Try this next time you want to save some money on ground cover.

[Anonymous]

Ok, i's ground cover time. The layout is painted a dark earth, and the matt glue has been applied and it's ready for the first coat of ground cover. THis is the fine stuff for covering the ground, looks like grass. Costs a pretty penny also. So my technique is to flood the area, pressing down on loose ground cover to press in the stuff at the bottom. Unfortunally this is the only way i can cover the walls of my mountains with any constinscy. However this allows for a lot of it to potentially go to waste.
WEll i flooded it tonight, and it looks great, then i was sitting there looking at it, trying to come up with a good idea on how to clean it and save it. The answer hit me in the head, literly. My wife nailed me in the head with a pair of old pantyhose to throw out. I checked both sides, one was run bad, the other was perfect. I threaded this ok side down the mouth of my shop vac. I have the 2" nozzle and it fit perfectly. I then just hooked the end of the hose over the end of the shop vac hose. Turn on vac, and it filled it perfectly. I filled it up to about 2 feet long, stuffed full. THis i then emptied into a big bucket and it is in perfect shape to reuse.
Give this a try some time. And if you've heard about this before, sorry. Bill

[rexhea]

I haven't heard it before. Good idea Bill. I have needed an easy way to pickup the excess and be able to reuse it. I wonder if a shop vac would be too much suction? If so, I guess I could always drag the wife's vac out.

Thanks, REX

[Anonymous]

Great idea crossracer100. I would have never thought of that. I hope you dont mind but I wanted to expand your idea so I posted another forum for all money and time saving ideas. You get the credit for getting the ball rolling around in my head.

[Anonymous]

You might also try an ordinary dust buster. I've been using good old Adirondack dirt as a ground cover, sifted, baked to kill nasties and spread on wet painted surfaces. While it's cheap enough, I hate to waste anything and found that using the dust buster let me vaccuum it up & dump it back into its coffee can for another go-round.

The plastic dirt collecting part is easy to wash out with soap & water.

Wayne

[dave9999]

Bill,
Sounds like a good way to pick up all that excess ballast also. Thanks for the tip. Dave

[Anonymous]

Ok, additional info. It was size Q pantiehose, and they were black.LOL and more important, it was a craftsman 6.0 hp shop vac, so it had some suction. LOL What was nice was how well it compressed the materiel into the sock, the only tough time was removing it, took about 5 minutes.

[Anonymous]

Didn't want this to get lost. Bill

[orsonroy]

I've got a $15 Dust Buster for just this purpose. I bought two: one for the wife to use around the house, and one marked "scenery only", after I saw her eyeing it for everyday household use!