Ceramic candle filters have been developed for cleaning high-temperature gas streams. They have demonstrated high collection efficiencies under normal operating conditions, but the brittle materials can fail suddenly with disastrous consequences. Reverse pulse cleaning has been shown to introduce severe thermal stressing of the material. Modelling of the flows to estimate the life of the element is difficult due to non-uniformities in the material. It is important to obtain experimental measurements of flows in the candle to provide input to stress models. In addition it is essential to ensure uniform cleaning of the filter and knowledge of the pulse cleaning flow processes are also important for this. This paper reports velocity measurements obtained using a hot-wire probe located at different positions along the length of a ceramic candle filter. The data have been analysed to estimate the outflow along the length of the candle filter to investigate the cleaning potential of different configurations and operating parameters. The effect of pulse length on cleaning performance was investigated for cases with and without a venturi educer. It was found that the maximum peak mean velocity was produced at a pulse duration of 0.2 s. Longer duration pulses did not have a significant influence on the maximum velocity levels inside the filter.