So we'll have to buy industrial vacuum cleaners

[John Williamson]

I'd start with wanting to know how good those pictures were in poor (Too dull or too bright) lighting, how good the flash was.....

[Tim Streater]

But it says: "Takes great pictures". This is Which, remember, so there is nothing else you could possibly need to know. By order.

[John Williamson]

[dennis]

What conditions it takes great pictures in. There are plenty of cameras that take great pictures in some circumstances but they take rubbish in others.

[Tim+]

Whoosh!

Tim

[Adrian]

Just going back to the start of all this... I've just checked the info plate on our ~15yo single-speed Henry. "1100w Max, 850w IEC". Nobody could accuse it of lacking sucktion.

But what's the "IEC" rating about?

[Java Jive]

[meow2222]

The point is it amounts to the same thing, it prevents people using >900w vacs. Its a farcical idea that only a government could think of.

NT

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And you have had self government for just how long? Couple of weeks, is it?

[js.b1]

Has no-one read the moronic document:

3.pdf

Figure 1 shows a plot of watts vs dust pickup %age. Unsurprisingly the DYSON (650W) does well because it has a) no bag and b) p roperly functioning cyclone technology. I suspect most of the others are ba gged conventional and hence the watts (1300W avg?) to compensate.

INCREDULOUSLY 5.3 says... "There is no correlation between wattage and cleaning performance/ dust rem oval; also vacuum cleaners with low input power are well performing. There are vacuum cleaners with 650W with dust pickup values not any worse than mo dels with around 1800W".

That is because that 650W is BAGLESS whereas others are BAGGED.

Who wrote this shit, DYSON marketing department with a bung to paris? Anette Michel, Eric Bush; TIG (Topten International Group).

Communists can't nationalise their melon agenda, so they instead legislate. It is possible rotor design could be improved, rotor clearance, rotor thic kness & profiling. It is possible hose bore could be reduced to maintain ve locity at the head. It is possible bags may be enlarged to increase surface area, reduce watts to compensate for their presence.

However, the energy saving is mostly trivial.

- It will save at most 40kW a year, which for 6 months of the year is heat that otherwise gas/elec heating will not have to input into the building.

- Any visible reduction in pickup will result in consumers cleaning for lon ger, negating the 40kW in the real world down to 15kW a year.

The elephant in the room is the disposable society, but I guess the French don't want reminding how many of their cars fail the UK MOT at year 3 AND w ould utterly fail the proposed tighter MOT. Perhaps they should cost out th e energy cost of the disposable society... or is that not what they are bei ng paid to do with corporate whitepaper rubbish shovelled through their doo r and legislation down our neck?

[Andy Burns]

Since you obviously have read it, did you notice if the power is measured in electrical watts or "air watts"?

[js.b1]

The document refers to "Wattage". Retailer data for most items refers to "Power Consumption"... eg, "1200 Wat t Motor".

It is an atrocious bit of "research" ignorant of the underlying technology and glibly stating 1 vacuum can do it (of a different technology) so all mu st be forced to. Utterly ignorant of patent limitations (some cheap cyclone clones out there are really really pretty dismal I am afraid compared to D yson).

Likewise with a blocked bag the pickup rate of such cleaners goes to poo, w hereas a dyson does not (it might fall to bits quicker than a Miele, but th at is another issue :-)

[js.b1]

To add (sorry), who is to say that all bagless cleaners are run at 100% power? The article seems to assume that they are and that the consumer is too dumb to reduce the power level?

I regularly (bag) vacuum at

[meow2222]

[SteveW]

Every time I've used a Dyson (or other bagless cleaner) its filters have quickly clogged and unlike a simple bag change, they've needed to be washed and dried before re-use. Horrible things.

SteveW

[Mike Clarke]

I wonder if they'd been used for cleaning up plaster dust in the past.

Our 9 year old DC08 worked great for years with the filter only being cleaned about every 6 months. Then we had some building alterations done with copious amounts of plaster and brick dust spreading all through the house. The Dyson cleaned it up without any difficulty but the cyclones aren't very good at removing fine plaster dust from the airflow so the filter clogs up very quickly. To make matters worse a lot of plaster dust forms a thick coating on the surfaces of the cyclone and is gradually released over time causing the filter to continually clog up long after all the plaster dust has been cleaned up from the house.

Eventually I got fed up of needing to clean the filter after every few days use so I stripped the cyclone assembly down and gave it a good wash and dry before reassembly and its performance was as good as new with many months between cleaning the filter.

Admittedly washing the filter is a pest but we have 2 filters so when the need arises the clean one can be swapped in and the dirty one can be washed and left to dry as and when time permits.

[Tim Watts]

On Monday 25 November 2013 21:02 Mike Clarke wrote in uk.d-i-y:

I prefer the old VAX "buckets" - the paper cone filter clogs like a bitch with plaster dust but can be rejuvinated with a copious thwacking with the back of a brush from a pan+brush set.

Then it can be washed.

[SteveW]

I know that two of the non-Dyson ones definitely hadn't - although one was used for that and similar after I'd bought a replacement bagged vac.

Another (Dyson this time) hasn't as far as I know, but is in a house where it regularly has to pick up ash dropped from a wood-burning stove when it drops from the ash-pan as it is taken for emptying.

I am at that stage at the moment, having re-done the living room this year and being a third of the way through the bathroom at the moment. The Henry has no trouble at all with it.

Incidentally, I would have been a lot further along, but much re-plumbing was found to be necessary when removing the bath to fit a shower cubicle, as a load of existing plumbing was above the floor, under the bath ... including a central heating pipe running through the legs of the bath and stopping me taking it out 'til the pipe was cut!

I did the same to the one in the house with a wood burning stove, which promptly blocked again the next day.

Not our vac though, as it's in a house that we rent on a regular basis when holidaying in Ireland.

SteveW