Central vacuum

[vacguy1984]

Hi everyone I wanted to ask a favor if anyone on here live’s or did live in a house that owned a central vacuum or previously owned a central vacuum would anyone be interested in sharing pictures or videos of them? Please?

This is what I would like to see if anyone can do it.
I would like to know what brand anyone had or previously had
I want to see a video of the unit running I want to hear how loud or quiet they sound
And I would like to see pictures of where it was installed either garage, storage closet, or basement.
And I want to see a video showing where installed like walking to the location where it’s located Please please?

I’ll start first I previously lived in a house with a central vacuum sadly we sold our house 5 or 6 years ago. But here’s a video from my YouTube channel of our central system ours was an astrovac made my Lindsey.

 

[vacguy1984]

Apparently it may not let me post video it saying file too large to post

 

[panasonicvac]

You can share a link and it'll show up.

 

[kitra]

My Dad installed a Central Vacuum in the early 60's and then another one in 1972. We bought our second House in 1993 and I installed a Central Vacuum. I installed it in a Bedroom Closet in the corner. The noise was never an issue. The Power unit was a Modern Day Silent Master S2. It was a twin Motor unit with lots of suction. Excellent! We moved in 2001 and we took the Power unit and accessories with us. The accessories were Hayden brand, not too great. We planned to install it in our current House but it's a 2-story House and running the piping upstairs seemed like a pain so the Silent Master is sitting in the Garage doing nothing.

 

[vacerator]

Wow, a shame to not use it. I'd find a hallway wall or up the staircase wall easy to access the tubing upstairs. Is one inlet up there enough? Or sell it.

 

[vacguy1984]

You can share a link and it'll show up.

I tried and it wouldn’t show up it said copy and I couldn’t figure out where it copied to from my iPad.

 

[vacguy1984]

My Dad installed a Central Vacuum in the early 60's and then another one in 1972. We bought our second House in 1993 and I installed a Central Vacuum. I installed it in a Bedroom Closet in the corner. The noise was never an issue. The Power unit was a Modern Day Silent Master S2. It was a twin Motor unit with lots of suction. Excellent! We moved in 2001 and we took the Power unit and accessories with us. The accessories were Hayden brand, not too great. We planned to install it in our current House but it's a 2-story House and running the piping upstairs seemed like a pain so the Silent Master is sitting in the Garage doing nothing.

That’s great but I still would like to see pics and videos of it running. That’s what my thread was about. But if you don’t have pics I understand. Maybe try videoing running if you can.

 

[vacguy1984]

Wow, a shame to not use it. I'd find a hallway wall or up the staircase wall easy to access the tubing upstairs. Is one inlet up there enough? Or sell it.

Do you have a central vacuum or you can share pics or videos of the unit running?

 

[Hatsuwr]

Do you have a central vacuum or you can share pics or videos of the unit running?

There are a great many videos you can find on YouTube. Here's the first one I came across, it is turned on at the very end:
That's pretty typical for how they sound. They aren't quiet at all—they typically rely on being in an out-of-the-way location like a garage or basement where the noise isn't as bothersome.

 

[vacerator]

I wish I had thought to try that with my Hoover CV. A universal relay isn't fittable. Oh well, it was 30 years old, with a new motor 2 years ago though.
Dealer gave us a $200 recycle trade credit on a new Vacuflo cyclonic.

 

[vacguy1984]

I wish I had thought to try that with my Hoover CV. A universal relay isn't fittable. Oh well, it was 30 years old, with a new motor 2 years ago though.
Dealer gave us a $200 recycle trade credit on a new Vacuflo cyclonic.

Can you please show a video of your unit running? Or show a video walking to where it’s located and turning the unit on ?

 

[vacguy1984]

Thanks for the replies I wish I can see pictures, and videos of what your unit looks like and a short video of everyone walking to where it’s located and turning the unit on so I can hear what they sound like! But if y’all can’t do that or don’t feel like doing it I understand just try your best.

 

[vacerator]

With a muffler on the exhaust, most are not that loud. Quieter than a shop vac. Some have soft start control boards. Mine draws 13 amps. on start, and 11.5 under load. It has a rubber insulated top with vent holes around the edge for cooling air intake. Bypass 2 stage motor. It's rated at 59.7 DB. Three stage, and dual motor units are louder of course.

 

[Hatsuwr]

With a muffler on the exhaust, most are not that loud. Quieter than a shop vac. Some have soft start control boards. Mine draws 13 amps. on start, and 11.5 under load. It has a rubber insulated top with vent holes around the edge for cooling air intake. Bypass 2 stage motor. It's rated at 59.7 DB. Three stage, and dual motor units are louder of course.

