Dysons again

The triumph of form over function, a bit like Bang & Olufsen (sp?) - Very well designed and by that I mean the sort of design that makes other designers go all gooey....

I've had a DC02 for 6ish years now. It hasn't broken yet, probably 'cos it hasn't many moving parts, but it regularly annoys.....

Take the hose for instance. How would you usually pull a cylinder cleaner around? Exactly, by the hose. Except that on this one, the hose connects to the top of the machine, right over it's centre of gravity. Pull it sideways and instead of steering round and following you, it falls over.......

....and then there's the handle. Very curved and comfortable when using the std floor brush, but just you try and use it with the small accessory brush. The hose hits the floor before the brush is flat. It's no good for cars either as you can't get the thing down flat enough (I usually put an old Electrolux brush on :o)) Or the mains lead, which still curls up and twists after all this time......

So why am I still using it? 'Cos it was expensive and I'm damn well going to get my money's worth!

Alan

Reply to
Alan Vann
Loading thread data ...

Read Ricks following post, as soot and plaster dust are not explicity excluded as suitable material for a Dyson to suck he is taking Dyson to Trading Standards/Advertising Standards over the claim of "no loss of suction"...

I wonder if he dries his pet dog in the microwave?

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Well we have four dogs and a DC07 to replace our worn out 10year old DC01 (although it would probably have been repairable). Not a dog's hair to be seen anywhere after five minutes with the Dyson except a half full container on the vac each time it's used.

Reply to
Geoff Beale

Lovely post, thanks.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

I got a DC04 around 4 years ago (my mother has a DC04, and my MIL has a DC01). As other people have said, you can vacuum a floor with your previous cleaner and then use a Dyson and fill the cylinder in 5 minutes.

If I replace my DC04, it will most likely be with another Dyson. Probably an upright model, though - I'm not so fond of cylinder cleaners.

John.

Reply to
JM

The above info came from a friend who was running a sideshow at a big NHS conference... ISTR he said they also had a section on some of the more unusual items found lodged places they were perhaps better off not being. One that sticks in my mind (and elsewhere for others it seems) was the procedure for removing a pint glass from a rectum! (tie a knot in the end of a rope, and place in glass. Now fill with plaster of paris and allow to set, pull on rope!). Same trick can be used for light bulbs if you find the bayonet cap unexpectedly breaks away from the bulb.

The thought that occurred to me was that plaster of paris creates a reasonably strong exothermic reaction while setting.... ;-) that should teach `em.

Reply to
John Rumm

No, it was the dence dust and nifty hover I didn't understand ... :-(

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

There is also a hell of a lot of Dysons around. They are the biggest seller.

Reply to
IMM

Yeah, that's annoyed me too

It doesn't matter what machine you're using, an obstruction in the hose is an obstruction in the hose

Reply to
raden

I'm not sure what the density of dust has to do with anything. I think he meant Hoover, but as a Dyson is obviously not a Hoover ...

Reply to
Rob Morley

I've used my DC03 with soot, plaster dust and when routing MDF, and never had a problem. I've had it for around seven years and the filters have been changed once.

Reply to
Rob Morley

I found them too noisy for their capacity.

I use a Henry for DIY stuff (eqially noisy but large bore hose and capacity, no filters to have to stop to clean, I use bags with it) and a Mele 'Big cat & dog' around the house (very quiet and durable).

I have repaired more DC03's for folk than any other make / model (that could reflect that they are popular or unreliable (or both) )

T i m

Reply to
T i m

I can't seem to get the original post to reply to in Googlegroups so this seems as good a place as any.

We had a Dyson for 3 or 4 years (one of the original cylinder models). Suction excellent when clean and new but dropped off in the same way as any other vac when the filter became clogged. Because effectively there is only one filter for fine dust it becomes clogged quicker than in a normal vac where the bag gets clogged first and stops too much getting to the filter. This means that all of the internals of a Dyson end up covered in filth.

If you live in a nice clean finished house they're probably great but this is a DIY forum and they're not suited to DIY. As mentioned elsewhere fine dust (plaster or wood) blocks the filters very quickly, larger items get stuck in the hose.

My other big problem is that emptying them is unpleasant. You need to do it outside as there will almost cetainly be dust flying everywhere and some of it usually ends up on you. To keep the thing looking nice you will want to clean out the dust bowl regularly which is a messy job as well.

We replaced ours with a Miele cat and dog:

- More than enough suction that doesnt seem to drop significantly until the bag is very nearly full

- easier to store,

- good tools including a beater/sweeper head

- adjustable power for furniture and curtains

- clean and quick to empty

When we moved again last year we bought a Henry as a second vac to use for all DIY jobs. For that it's brilliant and it gets thoroughly abused. However, i find it completely unsatisfactory for cleaning carpets - we finish a job, use Henry on it and then use the Miele to actually get the area clean. Henry bags also have a tendency to tear. Wouldnt be without Henry but theres no way i'd want it as the only vac

Reply to
anthony james

That's a very "sweeping" statement Dave!

