Be Excellent To Each Other

Thrilling I know.

We are off to John Lewis shortly to purchase a new vacuum cleaner.

Basically, do you love your vacuum cleaner enough to recommend to an internet stranger? If so, tell me whatcha got.

My ma has one of those cordless upright Dyson stick thingies and it’s made her life so much better as she can now vacuum the stairs which she always struggled with due to her physical disabilities.

Quite fancy one of those. No issues with lack of suction or running out of charge super fast?

No, and she has a three storey house with four bedrooms and can do the whole house (not sure if that includes my brother and BIL’s rooms or not, mind).

Miele blizzard CX1 dog and cat. It is oh so quiet. Seems well made.

We have a house with three storeys, 100% wooden floors, and a dog. So we are quite demanding of vacuum cleaners.

After research, we reluctantly concluded the Dyson was the best (I’d really rather not give the Brexity prick any money) and we got a V10. And it’s amazing, to my joy/annoyance. We can do the whole house in half the time and a quarter of the effort compared to our massive old wired one.

I have a gtech air ram dog hair thingy, it's good.

They quite often do a deal on the one that comes with the upright and the portable, so I bought that and flogged the portable on eBay, which made it £150 in the end.

Shark. Better than Dyson in our experience.

...which means I read Which?. The Dyson was highest performing for hard floors. There’s a similar Bosch model that was better for carpet, though.

Thanks all. Looks like we may be heading towards the Dyson animal v10. We are largely carpet, don't suppose you remember the bosch model you referenced, Doc?

I have a Bosch Animal one. Quite happy with it overall.

Nice, thank you! We have decided on the v10 animal. Excited (about a hoover)

[runs in]

:huff: :huff:

Get a 360!

...

Am I too late?

Doesn't the wooden flooring make it easier to pick up dirt compared to carpet?

In my experience, it does, kinda, as the vacuum (or broom/sweeper) can glide around fairly quickly and easily for cleaning up. However, the fur/dust is really clearly visible on hard floors so the cleaning has to be done regularly or it will look pretty bad, and 'dust bunnies; will form quite quickly. Carpet hides a lot.

We have laminate in the kitchen/dining and carpet elsewhere, and in the flat we had wood floors everywhere and warm air ducted heating, which seemed to move a lot of dust around. However now we have 3 kids and 3 pets the house is basically trashed, and it takes a lot of effort to keep it looking even at this level of shabby.

FWIW I use a corded dyson upright to vacuum the house, hard floors too. Then I use a steam mop on the hard floor. We also bought one of those carpet cleaning machines which does an OK job. I'm always fascinated and somewhat appalled by the colour of the water in the dirty-tank.

All of this.

The rest is lies.

There can be only one.

His name is Henry.

I have the Dyson V8 Absolute, it is a great piece of kit.

Also, further to the above: "demanding" isn't just of vacuuming performance, it also means "fuck me, it makes a big difference to have one that's lighter." Our old Dyson upright weighs getting on for ten kilos. The new cordless one is about a quarter of that. And although we have three stories, we have six flights of stairs; the rearmost part of the house is built on an offset floor level so each set of stairs goes up for 10 or so steps, has a small landing with a room off it, then turns 180 degrees and goes up four more. Not having to tote the upright up and down those is really nice. Especially when you ideally want to be vacuuming the house multiple times a week to keep the dog glitter under control (I'm not going to lie and say I always manage that.)

Dog glitter?

https://metro.co.uk/2019/01/31/covering ... a-8418258/

Lol at dog glitter. Duke is losing his winter coat at the moment and it’s like furmegeddon in our house. I might get one of them V10s. Couple of questions, because I’ve used a previous model a client has. Is the grip large enough for my large hands? Hers felt quite small to me. And, also hers got very hot after a few minutes use, as in the battery felt hot, not warm, hot. Would I be right in assuming her battery is fucked?

Erm, good question. I've never given it any thought. I'll have a look at it tonight.


No, I don't think so. Fucked Li-Ion batteries that get hot because they are fucked can only be fucked in the way that then means they catch fire and that's an exciting day out for all involved.

Ours has three power settings. We do the floors on 1 and it's ample; run time is a bit over an hour. We use 2 for some stuff, like upholstery. "Max" reduces the runtime to less than 10 minutes, makes an unholy racket, and seems to be overkill for anything except for very heavily soiled carpets or similar. That gets the battery really warm -- rapid discharge of lithium cells does that. It's by design. So at a guess: the one you've used was set to "max"?

