Never came across using a shop vac for pool use on the forum yet, so I have to ask what you are going to use it for? In the past, we've always had small Intex pools and we would drain for winter leaving about 6 inches in to keep the pool from blowing away. In the spring, I would use the shop vac to remove the remaining 2 inches and any other junk to start with a fresh clean empty pool to fill. If you are using a shop vac to remove a lot of water from the pool for any reason, I would go with a much larger capacity than I think a 2.5 hp would be.
At work I am an extremely heavy user of a shop vac. We have many many shop vacs around the plant. Some of them run nearly 24/7. Many of them are constantly on/off/on/off every hour.
I personally have used many different brands of shop vacs. True Shop Vac brand, Lowes brand, Craftsman brand, those all would last several weeks before we burn them up. I picked up a Home Depot Rigid 16 gallon 6.5 hp and used it for several years. Again, that was weeks with other brands and the Rigid for years.
We deal with a lot of carbon black dust, which gets into everything on a shop vac (and everything else that isn't a shop vac also.) That is why they would burn up within weeks.
I love my Rigid shop vac at work so much, I bought the same one for at home and I wouldn't buy any other shop vac for myself personally.
Where all our other shop vacs would burn up the motors within weeks, the Rigid has just 2 flaws that are easily fixed. With heavy continuous use (I'm talking running for hours) the plug gets hot and melts and/or the switch gets hot and melts. At work we just cut the plug off and put on a heavy duty plug and take the handle apart and replace the switch with a heavier duty switch. After several years when the motor finally does burns up, we remove the plug and switch and keep for when the replacement shop vac switch and plug finally goes (again, I run the vac for hours at a time.)
I don't work for Rigid or for Home Depot. In fact, my wife works for Lowes and I shop mostly at Home Depot, LOL. Just wanted to put this out because of how impressed I am and how much I love my Rigid Shop Vacs after burning up every other brand week after week before getting the Rigid.
