Vacmaster Power 30 PTO Wet & Dry Cleaner Review

Open the box and you’ll see the vacuum cleaner tank, surrounded by a few accessories. Open the tank and you’ll see even more parts stored within. With so many different bits, assembling the product can seem a little daunting. Fortunately, it’s all very simple. It takes less than 10 minutes before the vacuum cleaner is up and running.

You’ll need a Phillips screwdriver to attach the handle and the feet, but all of the required screws are supplied. The vacuum cleaner comes ready for dry vacuum cleaning – mine had its cartridge filter already installed. There’s also an optional dust bag that you can insert if you’re using it for a particularly dusty job. Everything fits together easily, and the instructions are helpful.

If you’d like to assemble the vacuum cleaner for wet vacuuming, then remove the cartridge filter (as well as the dust bag) and replace it with the provided foam filter. 

Once you’ve sorted your filters out, close everything up, insert the hose, fit the accessories/extensions that you need, and you’re good to go!

I was impressed with the design of this product before I had even received it, but became even more so once it was sitting in front of me. Cleva seems to have really thought of everything, making this one of the most versatile vacuum cleaners that I’ve seen.

Being a wet and dry vacuum cleaner is extremely useful and, as mentioned above, swapping between the high-quality filters needed for each is easy. 

The 30-litre stainless steel tank feels strong and sturdy, as do the stainless steel extension poles. All of the parts look and feel as though they have been built to last, which is exactly what you want to see from a vacuum cleaner designed to handle commercial cleaning tasks.

There’s a plastic carry handle at the top of the tank, and a large power button underneath this. Below this sits the power take-off socket. This enables you to plug a power tool directly into the vacuum cleaner, therefore preventing dust and debris from making a mess while you work.

That’s not the only clever feature that Cleva has designed into this vacuum cleaner. One of my other favourites is the drainage plug at the bottom of the tank. This allows you to “pour” liquids out from the tank without having to lift it. The blower function that the vacuum cleaner offers is very thoughtful too!

All in all, a very well-designed product. It offers enough versatility to be useful in both domestic and commercial settings, which gives it a wide appeal.

I have now used this vacuum cleaner for a variety of different tasks and it pretty much excels at just about everything. Here’s a closer look at how it performs in different aspects:

Dry Vacuuming Carpets

Owning six dogs, with some of them being double-coated giant breeds, along with two cats and various other animals means that I’ve been through my fair share of vacuum cleaners over the years. It’s not easy to find one that’s capable of lifting such large amounts of hair that have been trampled into carpet, in addition to all of the other debris that the animals drag into the house. 

However, after using the Vacmaster Power 30 PTO Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner on my carpets, my trusty Mielle and Dyson have been relegated to a storage cupboard. This vacuum cleaner is absolutely incredible at thoroughly cleaning carpets. If you’re a pet owner that struggles to keep your carpets hair-free, this vacuum cleaner is truly a game-changer.

That said, it would only really work this well on strong and tough carpets. Due to its sheer power, I wouldn’t want to chance it on delicate materials, although chances are that anyone with a house full of pets wouldn’t have fragile rugs or carpets anyway!

Dry Vacuuming Sawdust

If you do a lot of DIY or construction work, then you’ll know full well how messy things can get once the sawdust starts flying around. So, I put this vacuum cleaner to work in two sawdust-filled areas.

The first was the shed where I cut wood with a table saw, and the sawdust on the floor was several inches high. I used the extension wand connected to the hose but didn’t add a head attachment on, and it worked beautifully. It sucks up sawdust quickly and neatly, without sending a mini dust storm into the air.

I then used the vacuum cleaner in a shed that I’m currently building, where all the sawdust had collected into a 2-3 inch layer in one area. I tested out multiple attachments and they were all able to clear the sawdust in no time.

Dry Vacuuming Rubble and Larger Debris

I recently fitted a new wood-burning stove into my living room, which involved breaking up the old hearth, along with a few other bits of concrete. This left the area full of hard pieces of rubble. 

