my review of the Sirena
This is the first time I have owned a water filtration vacuum, after seeing it at the vacuum convention a couple weeks ago, I decided to get one since I'm a big fan of canisters and I really like the motor sound of this machine. Here are my impressions.
When you open the box, you will find two more boxes, one contains the Sirena machine, a nonelectric hose that can be used to vacuum wet or dry material, a curved wand, a telescopic wand, a bottle of ocean breeze deodorizer, and four small bottles of fragrances that you can use. The other box contains the power nozzle, another telescopic wand which has a cord holder, a hard floor brush, and an electric hose which should only be used when vacuuming dry material. The other attachments are shipped in the water basin and include a dusting brush, appoulstry tool, crevvis tool, and an inflator tool.
Let's talk about the Sirena machine itself. It consists of three parts, the motor unit, the water basin, and the dolly. The motor unit has the cord attached, not sure how long it is, but I would guess around 20 feet, there is a cover on the front which covers the hose in take, and on the back there is a cover on the exhaust port. The Hepa filter is also in this area. There are two buttons, the top one is the power button, pressing this starts the motor on high speed, pressing the button again turns it off. If you want to run the Sirena on low speed for purifying the air, press the top button first, then press the bottom button. In order to go back to high speed, you need to turn it off and back on so you would press the top button twice. The motor unit is secured to the base by two latches, one on each side. The water basin looks like a large bowl, and this is what holds the water as well as whatever is vacuumed up. When dumping the basin, you can just turn it over and dump everything out, or there is a spout that allows you to just dump the water and leave everything else in the basin, although I can't imagine why you would ever want to do this, it's best to get as much vacuumed dirt out as possible with the water, so dumping it all at once is definitely the way to go. The dolly has four wheels that also will rotate 360 degrees, allowing the Sirena to roll easily and to turn corners. The dolly rolls very easily and this has a good and a bad side. It's good because it's very easy to pull the Sirena along while vacuuming, the down side is that, while attaching the machine to the dolly, it sometimes rolls away from you and makes it a bit more difficult to get everything lined up. Still, I don't think I would change it, the good outweighs the bad here.
Ok, on to the hoses. The Sirena includes two hoses, one is electric and the other is nonelectric, I think this is a good thing. I know with the newest rainbow, you can do wet pick-up with the electric hose, I'm sure this has been tested, but, I think I would prefer to vacuum liquids with a hose that has no electric wires, it just seems much safer. The nonelectric hose has one end that will connect to either the in take or exhaust port, the other end has an oval shape, at first I couldn't figure out how this was supposed to work, what you need to do is attach the curved wand to this end of the hose. I'm not sure why this is required, you can't use attachments on the hose without the curved wand so it would have made more sense to just have this as part of the hose itself. Once the curved wand is attached, you will probably never need to remove it.
The electric hose has one end that will go in to the in-take, it's slightly larger since it mates with an electrical connector that is right above the air in-take port. Because of this, when using the blowing features, you need to use the nonelectric hose. The other end of the electric hose has a gas pump grip, there is no suction relief and to activate the power nozzle, you need to press and hold a trigger. I find this a bit annoying, if you forget to hold the trigger the nozzle will not work, I guess it was designed this way so if you walk away, there is no chance of carpet damage, but I think an on-off switch would have been much easier. The other annoyance with the electric hose is that it does not swivel, actually there is no swivel in either hose. The electrical connector on the electric hose is slightly larger than most of the other two prong connectors. For most users this will not matter, I like to pair my vacuums with different power nozzles, this does work, but the connection is a bit loose. The power nozzle that is included with the Sirena is their own design, it's not a third party nozzle. There is a platinum version of the Sirena available which does include the Wessel Werk ebk360 which is a very good power nozzle, as far as I know, this is the only difference between the regular and platinum versions. The power nozzle that comes with the standard model has three height adjustments, and it does use a flat belt which will require more frequent replacement.
Ok, on to preparing for use. The instructions say to fill the basin to at least the minimum line when doing regular every day vacuuming. I have heard that filling to between min and max will work better and keep the separator clean longer, and I have also heard to just fill it to max. I tend to fill it to just below the max line. You can add some of the deodorizer or fragrances if you wish, personally, I was not really fond of any of the fragrances. Any fragrance you use must be water based, apparently essential oils will cause the basin to crack, kind of a shame because there are some very nice essential oil fragrances, but oh well. I tried the Sirena on low speed for a while with some of the ocean breeze deodorizer but honestly I did not notice much difference. On low speed, the machine moves very little air, this is one feature I probably will not use, but it's there if you want to use it.
