Momma's got a brand new vac...

[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!