Unreliability of upright vacuum cleaners

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Why not? They'll be of interest to some in a few years.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Like the Firestone Tyre factory? Listed the day after it was demolished, on a Sunday.

[Huge]

More like "demolished the day before it was due to be listed".

And if I'd been responsible for it, I'd have done the same. If the Government wants to impose conditions on the owners of buildings, they should damn well help with the costs.

[geoff]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

It'll be the shed at the bottom of my garden next ...

[geoff]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

I would have thought it would have taken more than a day to knock that down

massive castle that it was

>

[Huge]

It was only the facade that was listed.

[Tony Bryer]

Agreed 100%. If you buy a listed building then you know what you're letting yourself in for (or should do anyway). If you own a building that is subsequently listed then you should be able to force the local council to buy it off you for what a developer would pay you assuming that it were not listed. In some cases, of course, listing may enhance the value. In other cases it destroys it.

[Tony Bryer]

Yes, but you only need to do enough strategic damage to render what is left not worth listing.

It's worth remembering that the true blue Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea did the same with their town hall to beat its listing by the GLC

[Kostas Kavoussanakis]

The one you took exception to, looks perfect.

Oh well...

Kostas

[Kostas Kavoussanakis]

Thanks. Is the (maligned earlier in the thread) Henry in the Numatic family? Or do you mean something like the CT 370-2?

Kostas

[The Medway Handyman]

Henry is the UK's best selling tub vac, used by every commercial cleaning company in the country. The mainstay of the Numatic range. The rest are just as good, just depends on the model you want.

[David]

Whenever I use the Henry I always start wheezing and sneezing becuase the filtration is quite poor and I suffer from asthma, and it is not because the filters are dirty or anything like that, the suction also drops quite a bit as the bag get's full, our Miele still works at full power even when the bag is nearly 100% full and the filtration is top notch. You hardly ever need to use the vacuum on full power too. The wheel design is excellent too.

[The Medway Handyman]

You can get a Henry Micro and AFAIK you can retro fit the filters to a normal Henry.

[John Weston]

We've got one and it has worked for me during the last 4 years. I've not had to replace the Microtex filter and I've not had a sneezing attack since getting it - whilst vacuuming, at least - if only I could fix the computer fans the same way without decreasing their efficiency. The Henry Micro the best filtered vaccumm we've had, IMO. Not done extensive tests though...

[Pete Verdon]

I recently acquired a second-hand Henry for my workshop, used both for general cleaning of everything from sawdust to welding slag, and occasionally connected to the dust port on a belt sander or circular saw. It does also get used for cleaning the car.

Do I need to use bags with it? It came with some, and I have one in there now, but I remember that the cleaners at my school didn't use bags. It has a kind of fabric diaphragm between the motor head and the tub - is this enough of a filter on its own (bearing in mind I'm not asthmatic nor cleaning a microchip assembly plant)? I prefer the idea of just emptying the tub into the workshop bin rather than farting about with bags.

Pete

[PeterC]

I've used George (Henry's big brother) for about 20 years with no bag.

Perhaps a bit dubious for fibreglass/asbestos and similar!

Needs emptying about every 5 - 6 times round the house (so about a year) or more often if used for plaster or brick dust.

[David]

That's great then. I have always like Numatics, Grandparents have had a George for over 18 years IIRC, the one with a 880w motor and plastic tubes which have been replaced by metal. They don't use bags either.

[The Medway Handyman]

One of Numatics great strengths is that the fabric folter is so effective, I'd say that 70% of the machines used in commercial cleaning don't use a paper bag. Two reasons; cost of bag (potentially high in daily office cleaning) and logistics - cleaning companies are crap at getting suppplies on site efficiently.

Every major European vacuum cleaner manufacturer has tried to knock Numatic off the No.1 spot in the UK. Karcher, Electrolux, Nilfisk, Ghibli, Victor etc. They all failed because their machines needed bags.

I spoke to the guy responsible for maintenance at Initial Contract Services (one of the giants in the cleaning game) about this once. A paper bag has two major advantages; its a second stage of filtration which protects the motor from dust and it means less fine dust is exhausted into the atmosphere.

Their take was that it was cheaper to replace dust damaged motors than pay for bags, and that they dusted surfaces anyway.

In your situation I'd use it with just the main filter & save the paper bags (cheap as chips anyway) for things like MDF or plaster dust.

[John]

We are mixing up two types of use - the DIY Clean-up and the normal domestic carpet grooming.

I guess many people have two machines - I still have my old Hoover Constellation for mucky jobs - and a DC07 for the carpets. different jobs - different machines - one lives in the house - the other in a garage.

[Jan Wysocki]

On 2009-04-11, The Medway Handyman wrote: [snip]

[snip]

I know that they sell well, but does anyone know why "Which?" has such a low opinion of them? (Not that I'm a big fan of "Which?" - their tests appear to be very superficial nowadays.)