Do you have any examples of ones that use a soft start? I was planning on incorporating that into mine, and I'm curious how existing solutions do it.

 

[vacerator]

Oh, doing that would require swapping out the control board. I wouldn't for two reasons. 1; Chinese made relay/control boards are more suseptible to voltage spikes and surges. I unplug our new one after use. 2; An existing motor may not be designed for soft start. Miele uses it in their German made vac's.
CV Brands that incorporate soft start; I think OVO, but I wouldn't buy one (China). Some MD models might, etc. the specs will tell you.

 

[Hatsuwr]

Oh, doing that would require swapping out the control board. I wouldn't for two reasons. 1; Chinese made relay/control boards are more suseptible to voltage spikes and surges. I unplug our new one after use. 2; An existing motor may not be designed for soft start. Miele uses it in their German made vac's.
CV Brands that incorporate soft start; I think OVO, but I wouldn't buy one (China). Some MD models might, etc. the specs will tell you.

I'll post about it more here when I've made some progress on it, but I'm redoing the entire control circuit. I have an old CV350 that had the common basic transformer + relay setup, but a few years ago switched that out for a Shelly smart switch. That worked great until my armature failed (I don't think there's any connection there).

I replaced the motor with a larger one that might be a bit too much of a load for the Shelly, plus I wanted a bit more out of the controller, so I'm planning something a bit more custom. I tried looking at some pictures and videos of the boards I could find online, but it's hard to find any that are clear enough to figure out what they have going on.

 

[panasonicvac]

I've used a Vacuflo 566Q and a VacuMaid S2600 that both had the soft start feature (coincidentally they both had the same motors). I've also had some Simplicity units made by the same company as CycloVac that used the soft start feature as well when I was working at a vacuum shop. Personally, I'm not a fan of it. It makes sense from a technical point of view but I prefer having a unit that starts up immediately.

Going back to the original question of this thread, I've got several videos on my channel with central vac videos. Some of which are mine. Right now I use a Beam 287S in my home. I also have a Eureka The Boss over in my storage shed. And in my collection I have a DrainVac Little Giant. I used to have a MD SilentMaster (believe it's a S2), left that behind when the place got sold. My all time favorite central vac ever would be the VacuMaid P-125 that my grandfather has. When I move, it's going to have a central vac since I can't live in a place without one. Would love to get another MD but open for other options like Vacuflo.

 

[cheesewonton]

I've used a Vacuflo 566Q and a VacuMaid S2600 that both had the soft start feature. I've also had some Simplicity units made by the same company as CycloVac that used the soft start feature as well. Personally, I'm not a fan of it. It makes sense from a technical point of view but I prefer having a unit that starts up immediately.

European and some Japan market Hitachi vacuums with soft start bug me. When I flip the switch on I want to go to work, not wait for the motor to slowly spin up. Lindhaus is the most frustrating this way.

 

[panasonicvac]

I agree. If it happened on a VacuMaid with those microswitch metal inlets, I'd be fine with that since I'd have to go and plug in the hose in order to turn the vacuum on like my grandfather's VacuMaid. The Aria is the only Lindhaus at least for corded models today that has the soft start feature. SEBO on the other hand has almost all models with the soft start feature today, only the 300 and 350 that don't because they're mechanical. Wasn't always like that, I mean my white X4 for example doesn't have it but not long ago they changed their boards so now the white X4 being sold today does have the soft start.

 

[cheesewonton]

I agree. If it happened on a VacuMaid with those microswitch metal inlets, I'd be fine with that since I'd have to go and plug in the hose in order to turn the vacuum on like my grandfather's VacuMaid. The Aria is the only Lindhaus at least for corded models today that has the soft start feature. SEBO on the other hand has almost all models with the soft start feature today, only the 300 and 350 that don't because they're mechanical. Wasn't always like that, I mean my white X4 for example doesn't have it but not long ago they changed their boards so now the white X4 being sold today does have the soft start.

The Sebo G4 / Windsor Sensor S12 certainly has soft start. It was a selling point in the literature and my 15 or so year old Sensor S12 certainly has it. Sebo's version is not as slow as the Aria though.

 

[vacguy1984]

I've used a Vacuflo 566Q and a VacuMaid S2600 that both had the soft start feature (coincidentally they both had the same motors). I've also had some Simplicity units made by the same company as CycloVac that used the soft start feature as well when I was working at a vacuum shop. Personally, I'm not a fan of it. It makes sense from a technical point of view but I prefer having a unit that starts up immediately.

