Nothing breaks an afternoon's concentration like having your wife coughing, sneezing, and swearing in a cloud of dust, brought about mostly because it was her turn to clean out the vacuum cleaner.
i don't blame her, but then again, she brought this upon herself.
We used to have a few old vacuums that eventually gave up their respected ghosts because, let's face it, most vacuum cleaners aren't really built all that well. So when it got to the point where she needed a new one, she looked around at what was available. She decided on one of those bagless varieties, partly against my advice that bagless really wasn't the best option.
Anyone who's replaced a vacuum cleaner bag knows the kind of dust those buggers produce. Now imagine not having that bag and it's generally confining ability to contain dust and you get some idea of what a bagless jobber is like. i have no idea why they make such a big deal about having HEPA filters on the things when that all goes out (or potentially back in) the window when you empty out the thing.
i'm sure there's some trick to dealing with the things (Like wrap the filter in an old grocery bag before knocking out the accumulated dust and what-not, but even with a perfect system where you don't have to knock crap out of the primary intakes, don't you still have a few ounces of fine particulate being dumped into the local atmosphere?
Thing is, it's not all that easy to find bag vacuum cleaners. Actually, it's darn near impossible to find a decent canister vacuum, i'm still waiting for the inevitable backlash that talks about the new Wonder-Velope self contained dust system where you simply "pull and pitch" the particulate containment system. No more dust-clouds!
Don't you love pendulums? Good thing they work in vacuums too.
(P.S. yes, i know this is a day late. i forgot to hit the publish button yesterday.)
I have a Shop-Vac, and hardwood floors. Every once in a while I trot it out to clean the area rug. Louder than crap.
You've got to see the Dyson DC15 to believe it. No loss of suction, and it reaches everywhere!
http://www.dyson.com/homepage.asp
Suction really isn't the problem. The problem is that when you go to empty the damn thing you wind up getting crap all over. Yeah, the Dyson supposedly manages to do some clever bits with airflow to remove dirt, but I'm guessing you also have to empty it a lot more, since the central area is filled with air-flow control mechanisms.
Shep: Know what works for us? We picked up a cheap dust-mop we use to collect the dust and debris from the floor, gather it in a pile and then hit that pile with the vac (obviously, the extension hose so the brushes don't shoot stuff all over). I think it works better than straight vacuuming, and is a LOT quieter.
JR - No seriously, check out the Dyson. I got one. Jeremy got one after reading my review of it, and he similarly loves it.
The emptying of it is no more frequent than in a vacuum bag, and it's COMPLETELY painless (remove the canister, put the bottom of the canister inside a garbage bag, push the button on the TOP of the canister which releases the door on the bottom, shake a bit, close the bottom back up and pull the empty canister out, leaving the dust sealed inside the bag).
It works great, is completely user-friendly… best money I ever spent.
Thanks Derek, I tried to get her to look at one, but she had her heart set on a cannister vac. I'll probably post a review up in a few weeks once she has some sort of opinion about it.
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It's kinda funny how old vacuums like Kirby tended to be bagless by default, then the "vacuum cleaner bag" — which you could just slip off and throw away — was heralded as the greatest idea to hit housewares.
I have a bagless vac, but I don't assume it to be any cleaner — I just dislike the concept of buying replacement components for things I've already purchased.