Ok, now on to the performance which is probably what everyone is most interested in. I wanted to give the Sirena a good test, so I took it to my girl friend's place, she has two cats, so there would be cat hair and of course plenty of dust from the litter box. The apartment is mostly hard floors, so I used the hard floor brush. The Sirena had no problems cleaning up everything, one thing I did notice, and this probably happens with any water filtration vacuum, if you vacuum up something that has a smell, that smell will be noticeable, especially when the machine is running on high speed. We vacuumed up a bit of cat food and it kind of smelled like fish. Thanks to the wheels on the cart, the Sirena will have no problems following you around, and it's unlikely that it would tip over. The Sirena can also be used to vacuum liquids, although I did not test this feature. In order to vacuum liquids, you need to use the nonelectric hose. The basin holds around three liters. While this may work for cleaning up small wet messes, it will not take the place of a dedicated wet dry vac, and if I needed to vacuum liquids, I would probably just grab one of the wet dry vacs in my collection. At this time, there is no attachment available for spraying water to clean carpets or hard floors, although you could get the parts to make one yourself. You would need a wand with a spray jet, a water hose that would attach to a faucet and an attachment for cleaning carpets or hard floors as appropriate. I got this to work using a wet dry vac, and it should work with the Sirena just as well. There is no shut off float in the Sirena, so if you vacuum liquids, you need to keep an eye on what is in the basin.
When the vacuuming was done, the water was quite nasty as expected. After dumping the water, there was some clean up that needed to be done. The bottom of the motor unit was quite dirty, probably from the litter dust, I cleaned this with a wet rag, the separator looked fairly clean, but I did remove it and clean it as well. On the under side of the motor unit, close to the exhaust port, a brush is stored for this purpose. To clean the separator, remove the brush, and use the wrench at the other end of the tool to loosen the nut on the separator. The separator looks like a small impeller. After removing and cleaning it, place it back on the motor shaft and turn it until it goes all the way on, then tighten the nut and put the tool back in the provided compartment. The basin also needed to be washed, I used some dishwashing soap in the sink and warm water to wash it out. When storing the Sirena, it's best not to store it with the basin attached, apparently this can damage the rubber gasket on the bottom of the motor unit. It's actually the motor unit that attaches to the cart rather than the basin, so, I store my motor unit and cart in the closet and the basin under the sink.
As far as actual suction and airflow, I did attach my rug rat turbine brush to see how fast the Sirena could spin it. It actually spun the turbine much slower than my other current model canisters, it spun about as fast as when using the Electrolux 1205. I think because of their design, water based vacuums will also be a bit less powerful than other vacuum types, the motors are not spinning as fast. And, while this test is always interesting, it doesn't necessarily mean that the Sirena will not clean as well as other vacuums, as long as you have enough airflow and suction to remove the dirt and dust particles, the vacuum has done its job.
So, on to the question that reviews are mainly designed to answer, is it a good product and would you recommend it? First, let me say that I have always believed that for the best overall filtration and cleanest dirt disposal, a bagged vacuum, especially a vacuum that uses hepa cloth bags is the way to go. The Sirena has not changed my view on that, because of this, the Sirena will not become one of my daily drivers. That said, I'm glad I got it and I do plan to use it every once in a while. I have no intention of starting to add a lot of bagless vacuums to my collection, this will probably be the only bagless vacuum that I will have. Is it a good product? Yes, I think it is, as long as you understand what is required to maintain it and are willing to do those things. If you want a water filtration vacuum but don't want to pay the ridiculous price for a new rainbow, this is the machine to get. The cost is similar to, and in some cases less than some other high end canister and upright models. I don't have a rainbow so I can't compare the differences in performance, I will leave that to those who have used both products. I would say the Sirena would be good for someone who insists on having a bagless vacuum, while they require more work to maintain than a bagged vacuum, it's easier than maintaining bagless vacuums such as those from Dyson, Shark, and other brands.
