Role of suction/airflow in a cleaner with a rotating brush

[myles_v]

Hi all,

I was curious and decided to test something out. I decided to vacuum the medium pile carpet in front of my front door on the lowest power setting of my Electrolux Guardian Encore and then go over the same area on the highest power setting to compare how much it picks up on each setting.

I honestly did not expect this big of a difference between the low and high settings, especially since I used the power nozzle. I used coffee filters placed at the bag to intercept the dirt being picked up. The filter on the left was done using the low setting, the filter on the right is high. As you can see it mostly picked up sand/grit, my boyfriend and I do not have any animals and take our shoes off before coming inside the house. Our Neato robotic vacuum ran this morning as well, so this is all dirt that it left behind.

 

[eurekaprince]

Suction and airflow are far more important for a bag-first canister vacuum than for a fan-first classic upright like a Kirby. You need to somehow get the dirt from the brush roll chamber to travel a long way up the wands and through a long 6-foot hose. So it makes sense that using the canister vac on the weakest suction setting would leave plenty of dirt behind on the carpet.

The short distance between brushroll and fan in a classic upright gets the job done with far weaker suction/airflow. Great classic Eureka uprights deep clean carpets well but have wimpy suction when used with the pan hose converter connected for above-the-floor cleaning.