The vacuum cleaner works great and I am completely satisfied with its performance. It was designed to clean wood stoves and I used it in our Vermont foundry furnace. It works well as long as you drive slowly and clean the filter frequently. The filter will clog after about 10 minutes of vacuuming the ash, but ash is a nasty thing. Try using a regular vacuum cleaner and you'll blow ash all over the house through the exhaust pipe. I love it!