Vacuum TIPS......

Upright vs. Canister Vacuums

Approximately 95% of American households use upright vacuums. As a general rule, uprights are less expensive than canisters, and are better suited to cleaning medium- to high-pile carpets. Their drawbacks include their relatively poor performance on solid floors, Berber carpets, edge cleaning, and tool convenience.

Canisters account for a smaller percentage of the market, but have advantages over uprights. Canisters are better adapted to cleaning all floor types; from hardwood all the way up to 60's-style shag. They can get under and around furniture where uprights can't. Their tools are usually much more convenient, and they typically last longer. Their main disadvantage is that they are not all easy to maneuver, and many topple over. Some people say that they don't like to "drag one behind them." Another big detriment to the canister market is that the designs out there vary so widely in terms of maneuverability and performance. For instance there are certain metal designs that are extremely top-heavy and fall over for no reason whatsoever. Then there are designs that are castered all the way around, making it hard to knock over, even if you try. Some are designed just for solid floors, others are equipped with two, or even three heads, depending on the cleaning situation.

A good rule of thumb is to determine whether you are a price-oriented buyer, or a quality oriented buyer. If you are a price-oriented buyer, the odds are that you will prefer the selection of uprights. Most of the inexpensive canisters are annoying to use, and mild in terms of performance. If you are a quality buyer, you will spend a little more on average than on uprights, but the price is very worth it in terms of usability, and cleaning performance.

Motor Bypass (vacuum motor protection)

There are basically two ways to design a vacuum: Place the bag before the motor, or after the motor. If you place the bag after the motor, debris such as pebbles, nails, screws, coins, etc. hit the fan in the motor causing it to break, melt, or seize. By sending the dirt and air into the bag before it gets to the motor, you protect it from all this stuff, and it will last longer. Also, because it does not have to "defend" itself, the motor can be made more efficient at moving air, which is the purpose of a vacuums cleaner motor in the first place. Why does anyone use a design that is not a motor bypass? It is cheaper. Also, there are designs that are look-alikes of days gone by when the fans were steel and could handle more abuse. Read that twice if you wonder why your new Brand X didn't last two years, and your old Brand X lasted 10 years.

Vacuum cleaning heads and flooring types

Vacuums generally have a spinning brush or agitator which "beats" the carpet, while the airflow through the carpet brings the loosened dirt up into the cleaner. This design works best on cut pile carpets of medium height and taller. It is not really appropriate for solid floors because the nozzle does not seal well against the floor, allowing air to come into the cleaner without picking up dirt. Some models have implemented a squeegee to deflect scattered particles on solid floors back into the airsteam. This works, but only to a point. Other vacuums have a switch which turns off the brushroll. These only work if the vacuum really moves a lot of air because the size of the opening on most nozzles with a brushroll is so large that it bleeds a lot of air into it unless it is sealed against a carpet.

Some brushroll designs are electrically driven, some are powered by the airflow of the vacuum itself. The latter "turbo brushes" are only good for enormous airflow vacuums, such as central vacuums, and very high-end canisters.

Solid floors and loop carpet require tools designed for them. These will usually have a switch to drop a brush for sweeping the solid floor as you vacuum. When the brush is up, you will be gliding along a flat metal or plastic plate which has airflow grooves molded in. These grooves concentrate the velocity of the air, allowing the suction of the vacuum to clean the carpet. This tool is the best to clean loop carpet, such as industrial or Berber, as no amount of "beating" will help. Also these tools are the lightest, most flexible, easiest to push, and trouble free. They also do edging wonderfully.

About AMPS and other vacuum ratings

First, let's get a few definitions set, so that we can see where we are being lied to:

Amp: A unit of electric current.

Volt: A unit of electric potential.

Watt: One Volt times one Amp.

Horsepower: Archaic, but approximately 756 Watts

Peak Horsepower: Whatever they want it to be.

Vacuum Cleaning Effectiveness: You gotta be kidding.

Your wall outlets: under 15 amps or you blow the breaker!

It has been shown time and again that you cannot determine a vacuum's actual suction by looking at the amp rating on the machine. We know of one vendor who went from a seven amp to an eight amp by changing only the label and the way the motor was tested. Also, these amp ratings are maximum ratings, not constant-use ratings. Think about this: If you have your TV, microwave, and 12-Amp vacuum all running at the same time, you should be blowing your 15amp circuit breaker. But you don't! That's because the vacuums that are twelve amp rated typically draw less than half of that on a continuous basis.

How about comparisons? Okay, a 12 amp vacuum should be stronger than an 11 amp one, right? Well, no, not unless they are exactly the same design. This is like cars. Many of the world's fastest cars are 4 and 6 cylinder engines. Shouldn't the big 8's be faster? They should, except that the manufacturers have done neat things like add turbochargers, free-flow exhaust, quad valves, etc. to make the smaller engines more efficient and more powerful, even though they have a lower displacement than other, less efficient, large engines.

Well, Mr. Smartypants, how do YOU know which is stronger? There are devices that we can use to help. One common one is a vacuum gauge. This works like a barometer, only calibrated to a scale useful for vacuum cleaners. We hook up the vacuum hose to the guage, and it tells us the "sealed suction" of the machine. These guages are all a little different, but give us a useful tool to see the relative differences between models. There is another type of guage called an airflow meter. These are expensive, and very few places have a real one. Also, these are easily rigged to be preferential to particular machines.

The best way to look at the cleaner is to asses it as a whole. The engineering of the floor tool has to be right for your floors. There has to be quality inherent in at least the most abused parts of the machine. The tool suction has to be acceptable, and the floors and edges have to come as clean as your willing to pay for.

We strongly suggest that you try out a few different machines before making a decision, and never buy a discount machine in the box, not having tried one.