Shop Vacuum--filter neccessary?

[Bank of Dad]

I vac the horses with the shop vac and the filters's pretty cruddy, made worse by someone unnamed who used it with water. Do I really need a filter on it for dry vacuuming?

[Tom King]

If you don't use the filter all the dust, and everything else that gets sucked up, will just get blown out the exhaust and into the air getting all over everything. Even a tiny hole in a filter will blow dust all over. The Gore replacement filters are worth the cost. They can be cleaned with a hose and reused many times.

[MistyBlue]

Yup, get a washable filter. A little more expensive, definitely worth the cost though. Just remove the old filter, bring it to a hardware store and they can find a replacement that matches in size.
I tried removing my filer and using it without the filter after I used my shop vac for water removal too...I had forgotten to remove the filter to suck up the water and it got soaked and nasty. :no: (and smelled gross)
Without a filter all I was doing was sucking dirt from one end of the vac and blowing it all over the place out of the other end of the vac. :sigh: Not one of my better ideas, LOL!