Actually, as I wrote in another posting, they work better for plaster dust than any other cleaner I've tried. The washable filter will need rinsing out after perhaps 4 or 5 bin fulls of plaster -- it's easy to see when that's required and trivial to do. I keep two so I can use the second whilst the first dries out. There's no plaster dust in the exhaust, and after some ~4 years, the original post motor filter (non-washable) is looking brand new.
Soot is a different story. Soot particles are extremely fine and sticky. They will wreck any vacuum cleaner, and there's a small possibility they can catch fire or explode when going through the fan motor. The best thing for soot is an old bagged cleaner with a bag full of dust -- the soot will stick to the dust in the bag for a while. When it gets to the bag material itself, it will either instantly clog it, or pass straight through, depending on the size of the pores in the bag. It will also stick to the insides of everything, hose, attachments, etc. Ideally, use a bagged cleaner which can take an outlet hose too, and have it exhaust outdoors so you aren't just recirculating the soot particles in the house. I have an old Hoover Constellation I use for this, and two hoses.
John (IMM) has got one, do you need to know any more? mind you for the price he could have bought 3 cheapo ones and thrown them away as they broke, a "suck, suck, suck" solution
Well, like I said, I haven't broken it, but the handle is a long largely unsupported/unstrengthened piece. If you'll forgive me, I'll resist the temptation to see how much force it actually requires to break ;-)
Incidently, the dust container is sandblasted to a pearl finish on the inside first time you fill it with brick dust.
To add my two pennyworth for what it's worth (or not), we bought a DC08 animal about 18 months ago.
It's too soon to say anything about reliability but it seems quite sturdy, despite being made of plasticy bits, and it hasn't suffered despite tumbling halfway down the stairs a few times before being arrested by the hose.
We're well pleased by the performance. It tackles anything we throw at it, including brick dust and plaster dust, but we don't expect miracles and shovel up the thick of the plaster and brick dust first.
The suction is much better than our old Electrolux upright, as would be expected considering the age and decrepit state it was in.
I was fitting some new doors at my son's house recently where they have a fairly new Panasonic upright which was nothing like as effective as our DC08 would have been. It would pick up the sawdust as it was pushed forward then promptly disgorge some of it as it was pulled back. I appreciate others have praised Panasonics in this thread, I'm not disputing that, just passing on my limited short term experience with one sample.
Apart from the initial novelty of being able to see all the gunge whirling round in the canister there is the useful aspect of being visually reminded when it needs emptying. The bag in the old one was invariably overdue for emptying by the time we got round to it.
I've just washed the HEPA filter for the second time in 18 months (should have been every 6 months but there was a delivery problem with the tuits), although it was well covered with dust there'd only been a very slight drop in suction. There's no doubt that the HEPA filter is very effective, the air outlet on the old vac used to rapidly get coated with fine tenacious black dust, after 18 months the outlet of the Dyson is still spotless. I'm not sure how the non-HEPA Dysons fare in this respect, I'd be a bit concerned if they didn't have some form of filter between the dust canister and the fan.
I don't pretend to understand the theory of cyclone extractors, the air appears to be sucked up the cones _after_ passing through the dust canister and presumably dust also falls down out of the cones, but it's certainly effective. When we were choosing the new vac I got the impression that many of the bagless competitors just swirled the air round a bit as it got sucked into the canister and relied on a (usually small) filter to stop the dust going any further. I imagine these filters would need much more frequent cleaning (or even replacement) than the huge Dyson filter.
As others have commented, the abundance of spares in the shops does suggest a reliability problem but some of these are attachments that I don't think were supplied as standard with all models so really fall into the accessories category rather than replacement parts. The existence of replacement "lifetime" filters does suggest that the life might not be as long as implied, OTOH some users might have become so addicted to their vacuuming that they need to keep a spare filter so as not to be deprived of a day's pleasure while they wait for the filter to dry after washing it :-). Or perhaps today's throwaway society means there are lots of people who would rather spend 12 quid on a new filter instead of spending a few minutes swilling the dirty one out under the tap.
A posting elsewhere in this thread mentions a tendency for the earlier DC02s to topple over when pulled along. Fortunately the DC08 doesn't suffer from this, the hose attaches very low down and the vac obediently follows wherever you go, conveniently dispensing more mains lead as required.
So despite it being ugly, noisy and expensive we're happy with our Dyson.
Until recently my other half worked for 13-14 years in an independent TV/Electrical shop. They sold a lot of Dysons.
