The Fault Of The TTi Hoover Products

[panasonicvac]

I was impressed when I first saw this video of just how well the filter on the Patriot performs. However, just by how much the Patriot costs and for replacing the filters, by doing the math I'd end up saving more by having a central vac instead. And like what Reggie pointed out, I'd rather have a vacuum where I wouldn't be sniffing in the dust and/or odors coming out of a portable.

 

[centralsweeper63]

Re-useable cloth bags lose power, paper a little bit and cloth barely any. That is what I have found.

 

[cheesewonton]

I was impressed when I first saw this video of just how well the filter on the Patriot performs. However, just by how much the Patriot costs and for replacing the filters, by doing the math I'd end up saving more by having a central vac instead. And like what Reggie pointed out, I'd rather have a vacuum where I wouldn't be sniffing in the dust and/or odors coming out of a portable.

What surprises me is that on those older Patriots like the one depicted in the smoke test the rear wheels are on a steel axle that goes right through the motor compartment. One would expect that axle to be a source of a significant air leak but the axle is apparently very well sealed. The newer models with six wheels do not have an axle going through the motor compartment. The four casters fit into notches in the body but do not penetrate the outer shell. The axle for the center wheels goes through the bag chamber instead of the motor compartment.

Kind of a heart breaker for the Miele fans. Incidentally when Vacuum Wars conducted the same smoke test on the Hoover Hushtone no smoke came out anywhere. Hoover better filtered than a Miele? Ooooooh Nooooooo. Say it ain't so.

 

[centralsweeper63]

I would imagine they have really good bearings.

 

[centralsweeper63]

I am a bit suspicious that in the smoke that video they took out the bags or filters. It is like they modified the machines being tested. I may well be wrong though.

 

[amtraksebo1997]

I wouldn't say suction loss is a lie. The paper bags on conventional vacuums did clog, which resulted in cleaning performance degrading, which would mean that the deeply embedded dirt wouldn't get picked up, with the worst case scenario being said dirt would be ground into the carpet. My Dyson Ball Animal 3 is just about 2 years old, and its suction is still just as strong as it was when I vacuumed with it for the first time, so that tells me that the cyclones are doing their job pretty well.

Okay, I probably should've worded my claims better. Vacuums will lose their suction if not properly maintained. HOWEVER, this fact was heavily twisted and skewed to make it out as a bigger problem than it actually is by Shark and Dyson. From my experience, this only occurs when the bag on a machine is almost completely full, such as on my Hoover Windtunnel Supreme and Dirt Devil Featherlite. Even then, it's so subtle, it's almost unnoticeable. Thanks to this skewing, now we have slop machines that are more maintenance heavy for little returns.

As for cyclones, forget about them. They shouldn't be overly relied on for filtration. Dust will still get on your pre-motor filters, and possibly into the motors.

 

[amtraksebo1997]

What surprises me is that on those older Patriots like the one depicted in the smoke test the rear wheels are on a steel axle that goes right through the motor compartment. One would expect that axle to be a source of a significant air leak but the axle is apparently very well sealed. The newer models with six wheels do not have an axle going through the motor compartment. The four casters fit into notches in the body but do not penetrate the outer shell. The axle for the center wheels goes through the bag chamber instead of the motor compartment.

Kind of a heart breaker for the Miele fans. Incidentally when Vacuum Wars conducted the same smoke test on the Hoover Hushtone no smoke came out anywhere. Hoover better filtered than a Miele? Ooooooh Nooooooo. Say it ain't so.

The smoke test is very good rule-of-thumb test to see how good a vac performs. If you can see the smoke coming out of the exhaust of a machine, then it's doing a lousy job. If you can't, then it's at least filtering down to 5 microns.

 

[centralsweeper63]

My Windsor Smartvac XP15 has a re-useable shake-out bag, it is a brick and stills sucks. It only stops working properly or loses much suction when it is filled into the tube.

 

[huskyvacs]

Well, if you want a truly great vacuum that is even better than a Sebo for a reasonable cost, you need crowdfunding, a factory, workers, design skills and some time.

And then said company will take 5+ years to attain the money, make a few dozen models, then go bankrupt and mismanage it all. ahem..ahem...Lupe...

 

[rlsellman21]

It isn't so much a case of the bag material clogging as the reduction in the size of the air path as the bag fills. In most bagged vacuums the bag sits against the sides of the bag chamber. As the bag fills airflow is obstructed. If you can suspend the bag off the sides you don't loose airflow. Look at the expander cages used in several Panasonic canister models and uprights ( MC-CG 885, 887, 983, 985, 917, 937, 955, 957, MC-UG773, 775, 787 with their "Opti-Flow" chamber ) as well as the expander cages used in the Kenmore Intuition and Elite canister models to see what I am talking about.

I have been fooling around with a home made expander cage in an old old old Kenmore from 1982 that very much lost airflow as the bag filled. These have the motor sitting vertically with the fan facing up into the bag chamber underneath a big rectangular "filter" ( 1/16 inch thin open cell foam, basically useless as a filter) housing. The bag as it fills presses against the underside and sides of the lid blocking airflow as dirt takes up the airspace. With the expander cage I have made the bag is suspended away from the sides, top of the bag chamber and off the side of the filter housing. This gives the air a nice unobstructed path from the hose opening, over the top of the bag to the motor. The dirt drops out and falls to the bottom and rear of the bag. Now I fill the bag with no loss of airflow. Same thing by different means with my Metrovac. It is a round steel tube with a suction motor in the back. There is an inner cloth bag the disposable dust bag fits into. The cloth bag acts like an expander cage suspending the bag off the walls of the vacuum and to my great surprise ( considering it is such and old fashioned design ) it too doesn't see to loose airflow as the bag fills.

I've been wondering about how Kenmore's Power Flow feature worked. Their claim about it suggests no loss of suction, even though they don't directly say that.