Hmmm, it’s a possibility re: the settings. I didn’t study it.

Our Dyson v6 is ace. We have a perfectly good Henry too, which is why we went for the ‘cheaper’ Dyson option. Both are very good at hoovering, but the Dyson is so light and portable that it is simplicity itself to vacuum.

In a bizarre twist of fate / alliance of planets / etc I now have another Henry that cost zilch!

Saw a rather sad one outside the new building that I assumed was broken and asked the receptionist if I could have it to try and repair and low and behold he was just caked up inside and actually is in full working order!

Henry’s are irrepressible!

Something in my mind prevents me from ever spending over 400 quid on a vacuum cleaner. I’ve never spent over £100 and I’ve never been disappointed with suboptimal sucking.

Title etc.

If you spend over £400 on a vacuum cleaner then you’re the sucker.

£399! In your face, Henry.

If you think that’s idiot money for a vacuum cleaner, I’ve got a pair of ovens that’d blow your mind. Not to mention restaurant bills.

I found two ovens and a bigger restaurant bill outside work and all they needed was a good clean.

News just in, different things cost different amounts, more when we have it. Over to mop for the sports. How are the Mets doing mop?

That Henry looks so happy to have been rescued

Fuck the Mets

Thanks Mop!

Coming up after this: are your shoes making you impotent?

Just extracted a live mouse from our vacuum. The cats had obviously brought it in, let it go, at which point it found a hiding place.

We just bought a new Hoover. Literally. It's a Hoover Vortex. It cost £50 and it sucks like a fresher on £1 a pint night.

Same, except we didn't flog the portable. We did have a problem with the handle locking in the upright position, but they sent a replacement, free of charge, no questions asked. It IS very light, but does have a tendency to grind to a halt if anything puts too much strain on it, e.g catching the corner of a rug in it, but I guess that's to stop it doing serious damage, and it resets easily enough. Feels a it flimsy to me, but then I'm not the main user and Mrs. W likes it, which is the main thing.

Hello!

We’re looking for a vacuum! We’ve got a lovely 1980s Hoover upright, but it’s never upright and keeps hitting people (99% Russell, occasionally my ma) on the head when they bend down to adjust it.

Can’t really spend more than £100-200. Would quite like a Henry but don’t think it will fit in the cupboard (but will measure to check). Would love a stick vac but probably out of our budget, and would have to work out where it might live to charge.

We have mostly hardwearing short to medium pile carpet. No pets, but one Russell, and a soon-to-be four year old.

£99!

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8086071 ... gLkj_D_BwE

I’m totally up for getting a Henry if it will fit in the cupboard. I shall get Russell to check. Though, I can’t tell which one that is, as I’m sure one is more powerful than another, and I’ll have to check the size difference.

I have a Shark and it's cracking, but may be overkill with no pets (it has super strong suction). This one is within your budget (upper end) and is similar to mine - https://sharkclean.eu/uk/product/shark- ... -nv601ukt/

Like I said, may be overkill though.

I was just looking at a similar one actually, Jem. Can you get overkill with vacuums? As sucky as possible is best in all circumstances, IMO. We don’t have pets, but we have worse: occasional visiting pets. So, a petless home that sometimes has a visiting floof. Actually, what we do have is that hardwearing carpet that is basically like Velcro to any bits of fluff, and I knit with wool, and see, and really the fibres from those are very similar to the pet hair, so I think that’s about right. Also, Darwin loveable to play with kinetic sand... It seems so much taller than our current vacuum (because it was made in the 80s when people were considerably shorter, weighed down by their shoulder pads), so would mean we could fit it in our cupboard if we raised the shelf. The 9l Henry wouldn’t fit in the cupboard (though the mini 6l Henry would).

Jem, I just thought I’d compare the one that you linked to and the one that I was looking at for tech spec differences, then noticed it was exactly the sameness model. I’ve taken it as divine providence and bought that.

Thank you for your advice, and you Z-Man. Henry was our first idea (they last forever) but just wouldn’t fit in the only space we had to store the vacuum.

I’ll stick googly eyes on this o r, though, for the happy Henry vibe

Yes.

Good choice Mimi. I really like it. I was a dyson lover for years so was weird going off-brand but definitely glad we did. Hope you have success with your velcro-like carpets

Should have bought a bigger cupboard!