We had a visit by a saleswoman who was trying to sell us a $2,000 "Rainbow cleaning system". For just listening, we received a gift of some bed sheet and also a "gift travel certificate" from a company called "Certs, Inc". (which is a florida based travel gifts company that does not make me very excited)
There is no filter, like on conventional vacuums that trap particles into a filter. Water acts as a filter.
The machine was supposedly "1.9 HP", however, when measured with my Kill-A-Watt power meter, it registered only 850 watts consumed from the wall outlet, so it could not be more than 1 HP. OK, we all know that everyone is lying about HP these days. No biggie. If it was 1.9 HP, it would trip the breakers all the time.
As a side comment, what we have now is a Sears Kenmore upright vacuum that is a real beast, it uses about 13 amps and has a HEPA filter.
Then the saleswoman proceeded to make various points, which I may not remember all or in correct order, but I will mention a few.
- Vacuum cleaners do not pick up sand from carpets/rugs, well. No comment on my part.
- After just 15 minutes of use, due to dust getting into the fine mesh of the vacuum's filter, the "air flow" diminishes due to dust blocking the little pores. So a vacuum cleaner is not usable.
This was a total lie, as was easy to demonstrate with my vacuum which has its bag 2/3 full already. It still sucked well and produced a lot of suction and air flow.
- Vacuums blow dust around and increase amount of dust.
I cannot say that it is false, for sure, but the 2.3 full bag in our vacuum attests that it traps at least some dust. Plus, it does have a HEPA filter.
She did some acrobatics by taking out the HEPA filter, which had some dust on the back, kind of mashed it in her hands a little and put back, -- then when the vacuum turned on, a lot of dust was indeed blown out.
- Then there were some demonstrations that Rainbow would still pick up dust after vacuuming with a Sears vacuum, which could possibly be true but I think that she cheated a bit by going outside the area that I actually vacuumed, a bit -- it is kind of hard to tell, I think so but my spouse is not so sure.
- She made some claims about infections that her system prevented, which went somewhat over my head but overall I was not sure if it was not complete bunk.
We did not purchase this system in the end, but I wanted to hear some opinions on this stuff.
i