Going back to the original question of this thread, I've got several videos on my channel with central vac videos. Some of which are mine. Right now I use a Beam 287S in my home. I also have a Eureka The Boss over in my storage shed. And in my collection I have a DrainVac Little Giant. I used to have a MD SilentMaster (believe it's a S2), left that behind when the place got sold. My all time favorite central vac ever would be the VacuMaid P-125 that my grandfather has. When I move, it's going to have a central vac since I can't live in a place without one. Would love to get another MD but open for other options like Vacuflo.

Do you have any pics or videos of your vacumaid s2600 that you could show? Or a short video of it running?

 

[panasonicvac]

No that wasn't my machine. But I can tell you that it looked like this.

 

[vacerator]

How long does it take for the motor to ramp up? A second or two? It's not like it's 5. If I want my car to go 60, it takes 6 to 8 or more seconds.
We have a Vacuflo 466Q and it does not have soft start. I just looked up the 566Q and it does not either. Bothe use a 7.2 inch 2 stage bypass metal horn motor.

 

[panasonicvac]

The 466Q uses a 116472 lamb motor that's 5.7 inches, especially since the unit is shorter in height compare to the 566Q as shown below. The 566Q uses a 7.2 motor but it's not the same one that the 560 has as well it replaced. To be fair, it's been so long since I used the 566Q that maybe it doesn't have the soft start, I could've sworn it did. But for certain the VacuMaid S2600 in fact does have the soft start up feature, it wasn't that long ago when I last used it. And I've noticed they're both even more powerful than the 7.2 motor that the 560 uses including my Beam.

 

[centralvacguru]

The "soft-start" technology was originally designed to try to reduce the in-rush current during start-up because of the instantaneous electrical requirements of a large brushed motor. These spikes on a 7.2" motor might reach 120-150 Amps for a few milli-seconds. The softstart was designed to slow down the ramp-up to spread those amps out over a longer time. But actually the problem stemmed from manufactures using too small of a relay and they were burning up relays prematurely. Our company never adopted softstart because we always used a heavier-duty relay and thus were not having major board problems. We did employ the technology in our products going into Australia solely because of the ANZI electrical requirements for that country. After about 20 years of usage of both, I personally have never seen any empirical evidence that the softstart technology extended motor-life thus we prefer not to include it on our relay boards. Why add cost and further potential for malfunction!

 

[vacerator]

The 466Q uses a 116472 lamb motor that's 5.7 inches, especially since the unit is shorter in height compare to the 566Q as shown below. The 566Q uses a 7.2 motor but it's not the same one that the 560 has as well it replaced. To be fair, it's been so long since I used the 566Q that maybe it doesn't have the soft start, I could've sworn it did. But for certain the VacuMaid S2600 in fact does have the soft start up feature, it wasn't that long ago when I last used it. And I've noticed they're both even more powerful than the 7.2 motor that the 560 uses including my Beam.

Ok, then the 566Q must be way more stronger. Too much for our 1,450 sq. foot home. The 466Q packs plenty of power. It lift's up small rugs even with a bristle floor tool. Vacuuming toss pillows with down ticking requires the suction bleeder open or the upholstery tool gets pulled off.

 

[vacuumdevil]

I happen to have a lot of videos of central vacuums

 

[Hatsuwr]

Ok, then the 566Q must be way more stronger. Too much for our 1,450 sq. foot home. The 466Q packs plenty of power. It lift's up small rugs even with a bristle floor tool. Vacuuming toss pillows with down ticking requires the suction bleeder open or the upholstery tool gets pulled off.

For a well installed system, I don't think the ideal power of the power unit corresponds very well to home size, for the vast majority of homes at least. There losses in pipes in the walls should be relatively small compared to the hose and cleaning head/attachments.

I happen to have a lot of videos of central vacuums

That's interesting. I wonder if you would get more cleaning-relevant performance from having the two motors in series instead of in parallel.

 

[vacerator]

We have only two wall inlets. Also, the HP true cyclonic models have no filters to restrict airflow.

 

[ultralux88]

The unit I have connected to my system is an MD SilentMaster S5 240v. But I’ve got a large collection of older power units, both ones I’ve traded in and ones I’ve got from others in the business. My oldest machines being from 1962, one a Power Vac that was made here in Denver, and the other being an MD from their second ever production run.