How many cfms are lost due to the restrictions of a blower filter? Seems like a lot. Looks very restrictive. Would it be better to have 2 pool filter types inline? This way seems to allow the blower to maximize air movement in the tank.
Am I over thinking this? Does it really matter where the filter is placed - before or after the tank.
A blower PROTECTION filter is not really putting any restriction on your blower....unless it becomes dirty.
The downside of taking them off is not really for everyday work, unless a guy is one of those that lets the blower filter get completely coated with debris from not prefiltering incoming dirty water. I do not believe most heavy objects such as...pennies, paperclips,broken glass, bobbypins and such....these things sink to the bottom of the tank, and there are usually baffles to block or redirect things of this type.
Things that float cause more of a problem hair, wood chips some types of plastics, rags,....these become more likely to get sucked up into blower as the water and foam fill the tank.
Many TM's have blower preheaters ( like heater core type ) If you have these on your TM it might be a good idea to check/clean them also as over time small amounts of debris that do make it through the system stop on the face of your BHX. If you have ever sucked up foam and had it blow through your BHX more than likely you will have some build up on them, this can cause CFM to drop, blower to get hotter due to blockage.
The biggest thing about Blower Filter is to protect from a mishap like when you forget about your towel in your pocket and whoops it is gone, or if you are working on rig ( rags again) while running it. Any time you are working with blower running and open access to blower intake many things can some how find there way to the strong vac.
When I was building the VWTM at my old shop I had it running and the guy next door came over, I had nothing on blowers just the open port, he started to place his hand over the open port, luckily I saw him reaching for it and yellled DON'T !!! It was so close it sucked his hand! but the loud yell of Don't saved his fingers, He did bloody his hand but only due to it sucking his hand down and cutting it on the threads of the intake port.
Scared the crap out of him and me.
On a final note, Blower Protection Filter once the wand is on the carpet and CFM's have naturally dropped due to vacuum load will be well be way more than enough to flow what air is coming nto the waste tank to the blower.
As far as Dev, SS CDV, Rc filters vs the other smaller filters, there size is where they shine, a smaller filter flows pretty good actually when clean, more than enough when wand is on carpet, the problem is it only takes a cup of debris to start to affect its flow, they are affected much much sooner.
Hope this helps.
