Last year I made the mistake of buying a cheaper ash vac for our pellet stove thinking to save some money. WRONG! The thing broke after two months, even though I was very careful about cleaning it. Dustless Technologies MU405 I could’nt find filters for it anyway. This year I bought the Cougar ash vac. Wow, what a differance! Works great and easy to take care of. Love being able to do a quick bag dust off with the toggle on top without opening the unit and no problem finding filters. Bought this Ash Vacuum to replace a Dewalt vacuum I was using. After a month of use with this vacuum on both our wood stove and pellet stove it works as advertised. This tool is designed for vacuuming ASH only and NOT chunks. It will pick up small pieces without clogging (less than 3/4″ diameter pieces) but anything larger than that will clog up the offset head of the metal hose adapter. With wood stove use, one should remove any large pieces with fireplace scoop shovel before vacuuming out the ash. A good feature is that if the vacuum suction decreases then you can shake on the external rod that cleans the filters inside the canister without making a mess. What I do not like about the rod is that it is enclosed by a long threaded cap that you remove to get access to the rod. The threads are too fine so threading the cap back on can be difficult. This could have been solved with the use of deep threads instead of fine threads. The filter system works very well so there is no worries about the vacuum filling your room up with a fine dust. The vacuum is quite loud but to me that does not rate it any lower. The larger the motor the more suction hence the more noise. Wear ear plugs if it bothers you that much but I agree with others here that the noise is overstated and not as bad as most say. The vacuum as a whole seems to be well built and it is Made in USA and that makes a difference to me.