I'll chip in and say that we bought a DC01 in the early days, we've used it ever since, and it has *never* broken down. We think it's great (and it's quieter than our previous cleaners).

There are two great variables here:

(1) People treat their possessions in different ways. (Note how many people in here have said "I've never replaced the filters yet!") To be sanctimonious for a moment (Rev. John speaking) I always aspire to treating our expensive devices with the reverence due something that's taken so much out of the earth (and of humanity) to create, so I try to keep stuff like new. Please note the word "aspire" - I'm not exactly 100% successful -- too feckn lazy.

(2) Dyson now have lots of different models, and it's pretty clear that some are less successful than others.

cheers -- just off to polish me car.

j.

Reply to
John

I'd say it's not the norm for *any* vacuum cleaner to need anything other than consumables throughout its life. The range of parts on a Dyson display has to be there for a reason.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I've got a very old DC01. A friend of mine has a friend who gets old Dysons from the local tip, repairs them (usually just the switch), makes sure they have a full complement of tools and sells them on for beer money. I paid the princely sum of £25 for mine which has the Hepa filter too.

It's very quiet so I can use it late at night if I want without worrying about the neighbours on the other side of the semi, better at dealing with cat hairs on the carpet than any other vacuum cleaner I've ever owned and seems to perform just as well as a friends newish one which I used to borrow before I got mine. I love how quick and easy it is to empty compared with all the old bag models I've owned and how you can see just how much crap it's sucking out of the carpet through the transparent container. It's the first vacuum I've owned that actually makes me enjoy using it.

It's also the first vacuum I've owned that doesn't spark my mild asthma off each time I have a big hoovering up session so I guess it really does trap nearly all of the fine dust.

On the downside yes they are plasticky and a few minor bits tend to crack and break but nothing that stops them working, or at least not yet on mine. Nails and bits of wood can get stuck in the U tube underneath but it's a simple job to get them out again. It's a bit unwieldy using the attachment hose, especially up high on worktops because the solid pipe is too long and the flexible hose tends to kink just where the two join but it's liveable with.

I'm too tight to pay £250 for one (or any other type of cleaner) which is why I never got a new one in the past but it's the best £25 I ever spent. I'm sure other bagless types perform just as well though now that everyone is making cyclone types under license from Dyson.

Reply to
Dave Baker

I must have been in a particulary good "read what they meant, not what they wrote" mode last night. It didn't throw me at all.. B-)

On Dysons I think the great unwashed misinterpreted the advertising "lots more suck" to mean "will remove pet hair". The only way to remove pet hair is with an "beats, as it sweep, as it cleans" head of some sort not just a few stationary bristles and suck. The first cylinder Dysons didn't have such a head. Bad press/interpretation sticks.

Curious that this thread seems to be generally positive, previous ones have been pretty negative.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

We recently replaced our DC01 with a new DC07 - I wish I'd done it years ago! The DC01 we bought fairly soon after it was introduced to the UK market. As others have reported we too ditched a Hoover Junior for the Dyson. The lounge carpet had been vacuumed with the Hoover and seemed clean but we switched the DC01 on 'just to try it'. Thankfully, there were only immediate members of the family in the room - the amount of dust that the DC01 discovered in that carpet was embarrassing!

The DC01 was fairly difficult to clean; the dust bin had to be emptied out and was a pain to ease off from the operating single cyclone head. The newer DC07 is exceptionally easy to empty - so much so that it's a chore that is executed almost each time the DC07 is utilised. That click-off single-handed operation is almost worth the price alone. We also bought the turbo-head 'thingy' for stair-carpet cleaning.

For workshop sucking - I use a Trend workshop vacumm -this has a 13A outlet into which I plug the power tool I'm using. The suck starts when the tool is switched ON - surprisingly, that's shortly before the dust seems to appear- and remains sucking for six seconds after the tool is switched OFF I did use the Dyson DC01 for this purpose but found the 'Have I switched the vacuum cleaner ON? - Must remember to switch the noise OFF' routine just too hard.!

It's annoying that Dyson has moved his manufacturing to Malaysia(?). It's ironic or something that he did this after he'd been lauded by Tony Blair as an example of 'Cool Britannia; and the minimum wage, paternity leave entitlements, changes to Employers-NIC rates etc. were introduced. Not necessarily in that sequence. Dyson has claimed (AIUI) that £20 of value must be added to each £1 of materials to justify manufacturing in England -with it's existing overburden, while only £5 of value is needed in Malaysia(?). [Half-remembered article in a paper's Business section].

For normal domestic cleaning - to a very high standard coupled with ease-of-use, I'd endorse a decision to acquire a Dyson - all-surface- model.

Reply to
Brian Sharrock

I was (and am) very happy with my DC01, but when I needed a cleaner for another location, I bought a cheaper knockoff. BIG mistake. Brand new, and it doesn't work half as well as my old Dyson, it's awkward to use, and a pain to empty.

Sheila

Reply to
S Viemeister

Yes, that was my memory, which is why I asked!

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

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.