"Yes Madam, your Dyson does seem to need a service, I'll have to take it away to do so though - complicated things these Dyson's, you know - It will be about a week and cost - Oooo - 90 quid with all the parts, plus VAT, if you don't want to pay cash."
One week later the Dyson is returned, having had a quick filter clean and a weeks rest standing in the corner of the workshop....
My parents' Electrolux vacuum did that in the hall whilst vacuuming the carpet...
I've seen plenty of Dysons in the US (at least California where innovative products are much appreciated).
The same models aren't quite as powerful, I presume due to limitations on power available from a US socket outlet and/or thickness of cable which would be required at 120V.
Thanks, guys, for all your great advice on vacuums!
The concensus seems to be:
A. The "drag-arounds":
- a Henry Turbo HVR200T-22 (aka "Henry Hound") £150 new
- a Miele Cat & Dog £190 new
B. The "push-arounds":
- any Sebo BS36 £225 new
- any Dyson, £285 new, provided you treat it like a cleaning goddess and lavish adoration and love upon its filters, conduits, and plastic parts! or C. the demented two-legged "bint" wot simply circulates constantly round the rooms . . . with any old vac! :-) In my case, Option C is a non-starter.
So we're torn between the "drag-arounds" and the "push-arounds".
The Henry is bulky to store and a bit of a pain to be carrying up and down the stairs, however you use it one state at all times, i.e. you use the hose to do the floors AND the stairs. On the other hand, you can't stand Henry by himself half way up the stairs and the hose doesn't look very long - so buying an extension or two for the hose might be necessary in order to do the stairs?
Re. the Dysons, I like the idea of being able to see into their transparent parts to see whether cleaning is needed or not. Also, the Dyson's "wand" (hose) is apparently long enough for you to do a long flight of carpeted stairs in one go. Unlike the Sebo though you can't glide the main machine under beds etc. Lots of people remark on the brittleness of the Dyson's parts and though we do treat our things with care, when you're vacuuming, pulling and pushing that thing round the floor and sometimes in a hurry, you are bound to hit bits of it quite hard aginst skirtings and furniture legs occasionally.
Hmmm. I think it's going to be either the Henry or the Sebo. Henry's awkward, and the Sebo BS36 is pricey.
Eddy.
The later root cyclones seem less fussy on filters... they have a large foam one on top of the ring of cyclones that you can shift round in position a bit to get clean bits over the head of the cyclones. I think I have only needed to clean ours once so far in about three years of use.
Sort of... if you are using it without the extension pipes (i.e. head just on the flexible pipe) then it can only just do 12 steps. With the wand on the end then you can reach a full flight - but you may have difficulty in Victorian places with longer flights of stairs.
The other thing to watch is if you block off the airflow then that tends to try to collapse the pipe - and it has quite a pull if you are not expecting it.
This is not something I have seen on ours, and that includes knocking them down a flight of stairs on occasion. I did break the plastic HEPA filter retaining bit on the DC01 once. I phoned the support line an ordered a new one for about ?4.50 IIRC. I have also seen someone break part of the handle off the clear polycarbonate bin on theirs when it was full of brick dust.
Lots of people seem to have the mains lead fracture close to the machine on some of the earlier models. Strain relief seems better on later ones.
In my experience they seem plenty robust enough in this respect.
We use our Henry to do the stairs and landing, and the hose easily reaches more than halfway, which is all that's needed. The house has nine foot celings so the stairs are quite long.
Ours eventually became semi-opaque as the dirt abraded the inner surface.
================================== The definitive answer:
Dysons are the best thing since sliced bread. Rush out and buy (at least) one immediately.
AND
Dysons are the worst junk that ever came off an assembly line. Avoid them like the plague - buy anything but a Dyson if you value your health and sanity.
Cic.
It needs to go the whole way as you should not position the vacuum cleaner at the top when doing the stairs. Pulling a vacuum cleaner over the top step and having it come crashing down the stairs is a significant cause of staircase falls resulting in a hospital visit.
I don't much care what the appliance looks like -- it's not normally left out on display anywhere. Being able to see through the side of the dust bin is useful for recovering things you didn't mean to suck up, and of course to see if it's full.
Ironically, I suspect part of the problem with the filter is that it needs cleaning so rarely (way less than once a year for normal domestic use except for the early Dysons) that people forget it completely.
If sucking up something like plaster dust, then you'll need to clean the filter after something like 4 bin fulls of plaster. Since I use a DC04 for this purpose (having found nothing else that works for this at all), I have a couple of filters which I swap round whilst the other is drying after rinsing out.
Leave it at the top, vac halfway down. Move it to the bottom, vac halfway up.
All the Dyson uprights I've seen have a hose with a rigid tube inside it, so you couldn't use it to vac the car out for example.
Rubbish! Very few if any tub vacs have a hose that long
You have data for that? My paramedic daughter has never attended anyone injured by a falling vacuum cleaner. She has attended one vacuum cleaner incident, but that's a discussion for a different news group :-)
Maybe, but not the way our stairs are arranged. Henry at the top CAN'T fall down the stairs...
You take the wand off the hose and fit the attachment to the hose with an adaptor.
The wand is INSIDE the hose.
Why would people do that when for about 55 quid, Dyson will send an engineer round to your house, and service it on the spot, and that price includes all parts except the hepa filter (which is supposed to last a lifetime unless you use it on plaster dust!)
We had our 2nd hand DC07 serviced this way - and it had been abused sucking up plaster dust before we got it, so it did need the new filter (£15). The chap also replaced the cyclone, the flexy hose, and something else which I've forgotten, and gave it a full electrical safety test too.
Gordon
Yes, but you can pull it out, leaving the hose flexible.
The metal tube just unclips from the flexy hose. What's then neat is that you can then connect it (the metal tube & handle & atachment bit) the other way round which makes it easier getting into awkward or high places. On our DC07, the tools just plug directly into the end of the flexy hose once you've taken the metal tube thing off.
Gordon
Mine's a DC01 Absolute. It uses a plastic adaptor thingy to attach the tools to the end of the hose.
Really? My 1955 Hoover Constalation does, and I don't recall the hose on a Henry I have used as being particularly short.
It was in some stats on a health and safety course. IIRC, it was the third item down the list as reasons for falling down the stairs. (Top reason was being drunk, so definately don't vacuum the stairs whilst drunk;-)
The wand just unclips, and all the attachments fit directly on the end of the hose too. From the DC07 onwards, you can use the wand either way round too -- same fitting at both ends.
Well I was being a tad sarcastic but you should remember that two are born every week - that is a con-merchant and a gullible fool, not only that but they often keep meeting each other...
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