Central Vacuum cheap

[Dustin]

Did anyone read the "Home Central Vacuum System" article on the latest Backwoods Home mag? Basically, the concept is to use a shopvac as the central vacuum and you put in regular old PVC piping in the walls with standard central vac fixtures for the house terminating down to the basement or in a little attached enclosure for the shopvac outside. Sounds very interesting, especially since it looks like most central vac systems have about 2 HP and the average shop vac has 3-5 (I just picked up a 5 HP Rigid -lifetime warranty too- for $25 at Home Depot during their Black Friday deals). I also noticed a way to improve on the design- by using X10 modules instead of messing with low-voltage relay wire and transformer to switch the power on or off  (though you could also just wire the outlet to a switch somewhere). You could buy a cheap $25 remote and appliance module (even cheaper if you buy multiples for controlling other stuff) and just use the remote to control the power to the shopvac.
Sounds like a deal! You could use all the normal air-powered central vac tools and purchase them over the internet, or even better, get them used.