the reviews of vacs: oreck xl

[vacuumssuck213]

Well I've decided I'm going to post little reviews of Vacs on here from my prospectives on use and effective etc. A little background as some of you know I've cleaned for a living for a few years I've done everything from industrial janitorial, commercial, offices, housekeeping, new construction, you name it I've done it. So I'd like to share my experience in use in different settings. Ok so first we will start with the oreck XL I had the opportunity to use a few of my Vacs in an industrial plant setting this is one if the three implemented. The oreck XL was a vacuum in my collection that wasn't taken to serious. Until it got to work. It became " the custodians best friend" this thing is small enough and light enough to fit on a cart cleans rugs extremely well one thing we found alot of Vacs lacked it kept up with constent paper fluff and powders and everything else associated with a busy manufacturing plant it did have its down falls tho in office area it was loud and irritating to the workers constant apologize were made if you had to use it around people. Overall its a slim light weight vac that performance is equal to alot of full size uprights without compromise in heavy duty durability. Great for getting under low furniture many Vacs struggle with thanks for the read tell me what you think below have a great day

 

[sbakerde]

Orecks for commercial use.

I have also used orecks for commercial use. I use these primarily for house cleaning with some commercial offices and a few other buildings in the schedule. After using these machines for a few months my impression of them turned rather sour. First this is while that vacuum is light and easy to use they constantly break. We constantly had to replace brush rolls because they wore out very quickly. With daily use we didn't even get a year out of. Brush roll before the bristles wore down to nothing. At $40 a pop that gets very expensive. Especially when we had 15 of them. I also found that being at a beach resort area doesn't work well with the oreck. The constant vacuuming of sand eats the housing and fan away. Another problem that we often encountered is the switch wire coming off the terminal. That often happened when that vacuum fell over during loading or unloadin of the van. All it took was one hard smack to the back of the handle to make it unusable. Being on a tight schedule did not allow much time to fix the vacuums in between houses. The final problem was that the oreck is not made for thick carpets at all. Many beach rentals has thick shag type area rugs that were impossible to vacuum. Often the girls would try to use the oreck on these and burn up the belt in a few seconds. I always made my crew use the straight suction canister on these.

Needless to say I have had many bad experiences using orecks for a cleaning business. So go those reasons I now use royals, Sanitaires, and commercial hoover elites.

 

[kirbyloverdan]

Orecks are used in

many of the Hotels and motels throughout Atlantic City the Taj Mahal being their biggest customer .

Sand is a plenty in my town and Orecks have held up for years the Taj maintains their own machines and I know the maintenance man who repairs them I used to sell him parts and he and the housekeeping staff love Orecks .

They are easy to repair and parts in bulk are inexpensively purchased brush rolls are $25.00 each that's what he pays for them being used daily around the clock 24/7 he replaces the brush roll once every 4 months after weekly adjustments.

They and all the other Hotels and Motels use Orecks and they all like and have continually purchased and used them since the beginning.

A lot of the Local cleaning services also use Orecks to clean the beach homes throughout my local area .

They have tried other brands but stick with Oreck for the simple repairs , but easy on the house keeping staff and extra large bags .

Dan

 

[sbakerde]

Dan

I have done both, sold the orecks and used the orecks as part of a cleaning company. The two are badly different. As a salesman I saw a lot of them come in for maintainance and repair. As the person who used them I saw the flaws and the constant need for adjustments. It's extremely frustrating when you have 8 houses to clean in the peak of the summer season and the equipment doesn't even hold up through the weekend. Not to mention the pile that got bigger daily of orecks that weren't working correctly. I spend many hours working late to make sure we had enough vacuums for the next day. This is my experience and opinion only but from what I delt with in the past I have no use for an oreck in a commercial setting.

Take no offence, just sharing my experience.

 

[kirbyloverdan]

Not offended at all

This is my experience and my opinion just like you I have one plus over 30 years experience in vacuum repairs plus owned a cleaning business where I used Orecks for new home construction clean up which is tougher than summer turn overs . Plus casinos with heavy trafic being used 24/7 365 Orecks hold up in this environment.

My store I managed saw more tune ups than repairs if anything a brush roll repair or user abuse .

