using the glue gun, apply the glue to the base. Afterward, fix the propeller you created in step to at the base’s center by pasting it with the glue.
- Connect the motor wires to a DC adapter jack, before attaching the former to the bottle using glue.
- Fix both the small as well as the large bottle pieces together, and you’d have a working homemade vacuum cleaner.
2. Make Your Own Vacuum Cleaner Bag
Even if you could save the money to buy a vacuum cleaner, you’ll be frustrated at the recurrent costs of their bags. That is, because, these bags have a limited shelf-life after which they are good for nothing. That is why we recommend that you make your own vacuum cleaner bag.
Apart from using them, you can remove, empty and even wash these bags. That means that provided you take proper care of them, you might be using these bags for as long as you’re using the vacuum cleaner. Though you need to have a modern vacuum cleaner for this plan to work.
List of components:
Before getting in on the project, make sure you have the following components at your disposal:
| – A pair of scissors – Drawstring or shoelace
| – Cotton or nylon fabric – Knitting needle
|
Step 1: Tearing apart the vacuum bag
Take out the current vacuum bag that lies inside your vacuum cleaner. Tear it apart at the seams. Use your hand to pull it apart. You might also use scissors but make sure you don’t lose much paper, as we’ll be needing it in the next steps. Once you have torn the bag apart, it should look like a tube.
Step 2: Cutting the vacuum bag
Using a pair of scissors, cut the bag lengthwise. Make sure that once you’re done cutting the bag, it should resemble a large rectangle. Take extra care as if the cutting isn’t done carefully, the whole plan might be in jeopardy.
Step 3: Cut the fabric
Once you have cut the bag, place the resulting triangle atop your fabric – which must be either nylon or cotton. After leaving a slack of 1’’ to 2inches, cut out a piece of the fabric.
That is to make sure that once you have cut out the fabric, the resulting rectangle should be slightly bigger than that of the vacuum bag which you placed atop the fabric.
Step 4: Create a small tube insert
Take the fabric rectangle and lay it flat. Turn up one of the shorter sides of the fabric. You can do it by folding the edge of the fabric by over 1 ½’’. Sew it down afterward. Doing that will provide you with a small tube insert.
Step 5: Put the insert into the tube.
Take a drawstring (or shoelace) and insert it through the tube that you’ve just made. If you can’t do it with your hands, use a knitting needle to knot the drawstring around the fabric’s hook.
Then, to attach the insert with the tube put the needle into the tube. Give the drawstring plenty of slack so that you can easily tie it afterward.
Step 6: Sew down the fabric
Lengthwise, fold the rectangle of the fabric in half. Then, hem the edges together so as to make sure that the fabric ends up forming a large tube.
Once you reach close to the drawstring, stop the stitch and turn the tube on its right angle so as to make sure that the raw seam isn’t visible from the outside.
Step 7: Folding the fabric
By now, you’ll have two ends: the finished and the unfinished. Gather the latter and fold it the same way as a vacuum bag is folded. If you don’t remember that, fold it the way you’d wrap a gift paper. Afterward, close the end by sewing it.
Step 8: Final step
In this step, you’re going to attach the bag that you have just made to the vacuum. To do it, locate the vacuum intake hole and then fasten the drawstring end around it.
If you want to be doubly careful, get yourself a rubber gasket from your local hardware store and then slip it into the intake hole. In the future, whenever the need arises to empty the vacuum bag, you’ll be using the drawstring end.
3: Make Your Own HEPA Vacuum Filter
Experts tell us that nothing aggravates allergy and asthma more than pollutants around us. That’s the reason why most manufacturers now provide their vacuums with HEPA filters – as they are known to capture allergy and asthma-aggravating pollutants, thereby providing relief.
Therefore, if you need a homemade solution for all your allergy troubles, it’s time you know how to make your own HEPA vacuum filter. Trust me, without costing you a lot of money in attachments that you’ve to buy, it will do a world of good to you by keeping those pesky pollutants at bay.
List of components:
Make sure you have the following components before getting on with this project:
| – Cardboard box
| – Pencil or felt pen
|
| – Scissors
| – Duct tape
|
| – 12v DC motor
| – Glue Gun
|
| – Respirator dust filter
|
Step 1: Deciding the filter’s spot on the cardboard
Take out that cardboard box, and place the respirator dust filter on it. Then, use a pencil to trace the filter. Make sure you give a slack of 1’’ to 2’’ just to be on the safe side.
Step 2: Sealing the filter
Seal the dust filter against the cardboard by using duct tape. Make sure the seal is tight otherwise the filter might come off. So the better the seal, the more effectively the filter might work.
Step 3: Inserting the cardboard
Bend the cardboard (containing the attached filter) into an enclosure inside the vacuum which is made for filters. It is very important that you make sure that the right side of the filter – one which blocks pollutants – is exposed to airflow. Otherwise, the efficiency of the filter might suffer.
Final Step: Attaching the filter
Check out where the exhaust port is located inside the filter before attaching the filter over it using duct tape. Make sure that there is no opening between the cardboard and the vacuum’s surface for the air to get out. Otherwise, the effectiveness of the vacuum will be seriously impaired.
That said, don’t attach the filter too tightly. For, filters become dirty with the passage of time and might need some replacement. If you have attached your filter too tightly, you might not be able to remove it. That, in turn, might overheat the vacuum.
Summary
Who says you have to spend a fortune to land a top quality vacuum cleaner? Provided you have some spare time on your hands – and could follow our plans right to the word – there’s no reason why you can’t have a homemade vacuum cleaner offering all the bells and whistles. All you need is persistence to see the job through.