Author Topic: Vacuum Cleaners  (Read 12623 times)

Torslanda

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Vacuum Cleaners
« on: 17 September, 2012, 03:41:45 pm »
Upright or cylinder? Bagged or bagless?

What is recommended? What do we need a barge pole for?

Purely domestic, maybe the odd car interior but strictly no workshop stuff and we don't need an aquavac.
VELOMANCER

Well that's the more blunt way of putting it but as usual he's dead right.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #1 on: 17 September, 2012, 03:45:55 pm »
I love my Henry but YMMV.

Jaded

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Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #2 on: 17 September, 2012, 03:51:25 pm »
In my experience, if you buy a Dyson you will have an opportunity to choose another vacuum sooner than you expected.
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #3 on: 17 September, 2012, 03:54:01 pm »
My Miele S2111 bagged, cylinder vacuum is quite simply the best I have ever had by a long margin. Great value at £125 when I bought mine a year ago.
Haggerty F, Haggerty R, Tomkins, Noble, Carrick, Robson, Crapper, Dewhurst, Macintyre, Treadmore, Davitt.

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #4 on: 17 September, 2012, 03:58:59 pm »
My mum has recently bought one of these^.

I am duly impressed with it's performance.

Much better and quieter, than my bigger, older Miele S251i

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #5 on: 17 September, 2012, 04:02:26 pm »
We have a Henry.

I can't say it's overworked.
Getting there...

marcusjb

  • Full of bon courage.
Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #6 on: 17 September, 2012, 04:04:27 pm »
Henry users here (well, our cleaner uses it mostly!).

 Indestructible, and if you do manage to break anything, you can buy spare parts very easily and inexpensivly.

Ours copes fine with everything we throw at it.

They are not very exciting, don't have oodles of clever technology, but that cute little face. How could you not want one?
Right! What's next?

Ooooh. That sounds like a daft idea.  I am in!

Woofage

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Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #7 on: 17 September, 2012, 04:07:11 pm »
I love my Henry but YMMV.

Indeed it will. I burned out the motor of an as-new Henry in about 20 minutes ::-).

We have a pair of Dysons* which have been excellent.

* one upstairs, one downstairs.
Pen Pusher

clifftaylor

  • Max - "make mine a Beophar Hairball Paste please"
Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #8 on: 17 September, 2012, 04:15:30 pm »
Did have a Dyson, which broke, now use a Miele Cat & Dog which is fine.

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #9 on: 17 September, 2012, 04:17:06 pm »
*interested as gave up on last cheap hoover-now binned- just after Mr Smith said "don't EVER ask me to do that again"*

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #10 on: 17 September, 2012, 04:24:17 pm »
I love my Henry but YMMV.

Indeed it will. I burned out the motor of an as-new Henry in about 20 minutes ::-).

We have a pair of Dysons* which have been excellent.

* one upstairs, one downstairs.
Matches our experience. One dyson that must be 12-14 years old now. Has needed spare parts occasionally - which were supplied free by Dyson (not by local ripoff shop).
<i>Marmite slave</i>

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #11 on: 17 September, 2012, 04:27:13 pm »
Woofage - how did you burn out a Henry in 20 minutes?
Ours was seriously abused when renovating our house - brick dust and fragments, plaster dust, oodles of normal house dust, disintegrating carpets and he still works with a little smile on his face.
Henry is also pretty cheap (<£100), made in Britain and all the parts are available to buy and easy to fit.  If you can use a screwdriver you can replace every part in your Henry!

Edit: we don't have, and never will have, pets, so can't comment on suitability for dog hair and the like.

Kim

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Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #12 on: 17 September, 2012, 04:33:45 pm »
What's the long hair rating?  Much as I admire Henrys, I've yet to meet a cylinder vacuum that did a decent job of extracting copious amounts of long human hair from carpets.  Upwrongs will happily collect the hair, and either tangle it round their roller or turn it into tribbles with which to block their internal tubing.

All the Dysons I've had have suffered from being made of brittle plastic, overly complicated (and therefore blockage-prone) internal plumbing and too many fiddly self-untapping screws required to de-hair the roller.  These issues aside, they've been pretty good, so if you're mostly hoovering dust, they're okay.

After several Dysons (augmented with a £20 goblin to give real suction on a flexible hose[1] for things like the stairs), I found myself pining for my mum's 1970s Hoover.  It did what it said on the tin.  What I ended up doing was buying a second hand Kirby G6 on eBay.  Kirby are an evil company known for their unethical sales tactics, but they appear to have refined the classic upright vacuum cleaner design to something approximating industrial perfection.  This thing will literally beat the dirt out of your carpet while providing levels of suction that mean that it's almost impossible to push along - which is why they added power-driven wheels.  The G6 is the last model where pretty much all the important components were made out of metal, rather than plastic, and spares are readily available.  It's a heavy beast of a machine (hence they regularly come up on eBay when people discover they're too frail to carry them up and down stairs), and you still have to unclog the roller, but that's a straightforward job that doesn't require tools.  I rather like it, even if it sounds like a jet engine and did try to eat me that time.  It's the sort of hoover I can imagine Isambard Kingdom Brunel using.


[1] The Dyson we had at the time had the most idiotic hose arrangement I've ever seen: the handle would detach, and extend on the end of a metre or so of rigid metal tubing, followed by the flexible hose.  While the host could be detached for unclogging, the attachments were all designed to fit the oriface on the end of the handle, not the hose.  How you're supposed to do the stairs with a metre long nozzle, I don't know.

Woofage

  • Tofu-eating Wokerati
  • Ain't no hooves on my bike.
Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #13 on: 17 September, 2012, 04:40:45 pm »
Woofage - how did you burn out a Henry in 20 minutes?

