I have a 12 amp wall mounted shop vac, but I’m not allowed to screw into the walls of my rental garage. I also want to use it at the same time as other high power tools, like my table saw or drill press. This is a problem, because if the tool and the vacuum are both running on the same 15 amp circuit, the breaker trips. My rental garage has a single 15 amp circuit for all of the outlets. Except this one, which is on the same circuit as the lights.

I doubt I’ll be opening or closing the garage door at the same time as I run the shop vac, so putting the vacuum on the lighting circuit solves a lot of problems.

I bolted a 2×4 to the metal rail with 5/16″ screws and nuts and then mounted the vacuum to that.

My countsink bit was too small to fully fit the head of this 5/16 screw, so I drilled a 1/8″ pilot hole, then used my 5/8″ spade bit to drill a small impression before drilling with 1/4″ and 5/16″ bits and then using the countersink bit for the bottom of the conic section.

I needed somewhere for the hose, and the mount needed stabilizing along the Z axis so it doesn’t wobble when you turn the vacuum on or off, so I put another 2×4 on the other side for the hose mount and connected them together with deck screws for stability. I wired up a switched outlet that I can (just barely) reach from the ground, with an extra outlet in case I want to plug anything else into the secondary circuit.

Now I can run the vacuum at the same time as other high current shop equipment because they are on different circuits, and it’s off the floor and out of the way.

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