The shop was independent. People came to the shop because they were prepared to pay for service from an independent retailer.
The majority of their customers were middle aged and affluent elderly people. If there was ever a problem with an appliance, then the customer would be straight back to the shop. The shop would liaise with the manufacture to resolve the problem.
My other half says that Dysons are very reliable. They had very few problems and very few complaints.
They are superb machines. Both my partner and I suffer from mild dust alergies. The problem has gone since we got the Dyson.
"Philip" wrote | Why on earth would ones todger be anywhere near a rotating fan | blade not too far back, or anywhere else for that matter? | The mind boggles!
It's that "no loss of suction" that some men seek.
Well, I do (pretend, that is); the air circulation route is shaped so that it swirls round circularwise in (I think) an increasingly tight spiral. Being light, air can do this; being denser, even dust can't manage to turn the corners fast enough, so the suspended solid stuff gets thrown out to the edges of the cylinder, which it hits and (now away from the strongest circulation) falls to the bottom.
James Dyson observed this principle in use in an industrial application (cyclone extraction's been used there for decades, AIUI), and thought it'd work OK scaled down to domestic-vac proportions. Whether that counts as brilliant innovation or bleedin' obvious is a matter of opinion - though by the bizarrely trivial standards of patents, it counted as 'novel' enough for Dyson to patent the idea in the domestic-vac application...
My Dysons are both non-HEPA and have the washable pre-motor filter and a non-washable (I think, never needed to wash it) post-motor filter. I thought the HEPA filter was an extra non-washable one in addition to these? And no, there's no dust build-up or even slight discolouration of the post-motor filters after 4 years of sucking up rubble, brickdust and plasterdust in the case of the older one (or the newer one come to that).
I believe Dyson has a patent on multiple cyclone filters. Cyclone filters themselves have been around for years, and any original patent on them would have long ago expired. The clever bit is making them work in something as small as a domestic vacuum cleaner, as they are more effective the bigger diameter they are. Prior to Dyson, I suspect the smallest anyone would have envisioned they would be be effective would be dustbin sized, and they go up to things the size of a large room (or probably a whole house if you look hard enough).
I discovered that there is quite a bit in cyclone and dust extraction technology, having just been finalising the design for the hookup for my woodworking dust extractor in the workshop.
formatting link
principle is exactly the same, with all but the very finest dust ending up in the bin at the bottom, and the finest (of which very little seems to leave the cyclone) ends up in the outlet filter. There's a chunky fan in the top and substantial 2HP motor.
The sizings of the ductwork are important to maintain the correct air velocity to maintain the dust and chips in motion, and then the rate into the cyclone drum to achieve proper flow and separation there.
A lot of suck and the external air filter does not often need to be cleaned.
Our new cooker has a black top, which I hate. It still shows every spill. There's no answer to it - except not to spill or splash and no matter how careful I am I do those things. Even plain water boiled over leaves a mark when it evaporates - and we don't live in a hard water area.
Perhaps I should be like Spouse and think it doesn't matter.
I think the HEPA filter is fitted in place of your pre-motor filter, at the top behind the dust canister. It's a big round yellow plastic ring with the filter element bonded into the base and a big fat disk of blue foam sitting inside the ring on top of the filter. We weren't particularly bothered about getting the HEPA version but it was on offer at a lower price than the non-HEPA one which had fewer attachments so we went for it.
I assume the post-motor filter is in the base below the canister. There's what looks like a spring clip holding a cover there but it doesn't seem very keen to open so I leave it alone. There's no dust collecting in any of the hollows in the bottom of the pre-motor filter so I don't expect dust in the post-motor one will ever be a problem.
I get the idea of the spinning action removing the dust, it's the dynamics of the air flow that I can't get my head round. The animation on the Dyson website shows the dusty air being blown into the top of the cones via the grey swirly bits, then it spirals down inside the cone (depositing the dust as it goes) and then goes back up the cone to leave via the straight tube in the middle of the swirly bit. It's the idea of air moving in both directions up and down inside the cone that I find hard to grasp.
Ah no, that would just make it Dual-Use technology; not withdrawn from general sale (unless it fell definitely into the Highly Sensitive category), but subject to tighter export controls.
(OK, OK, it's sad; but export categorisations are like that - once you've wrapped your head around them, you discover it's they that have wrapped themselves around your head. Blame too many weeks spent in Vienna...)
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.