Momma's got a brand new vac...

[jmurray01]

"But I never quite understood why Electrolux never fitted a piston valve bag indicator in the front bin door to ANY of the Powerlite uprights and have since failed to include it, even on the more recent models." Maybe they realised it was a useless feature as it only indicated a full bag when it was bursting at the seams and didn't have any suction at all, so decided just to save a few pennies on something the user would never miss.

As I said on the thread about piston indicators, I hate them.

The one on my 2008 JMB SC1056 doesn't indicate a full bag until it has no suction at all, the same goes for the bin full indicator on my 1988 Hitachi Powerhouse and the 2000 Electrolux Tango likes to say it has a full bag when it has a brand new bag and no blockages (the indicator is clearly too sensitive for the 1400 watt motor fitted).

They are utterly useless for anything other than identifying a blockage, which even then is still useless because if you had a blockage, you'd know about it without having a little red indicator to tell you!

 

[jmurray01]

The only upright I have with a piston indicator is my 1993 Philips U800 and seeing as I'm still on my first bag with it and haven't filled it up yet, I don't know whether it works efficiently - Who knows, maybe it will surprise me, I'm not holding out any hopes though.

 

[turbo500]

I've never found that any bag full indicators work that well. Even the computer controlled indicator on my Sebo x1.1 doesn't go off until the dirt is starting to go up the hose. I much prefer to just check it myself

 

[jmurray01]

Hear hear Chris, nothing better than actually opening the bag door and feeling the bag.

I change my bags at 1/2 to 2/3 full, you ?

 

[turbo500]

Well, I don't use my vintage vacs as daily drivers. The beauty of the Sebo is that the bag is jam packed full to the top before you need to empty it, so I fill it up as much as I can without the dirt coming up the hose. Thanks to the filter setup, it really doesn't lose suction until its full to overflowing

 

[vintagerepairer]

Does it smell though?

 

[turbo500]

No, not at all, that's to the high quality bags and S class filters

 

[alexhoovers94]

"Does it smell though? " ..... "No, not at all,


I changed the bags and filters a couple weeks ago in our x4 extra with genuine replacement ones and after about a week and a half of use it started to smell off dust and pet dander, don't get me wrong, it will still be filtering to a high standard, it is just it starts to smell because there is no charcole filters to prevent odour.
At least this is my experiane, I have this problem with all of my vacuums.

I like how you can fill sebo bags right to the top, however I would still emty it when it reaches about 3/4 full because I wouldn't want to over work the motor.

Nice felix by the way chris! Your mum will enjoy it for YEARS!

 

[sebo_fan]

I use the Charcoal filter in my X, its the one if you clean up after pets.

 

[jmurray01]

The only Vacuum Cleaners I have charcoal filters in is my Turbopowers, so to mask any pet odours (not that there would be many with just a cat) or any other smells for that matter I use vacuum fresheners in the bag.

 

[alexhoovers94]

I have a charcole filter in my turbo 2 and it does help some what but then again it does begin to smell before the bag is completely full.

 

[sebo_fan]

The Felix has a piston valve bag indicator that I never could trust properly; again like others, feeling the bag or checking it made much more sense. However the new fabric synthetic Felix dust bags are far more reliable working with the valve giving a far more consistent and reliable "reading" compared to the paper bags. 

 

[jmurray01]

Piston bag full indicators are like the low fuel warning lights on cars, they only activate when you are close to breaking down!

 

[sebo_fan]

Well, we'll just have to learn to disagree. Whilst they may not be reliable on certain brands I find them effective on others. Electrolux could have put a valve on the front of the Powerlite even if it wasn't reliable - at the time other brands had them and it made the machine a false economy if you went by the lack of suction alone if the hose was clogged and didn't feel the bags. Most owners rarely feel a dust bag and often chuck out the bag when it isn't even full. I could tell that from the amount of Powerlite uprights that I've seen at our local recycling site - and the synthetic genuine bags are not cheap to buy in the first place. Sadly with the force of suction, using the brown/paper dust bags often resulted in some being split open during use. 


 


If however there is one saving grace to having a white vacuum cleaner, it takes a far longer time for scratches to appear; my old SEBO K3 is testament to this. Unless you lift the machine up or peer closely only a few scratches can be seen compared the darker colours on my Miele canister vacs. 

 

[jmurray01]

Well I agree about the colour.

My 1993 Philips U800 does have some scratches but you'd never know because the white colour hides them.

 

[jmurray01]

"at the time other brands had them and it made the machine a false economy if you went by the lack of suction alone if the hose was clogged and didn't feel the bags." So you're trying to say that because there was no indicator people would replace bags when they didn't need replaced because of a loss of suction through a blocked hose ?

If there was a bag full indicator then a blocked hose would activate it anyway and make the person doubly sure the bag was full.

 

[sebo_fan]

Yes Jamie - if you read what I've said in context - and you've got the jist of it if you read further into your reply - most owners never checked the synthetic dust bags AFTER checking the hose, therefore wasting one or two quarters left in the bags. The filters underneath would be terribly clogged up with dust as well. Clearly if a valve was fitted ,either a blockage in the hose or the bag would indicate there was a problem.


 


Thats why when you rescue an old clean fan Hoover, you may well find the carbon filters on clean uprights like the TP2/3 are completely clogged up compared to the dust channels/where the main hose travels from, looking a lot cleaner. As a repairer's assistant in the mid 1990s, I used to see a lot of vacs where the motors were actually, still pretty good and owners had chucked away the vacs because they thought they had lost their suction. All that was really required was simple things like changing the dust bag, to cleaning the motor filters behind the bag. Owners just don't bother changing the filters on machines like vacuums - in the same way that they won't defrost their old fashioned freezers until something like an LED or a valve tells them to do so to avoid finding that the doors won't open due to the freezer over-freezing!