Okay-
Who’s got a vacuum they love?
One what’s got all those fancy HEPA anti-dust filtration whatamajiggers. Picks up allergens and dog hairs and bad juju.
We’ve had a terrible vacuum for years now, and its complete and utter inability to pick up dog hair off the couch is the final straw.
My mom is extolling the Oreck XL series, but I see too many bad reviews out there on the internets. Allergy Buyers Club sells a host of high-end, pricey ones I’ve never heard of.
Help!
All i know is to avoid dyson like the plague! My roomate works at home desperate ( I mean depot) and they got 8 in, sold 7 and had 7 returned. My mom has had either a hoover or a dirt devil for years and i have never heard a complaint other than having to get it out and use it. 😉
No Dyson. Check.
Hoover or Dirt Devil. Check.
Complaining about vacuuming. Already taken care of.
Okay… so did you just happen to have a picture of your Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner handy?
Does that one have the dustless functionality, HEPA or whatnot, preventing dust from getting back into the air?
No, I did not have the picture on hand, but I have a digital camera.
And the filtration level depends entirely on the bag. You want HEPA, put in a HEPA bag. Type U is Type U, they all should fit.
But if you are used to a bagless you might not need a HEPA bag, bagged vacuum cleaners intrinsically pick up finer dust.
You do have to be careful taking the bag off, or you get a puff of dust in the face, but that is a user error, not a design flaw.
What I’m used to right now is a cheap, horribly designed, bagged vacuum that doesn’t pick up anything.
I supposed $40 isn’t too much of a risk. If we have to go to a $250 model later because the dust mites continue to plague me, that’ll be fine. If it gets up the dog hair in the meantime, we’re golden.
I hope you find something that works for you.
I don’t understand why so many crappy vacuum cleaners are out there. I mean it is a pretty simple concept. A pump to move air, a spinning brush to loosen dirt, a containment vessel that can be easily emptied. This isn’t rocket surgery.
Well, it’s such a new technology. You have to get them a couple hundred years to get a handle on it, really.
At least none of the ones I have seen require wall warts.
Yet.
I have a Hoover Bagless Windtunnel that I freakin’ love.
My dad bought it to replace my vacuum cleaner, which he thought was wholly inadequate, when he flew out here on a moment’s notice to care for me after my emergency appendectomy. I scoffed at his gift, poo-poo-ing his snobbery.
But here’s the deal: he’s totally right.
It has this “dirtfinder” gizmo that lights up when you need to re-go-over areas that remain dirty. It sails smoothly over carpet and ceramic tile. And it isn’t so loud that it makes me want to scream.
I would also like to point out that it is almost 11pm on a Saturday night and I am extolling the virtues of a vacuum cleaner. My life is so very exciting.
When I was home for the summer from college, I was up late one night with a friend trying to build a circuit to do something cool with some of my newly-learned engineering knowledge.
I had a big bucket of resistors, and trying to find the right one was tedious. He asked, “Why don’t we organize all these by value so it’s easier?”
I answered, “Because then we’d be the type of geeks who stay up late on a Saturday night organizing resistors.”
Vacuum cleaners, though… that’s cool.
For less than five bucks, you can subscribe to consumer reports for a month online, and get some way dweeb-tarded input from researchers who care about how good a sucking device can be. Its also fun to search that site for stuff. This counts as a big ticket item in my book, making the consideration of using one’s Costco membership for items like this. I learned that the savings on big ticket items is usually what makes the membership fee worth it. I think consumer reports told me that,too…
Hoooo-ver
We also have a Hoover windtunnel that works really well. It does have a bag, which is fine. The thing I would change at this point is that its self-propelled upright carpet-sweeping ability is great on carpet but not effective on our newly exposed wood floors, and I must resort to the attachments, which are also fine but not made for this sort of activity. They are great for smaller jobs, but using the bare tube for the whole house is a little back-unfriendly and not the best use of time– but it does suck consistently, which is what I like about it so much. I also totally agree about the Consumer Reports comment, as might be expected since amosearle and I use it for the same things at the same time, often one peering over the other’s shoulder as we weigh the pros and cons of getting the best buy over getting the one with the coolest flux capacitor…but that’s another story. Good luck!
Re: Hoooo-ver
I totally need a vacuum with a flux capacitor.
On our to-do list is getting a Costco membership. Soon, oh, soon…
There’s also the Sears Scratch-and-Dent (called the Sears Outlet) on Mountain Industrial Way in Tucker. They may have vacuums.