Cleaning up plaster dust after taking down a lath and plaster ceiling. Nothing too demanding. We finished the job with the Dyson..

I'm sure the unit was sub-par, but I am simply reporting my experience (as is customary on a forum such as this ;)).
Pen Pusher

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #14 on: 17 September, 2012, 05:05:59 pm »
In my experience, if you buy a Dyson you will have an opportunity to choose another vacuum sooner than you expected.

We've had our Dyson 15 years at least, no faults, but as of this year no spares available should it go wrong.
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

AndyK

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #15 on: 17 September, 2012, 05:18:54 pm »
I have a Henry, it's indestructible and very powerful.

 Had a Dyson but it was crap, it kept breaking. What decided me I would never get another Dyson is they have mobile repair vans. If they were that great they wouldn't need a repair service.

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #16 on: 17 September, 2012, 05:25:36 pm »
Our (DC02 stair-hugging) Dyson's still going strong after mebbe 15 yrs - the cable rewind's a bit weak now (and replacements non-existant), and I've had to re-terminate the mains cable within it once, but otherwise ok. The modern equivalents seem a bit wobbly and flexible but equally they may be more like to bounce than break..

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #17 on: 17 September, 2012, 06:16:08 pm »
/bloke in pub mode/
Tell you what, I've used an awful lot of hovers in my time, an awful lot.
/end of bloke in pub mode/

Interestingly, I'd say the three most common that I've found in peoples homes are those mentioned in this thread.

The Miele is a quality vacuum, no doubt. Always performs to a high standard.

I have a basic Henry that I rescued before it was being chcucked out by the cleaners in a Dental surgery because they reckoned it had had it]. I've used the same bag multiple times for over a year now [multi-layered fabric thing, with the bottom cut off and held with a plastic clip].

But Dysons are very weird machines - some are really excellent and some are a complete pile of crap. Not all Dysons are the same, that's for sure. They've made a fair few different models. If people think Dysons are bad, then try some of the other cheap bagless vacuums.  :facepalm:

Thing about domestic vacuums is, regardless of whether it's bagged or bagless, you need to keep the filtration system clean [which often means washing the filters and making sure they're completely dry]. If you start using it for building work, hovering up loads of fine dust then anything, regardless of how well it's made, will soon get clogged up and become a vacuum that's crap. Loads of fine dust particles will eventually get through anything that breathes and clog the filters.

I do so feel I've lead such an interesting life sometimes!

Garry Broad

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Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #18 on: 17 September, 2012, 06:23:37 pm »
Vacuum cleaner? If your vacuum needs cleaning, it's not a proper vacuum!
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Jaded

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Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #19 on: 17 September, 2012, 06:25:21 pm »
Dyson. The Marmite of vacuum cleaners.
It is simpler than it looks.

Biggsy

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Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #20 on: 17 September, 2012, 06:55:43 pm »
My Henry smells.
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Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #21 on: 17 September, 2012, 06:58:48 pm »
My Henry smells.

Throw some Biotex / laundry powder onto the floor and Henry it up.

Job done.

It'll still smell, but do so a bit sweeter.

Srsly.

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #22 on: 17 September, 2012, 07:03:11 pm »
I bought a VAX121 in 1993 and it's still going strong.


Edit: Just googled Henry vacuum cleaners and it's just like a VAX121 :thumbsup:

red marley

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #23 on: 17 September, 2012, 07:06:35 pm »
I had a long conversation with the owner of the Clapton Vac Centre who knows more about vacuum cleaners than a human being really ought to.

He said he makes a tidy packet repairing Dysons but in all conscience couldn't sell one to anyone for precisely that reason. He recommended Sebo as a make. They are generally used by commercial cleaners but do domestic sales too. I've had my Sebo for about a year or so now. Not too pricy, very reliable, light (for its power) and importantly for me, quiet.

Re: Vacuum Cleaners
« Reply #24 on: 17 September, 2012, 07:15:22 pm »
.......Thing about domestic vacuums is, regardless of whether it's bagged or bagless, you need to keep the filtration system clean [which often means washing the filters and making sure they're completely dry]. If you start using it for building work, hovering up loads of fine dust then anything, regardless of how well it's made, will soon get clogged up and become a vacuum that's crap. Loads of fine dust particles will eventually get through anything that breathes and clog the filters........

I did some work with Electrolux when I was at college (busy designing a vacuum cleaner for the new millennium  ::-))

Key things to vacuum cleaner efficiency are twofold.

Firstly, as VB says, filtration. The secrets which go into vac bag design are up there with tea bag design and what they keep in and what they let through - and, needless to say are closely guarded.
The people who design the materials for tea bags are unsurprisingly the same folk who do the materials for hoover bags.

Secondly, the metal plate with grooves in it which sits on the underside of the bit you push along the floor.
Apparently there's only two or three companies worldwide that produce these plates and sell them on to vacuum cleaner manufacturers.
It's the minute differences in the radii of the grooves and slots of these plates which determine how much of your grot ends up in the bag and how much remains in your shag pile carpet.

Nothing to do with wattage, see-thru coloured acrylic components, or 'on board' tools - of which incidentally, Electrolux's informal view was 'toys which the punter asks for'.

ETA - Nilfisk. I believe it's what they use to deep clean hospitals when they've finished building them.

Further ETA -
.... If people think Dysons are bad, then try some of the other cheap bagless vacuums.  :facepalm:....
Oh My Lord.
Mother had a Samsung one of these (prior to her current Miele), which played a little electronic tune whenever you turned it on (Why?)
And who's detritus chamber required emptying after hoovering each room. (Mum's rooms really aren't that palatial, or dirty)
It was the biggest piece of consumer durable §h!te I have ever encountered.
How people can manufacture stuff like this and not be in prison astonishes me.