The VacPan (RV Central Vacuum System On the Cheap)

Jim — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:25:31 +0000

The Elemental Essence of Debris Elimination
If you’ve recently changed out your RV carpeting for a hard surface floor, you may find yourself doing a lot more sweeping! It’s surprising how much sand and soil came off your shoes, then hid in the pile of the carpet. But with hard surface flooring like a laminate, or vinyl, or in our case the TrafficMaster Allure vinyl planks, there is no place for that soil to hide, and ignoring it is not an option. Not only is it obvious, it can scratch the flooring and dull the surface. While no one wants to be a slave to the broom and dustpan, I have found an inexpensive way to make clean up chores a lot easier. A product called the VacPan (http://builtinvacuum.com/inlets/vacpan.html) is a toe kick plastic face plate that hooks up to a central vac system. By simply sweeping the dirt and debris within a few inches of the opening, you kick the lever with your toe and it’s sucked away! No more looking for that elusive dustpan, bending over, or chasing that little line of dirt that eludes the edge of your dustpan.

Now you’re probably saying: “Well that’s all well and good, but I don’t have a central vacuum system!” Well, neither did I, so I went low tech (read cheap) and built one. I started looking around at garage sales and scored an Oreck Portable vacuum for $5. Basically, any brand of portable vacuum will do, so long as it has a hose attachment.

Installing the Central Vac
Knowing that there is a lot of wasted space behind drawers in most RV kitchens, I pulled a large drawer out below my oven and found a void that was about 10″ deep. The hardest part of this project was finding power for the vacuum and this was accomplished by tapping into a 120v line that was running nearby. (Note: If you are uncomfortable with working with electricity contact a licensed electrician to put in an outlet. But there goes the “cheap” part of the project!) There may be an outlet in your basement that your converter plugs into that could be used. After wiring in an outlet, it was just a matter of cutting out a place in the baseboard for the Vac Pan assembly, securing the vacuum and connecting the two. To wire the vacuum to the VacPan, I simply removed the on/off switch on the vacuum and connected a set of wires to the VacPan. I used heat shrink on these connections. I used zip ties to secure the vacuum in place.

Pros & Cons
The only downside to this arrangement is changing bags. We’ve been using the system for over a year now, and haven’t needed to empty it yet, but since we are not fulltimers yet, we can’t judge how often it will be necessary. The plus side is that it does not take up precious basement storage like conventional central vac systems. And since it is so easy to use, you will find yourself using it more often than dragging out the broom/dustpan combination. The kids like it so much, you may have to limit how often they sweep the floor!

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The VacPan (RV Central Vacuum System On the Cheap)