A Shop Safety Cabinet for PPE

I’ve wanted some type of cabinet in my workshop for PPE and earlier this year I saw a cool cabinet that I thought might be perfect. Fast forward to the new house, the wall, and a new shop (post coming soon), so when I saw the Facebook Marketplace listing again I jumped on it.

Aren’t the graphics great on those green stickers? I only paid $25 for this Sellstrom Model 2000 Germicidal Cabinet. A new one is currently 51% off on Amazon, which brings it down to $599 and replacement UV light bulbs cost over $100! This unit had some rust, like it had been sitting in a puddle, but otherwise it barely seemed used. The light bulb still works and so does the timer pictured below, which can be set to run for up to 5 minutes. You can also see the UV light bulb on inside the cabinet, through that tiny window.

I used a razor blade to scrape as much of the rust off as I could and then used a sanding block. I cleaned the areas with mineral spirits and masked them off with painter’s tape. The bare metal got a coat of rusty metal primer.

The few inside corners were painted with a non-matching white, which nobody will see. I painted the bottom exterior area with some black, which turned out great. I hung the cabinet near the door and surrounded it with my glove dispenser and other safety stuff.

Unclog a Bissell Carpet Cleaner

If you have a Bissell carpet cleaner that won’t spray, the heater core might be clogged up. Start removing screws and parts (you can probably find a video on YouTube for your model) until you find a rectangular metal part with wires and hoses connected. For this model it turned out I didn’t need to take the handle pieces apart.

After you remove the wires and hoses, you should be able to pull the heater core out.

Then you can pop off the cover and clean out the inside. I should have taken a picture of the junk that was caked in the channels, but this is what it looked like after I did a quick cleaning.

Then comes the fun part of trying to fit everything back together. 🙂 I had to do it twice because I didn’t route some of the hoses properly. The unit works again though!