Again, this vacuum cleaner handled it all like a pro. You’re only limited by the size of the hose, which enables it to pick up fairly large chunks of debris. With the tank being made of stainless steel, I wasn’t worried about causing any damage to the body of the vacuum cleaner, although I was concerned that some of the sharper pieces of rubble could tear the filter within. Fortunately, it didn’t – the filter is much stronger than it looks and was capable of withstanding the harder material that flew in at it.

Connecting to Power Tools

One of the unique features that this vacuum cleaner boasts is the ability to be connected directly to power tools. So long as the tool in question is under 1500W, you simply attach the hose to the tool and plug the tool into the power take-off socket, which enables the vacuum cleaner to be operated remotely from the power tool. 

This would be ideal for something like a sander but, unfortunately, mine wasn’t working. So, instead, I connected it up to my power jigsaw. This tool didn’t have anywhere for me to insert the hose into, but I was still able to plug it into the vacuum cleaner to test out its remote operation.

I wasn’t surprised to find that it worked perfectly. Once you turn your power tool on, it takes a few seconds before the vacuum cleaner kicks into action. Then, once you’ve stopped using your power tool, the vacuum cleaner keeps going for a few seconds before turning itself off. It’s a very useful feature for preventing your work area from filling up with dust in the first place! 

Wet Vacuuming Liquids

Whether you have a big spill to tidy up or you’re looking for a way to drain a pond or a hot tub, the fact that this vacuum cleaner is designed to work with liquids is a huge bonus. To test out how well it does this, I filled a bucket with water and then used the vacuum cleaner to suck this up. 

The speed at which it did so genuinely surprised me – it emptied the bucket in about 5 seconds. I wasn’t prepared for it to do this quite so quickly – I even refilled the bucket twice more to make sure that it wasn’t a fluke, but it worked at the same speed each time. 

I then opened up the drainage plug at the bottom of the tank to release the water – another very clever feature that worked brilliantly! It’s worth noting that although the tank is 30 litres in size, it’ll need to be emptied after it has collected up around 23 litres of liquid. Still, that’s a good volume, especially considering that emptying the tank out is so easy to do.

Wet Vacuuming Gutters

Hoovering up wet leaves may seem like a strange concept, but it can save a fair bit of time if you’re ever cleaning out gutters! Since we’ve had a fair bit of rain lately, all of the leaves around my farm and in my gutters were wet, so I used the foam filter to do this.

Unfortunately, I found that the wet leaves clogged the hose up pretty quickly. It wasn’t so much the fact that they were wet, but more the size of the leaves (mainly large sycamore leaves). If the leaves were smaller, then this vacuum cleaner would be able to clear your gutters out with no problems.

The Blower Function

Having a blower feature on a vacuum cleaner is another unusual, but very thoughtful, feature. To activate this, you unclip the hose from the front of the tank and attach it to the back, before turning the vacuum cleaner on like normal.

Last autumn, I tested and reviewed dedicated cordless leaf blowers, and I wasn’t expecting this vacuum cleaner to be comparable in terms of performance. However, it really did blow me away (pun intended!). It was able to move large quantities of wet leaves without any issues, which many leaf blowers struggle with. I usually use a leaf blower in my workshop too when I need to shift sawdust, but this vacuum cleaner managed to get that done so much more effectively.

I also used the blower function to clean out the paper filter in the tank and it did this well too. It dislodged the majority of the dirt and debris that had gotten caught up in the folds of the filter, leaving it looking almost like new!

The Vacmaster Power 30 PTO Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner is fitted with a 1500W motor. Many people believe that the stronger the wattage of a vacuum cleaner, the more powerful its suction will be. However, this isn’t quite the case.

The wattage simply refers to how much electricity a motor uses. On the other hand, suction is determined by a number of other factors, including air flow, water lift, and horsepower. And when it comes to this vacuum cleaner, suction truly excels.

As I mentioned earlier, this vacuum cleaner is capable of picking up even larger and heavier pieces of debris. When it comes to lighter materials, such as sawdust, you can hold the nozzle a few inches away and its pull is still strong enough to clear the area. I didn’t notice a reduction in suction when I had the extensions attached either, which is definitely impressive!

The fact that there’s an air flow control means that you can also adjust the suction power to a certain extent. This is ideal if you’re using the vacuum cleaner around items that you don’t want it to pick up, such as curtains.