Dan

 

[silentjon]

I'm right there with Seth on this one. After cleaning beachfront condos and hotels, houses and businesses, and also being a former employee of Seth's. Orecks are not very well suited for commercial use, especially in an area like this with alot of beachfront properties. I've replaced so many fans that were worn down to nothing and fan housings that wore down paper thin and shattered it's not even funny. It got to the point at the vacuum shop that no matter how many vacs were piled up or what was wrong with them, I could have all of them(mostly orecks) done and ready for pickup within 2 hours of opening. Remember the back room full of Orecks to refurb that one day in Salisbury Seth? I made pretty quick work of disassembly and cleaning those haha

And about the roller brushes. I loved when someone brought an Oreck in and said it won't pick anything up even though it has a new bag and belt. Did they ever think to look at the brush? Or better yet, the lack of brush. A wooden dowel doesn't work very well, it needs to have bristles on it.

The handles also tend to break, the fan housings break from being pushed around rough or bumping into things.

The pros of an Oreck are the large bag and light weight. Cons are that they really don't do well at all with sand, or small hard objects like coins, pebbles, paper clips, etc, they are kind of loud, and have an annoying pitch to them. And they have far from impressive airflow and suction due to the tiny fan, making them almost worthless for removing dirt and grit from down in the carpet.

I was constantly repairing the Orecks I used for cleaning. One day I got stuck with 8 condos and a broken vacuum. I headed for Salvation Army and grabbed a Eureka Bravo for 3 bucks. That Bravo lasted the entire summer and half of the next. I discontinued use of it for a Sanitaire wide track, and used a straight suction canister for hard floors and above floor cleaning. The Sanitaire did wonderful on the sandy rugs and carpet at the beach, from the commercial glued down carpet, to berber and the shag carpets that Seth mentioned.

 

[vacuumssuck213]

nice to see both negative and positive sides. how ever i must say what models were they where were these manufactured all these i believe could play a factor in quality and wouldn't be the model i reviewed. my vac is a early 90s oreck xl classic.

 

[silentjon]

As far as models go, ive personally used anything from the 9100 to the xl21's. Mostly 2600 and 2500 and the commercial ones. The xl21 fan housings seem to break less than the classic xl style machines, and they seem to have a slight bit more airflow. I do like the stiffer bristles of the xl21 brush rolls, but they do still wear down quickly

 

[human]

My girlfriend used to have an Oreck when we first got together. I was never impressed with it. She's a former hairstylist and still does it a little at home for "under the table" money. Her most frequent clients are her boss at her day job and me. She tries to schedule his haircuts and mine on the same evenings so I can vacuum up afterwards. The Oreck was absolutely lousy at picking up hair. It would take me dozens of passes over the same area to get most--but never all--of it up. Mostly it would just spread the hair around.

She 'borrowed' my Kirby Heritage HD-1 about two years ago and still has it. That beast picks up ALL the hair in a single pass. It takes me longer to get the thing out and plug it in than it does to actually vacuum up the hair cutting area. It works so well that she pitched the Oreck into the dumpster shortly after she borrowed the Kirby. It has not been missed. I guess the only way I'll get to keep that Kirby is if I keep her too.

 

[jade_angel]

Orecks aren't terrible, in my experience, but they do lack power. They do well for quick clean-ups as long as something beefier is used in between.

Before they cut funding, the janitors at my office used Orecks daily to vacuum the offices. The carpets looked pretty good, but over time they started to get dingy in the high-traffic areas. They also had a Riccar 1700 canister that they used for bare floor areas - so I borrowed that and used the power nozzle, and it spruced things up nicely. Orecks seem to get the surface crud but they don't dig deep.

The 8 pound Simplicity/Riccar machines, though, are as handy as an Oreck but a lot more powerful. I think they're as powerful as a Kirby, honestly, though the lack of manual height adjustment means they don't do as well on odd rugs.

 

[tolivac]

Oreck---an expensive "Broom" vacuum.Indeed,the Taconoy compact vacuums are better than the Oreck---and less expensive.

 

[pr-21]

I think....

A lot of people don't know or learn how to change the belts especially and then when they don't groom the carpet well, they trade it in or trash it thinking it is broke.

PR-21