Elderly relative was complaining about Hoovering being tiring. I watched her doing it and saw she was "scrubbing" quite hard and fast with it. I suggested she should let the revolving suction, brushes and beaters do the work and guide it slowly around the room - single pass. She looked at me in total disbelief!
Am I right?
lol, was she by any chance a maid in a big house at the turn of the centuary??? i saw a film type thing ages ago showing the hoover thing they used back then, one person to work the foot operated bellows to produce the suction, and the other to scrub the floor with the lance... as no turbo brushes back then, so the fixed brushes had to manually scrub the dirt out of the carpet/floor to be sucked up.
If so she's about 130, no wonder she's finding it hard going.
Dead right.
IME many women don't have the first idea how to clean anything. (Hides behind sofa).
This goes back to the old days of the early uprights. The single motor drove the vacuum fan & the brush bar. Bad idea since a vacuum fan needs to run fast (16,000 rpm) and a brush bar slowly (200rpm ish). Difficult to do with one motor. The belt was in the middle of the brush so it left a strip 'unbrushed' and unvacuumed. You had to overlap & scrub a lot to ensure even coverage.
Added to this was the use of 'dirty' fans & bottom fill bags, it was a wonder they worked at all.
Modern vacs will clean in one pass as you rightly say, but cleaning techniques are passed down without any thought as to the science or logic behind what you are doing.
Don't get me started on mopping floors, polishing furniture or cleaning toilets.
(British Institute of Cleaning Science approved trainer) (Lapsed).
PS Smartarse comments aside, yes you must be right. The machine is supposed to do the work for you. If she insists on putting in all the effort herself she might as well save a few bob in lecky and revert to a good stiff broom (sorry, I was supposed to be avoiding smartarse comments).
In article , The Medway Handyman scribeth thus
Does your Missus know you go round posting things like this Dave;?..
Well having just had a heart attack I find that hoovering is one of the tasks forbidden for a while, then recommended as an exercise to improve your fitness.
In message , The Medway Handyman wrote
A few years back we used to have a cleaner at my place of work who prided himself on the cleanness of the toilets. The mirrors were clean, the chrome taps were shiny etc.
Unfortunately he used the same damp cloth to clean the sinks and taps as previously used to clean in and around the urinals and pans.
"Gerba defines a sanitary surface as something clean enough to eat off of, with no more than 1,000 bacteria per square inch. The toilet seat passed that test, but "20/20" reporter Don Dahler's desk failed."
Was that a female nurse told you that? ;-)
Owain
If the workplace had a small kitchen, and the same guy used to clean that with the same cloth, *then* I'd worry, I think :-)
If you are talking about either an upright cleaner or a powered head cylinder cleaner, then yes.
For a bog standard cylinder cleaner with no rotating brush/beater bar, then some manual brushing will be required on carpets.
Sorry - yes , an upright - revolving brush/beater
ISTR an industry recommendation that, to clean a carpet properly, you needed to do at least six passes over the same spot.
Colin Bignell
We once had cleaners who discovered that the pads off the floor machines fitted neatly for drying on top of the Burco tea boilers. The only non-carpeted floors were the toilets.
Chris
I noticed that, after a back strain, the next time I was up to vacuuming, I really felt that some muscles had been given a workout.
Chris
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