I am looking to replace my small Dewalt Vacumn  that I use to clean my grills and I am looking for recommendations for handheld vacuum cleaners
thanks

Curious as to what you mean by 'hand held'.

I have an old 'dirt devil' hand held and it's bulky. It werks for the car, but I couldn't use it on my pit.

I have a small canister vac with a 2 stage filter I use and it works great. The hose is long enough that the canister can sit on the deck, and when disposing time comes, I just take off the hose, unplug it, and take it to the trash and dump it out. Starting out with clean filters, I can get that thing full to the top before it starts complaining.

I have three cordless Dysons, one on the boat and two at home. Not too sure how well they would work on the pit due to volume, but for everything they are great. They came with lots of attachments including two motorized heads, one small for the car and a larger one for floors. The rechargeable battery last for ~20 minutes on high and 30 minutes on low. The down side is that they are spendy, typically over $300 each. It's a long story how I came to have three but it is by far the best non wet/dry vacuum that I've ever had.

For cleaning ash out of a pit my suggestion is to go to Wal-Mart, Bi-Mart, Amazon or your favorite hardware store and buy a cheap 2 or 2 1/2 gallon vacuum. No way would I spend much money to do this kind of chore, but thats just me. I have a cheap Ace hardware canister vacuum that I got on sale for under $20.00 and it has served me well for roughly 4 years now. Has more than paid for itself several times over. Now that I have a MAK 2 star the vacuum's service is reduced dramatically but still comes in handy for those areas hard to reach otherwise.

I used a five gallon home depot bucket with their buckethead vacuum attached as the lid.

Stinger 2.5 gal, just under $30 at HD.   It has only one function ... to clean out the Traeger.   

DK

I used a five gallon home depot bucket with their buckethead vacuum attached as the lid.

Same here.  It is still working after 5 years of use.  Easy to clean. and cheap enough that if it died tomorrow, I wouldn't care.

I used a five gallon home depot bucket with their buckethead vacuum attached as the lid.

Same here.  It is still working after 5 years of use.  Easy to clean. and cheap enough that if it died tomorrow, I wouldn't care.

Probably about as long as I have been using mine.  I never changed a filter or any of that stuff.

I use a cordless Makita, dragging more cords around, means doesn't get cleaned as often.

 "Hand Held" may not fit well in some locations in the pit unless it has a hose.

 As electricity is there for the pit, I see no real need to go cordless.

 I use a 5 gal/6 hp, Shop Vac with a yellow bag intended for fine dust..It's small, light weight, extremely powerful and easily moved about... The bag hasn't been changed in over a year of 5 to 6 day/ wk use.