At 8.2kg, this vacuum cleaner is a little heavier than the average domestic vacuum cleaner. However, the four casters that it sits on are impeccably designed, meaning that you really don’t feel the weight of the machine. The carry handle at the top of the tank is sturdy too, enabling you to manoeuvre the vacuum cleaner without much effort, even over rough ground. 

The floor head attachment also comes with its own set of large and stable wheels. These allow you to easily swivel the head of the vacuum cleaner around without having to lift it up.

This vacuum cleaner comes with a 5m power cable, which is actually a little shorter than what I’m used to. However, since I was using an extension lead with this vacuum cleaner anyway, the cable length worked just fine for me and didn’t once tangle up.

It may offer a number of unique features, but the simplicity of this vacuum cleaner’s design means that it’s extremely easy to use. There aren’t lots of different buttons and switches to deal with – instead, the power button is the only one on the machine, so you can’t really get things wrong!

The variety of attachments that come with this vacuum cleaner is a huge help too. No matter the cleaning task you have in mind, chances are that you’ll already have an attachment that’s perfect for the job, which really helps to speed things up.

Emptying the vacuum cleaner couldn’t be any easier either. I’ve already talked about how convenient the drainage plug at the bottom of the tank is for liquids, but clearing it of dry material also only takes a few seconds. All you need to do is unclip and remove the top of the tank, tip the tank upside down to empty out its contents, and then replace the lid. The tank itself is quite light, meaning that even a full load doesn’t require many muscles to empty!

Not only is using this vacuum cleaner easy, but storing it is very convenient too. The power cable can be wound up at the back of the machine and all of the attachments slot into the base, enabling you to store everything as one compact unit. 

The only real flaw that I could find with this vacuum cleaner was how loud it is. That said, if you’re using it in a workshop where you already regularly use noisy power tools, then chances are that this won’t be much of an issue.

However, if you’re planning on using this vacuum cleaner in a domestic setting in a flat or a semi-detached house, then you’ll need to be mindful of the fact that the neighbours will most likely hear this machine through the walls.

Vacuum cleaners are usually very safe to use, meaning that they don’t require a long list of safety features built into them. However, one issue that people often have when hoovering is static – the friction that results from the hose rubbing against the debris that it’s picking up commonly causes mild electric shocks.

To counter this, Cleva has attached an anti-static grounding chain to the bottom of the tank. This discharges any static energy that starts to build up, meaning that you won’t need to worry about electric shocks when using this machine.

Considering all of the different features offered by this vacuum cleaner, its price is a steal. It may not look quite as sleek and stylish as some of the alternatives from bigger-name brands, but it’s so much more powerful, versatile, and effective, making it an amazing deal.

It also comes with just about all of the accessories that you could ever require. Between the extension tubes, the floor head, the crevice tool, and the dusting tool, there really isn’t anything else that you would need, no matter what you were vacuuming.

One thing that often adds to the long-term cost of a vacuum cleaner is having to replace the filter and the bags. However, in this case, it’s easy enough to manually clean the filter, especially if you use the machine’s blower function to your advantage. That said, you also have the option of purchasing an additional nylon filter with this machine – they don’t tend to be quite as good when it comes to extremely dusty environments, but they’re known for lasting longer.

The dust bag that comes with this vacuum cleaner is optional. The instructions recommend that it’s used when dealing with large volumes of fine dust, as this helps to protect the filter. Replacement bags aren’t expensive – they’re actually much cheaper than those of some of the bigger-name brands out there. Of course, if you put some extra effort into cleaning the filter each time you’ve used the vacuum cleaner, then you’ll likely get away with never needing to use a dust bag.

It’s not often that I review a product that doesn’t have any faults. However, other than its noise level, which is to be expected if you’re looking for a powerful machine, this vacuum cleaner really has no flaws. It’s cleverly designed, easy to use, and has amazing suction. Even better, it’s incredibly versatile thanks to the many different features and functions that it offers. 

Whether you’re looking for a high-performance vacuum cleaner to use in your home or need something fast and effective for heavier-duty workshop cleaning tasks, I would highly recommend going with the Vacmaster Power 30 PTO Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner. It truly is the best vacuum wet and dry cleaner that I have ever used – I only wish that I had discovered it sooner!