The word on Miele Canister Vacuums

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The thing about central vacs in UK homes is fitting them in the first place, unless your building from scratch, adding a central vac would mean pulling up floorboards and digging out holes in walls, especially in 1800s style terraced houses that use real walls and not wood frames & plasterboard, that'll be why they never really took off here as we can't just buy a plot of land which may or may not have a structure, clear the site and build a house with all mod cons to the owner's tastes and requirements... :&#92

As for miele quality, well, my S316i "Cat & Dog" likes to try and fall apart if I so much as try and change the bag, it's not broken (well,the tool lid is, but that's down the very tiny fragile clips they used for hinges, one of which broke off), and it's a heavy lump compared to my metal Tristar, not to mention the electrics inside are verging on being toast cos they have a lot of brown scorches on the PCBs around the motor and speed controls, something the Tristar doesn't have a problem with as it's speed control is a switch (No speed to Full speed on one action) with no electronics crammed in there where it gets hot and dusty (well, it gets hot and dusty in the Miele, the tristar just gets comfortably warm)... :|
 
David:

You just described one of the things I prize most about a TriStar - its simplicity. It's a can, a fan, a motor and a switch, plus some filters. To my way of thinking, that's all a vacuum needs to be. I can understand that some people prize the sophistication of electronically-controlled vacuum cleaners, but I would rather have less to go wrong.
 
"You just described one of the things I prize most about

Yeah, it's why I love my Tristar too, you cannot beat simplicity, when something is as simple as they are, there's little to fail, a switch, a wire, a set of motor brushes, a filter or bag, that's it... :)

Even the PN is a simple affair, a motor, a belt and a brushroll (though the other versions of PN have overload protection electronics depending on what model they are)... :)
 
David:

As a measure of how helpful simplicity is, I would point to the only TriStars I've seen with consistent electrical problems - the two-speed models. Those have trouble much oftener than the classic single-speed TriStars and Compacts.
 
Well, my parents home was built by a Canadian in the 1960s. The house was built in an area of 40 other homes built by the same guy. We often laugh when we visit the neighbours as the builder obviously had a contract with building companies to furnish every home with the same kitchen cabinets, door handles and fixings.. at the time that the house was built, every house also had an oil tank when oil was relatively cheap to buy. In the 1980's my father was the first person to get gas fitted in the street and I remember quite clearly the trouble that gave us in terms of getting it fitted to the home instead of relying on the more expensive oil. Half the garden had to come up to get the gas pipes in as well as some of the floor boards inside the home.

Proof that not every home in the UK is built in 1800 style terraced houses.

If a buyer wants something they'll get it - regardless of the cost involved.
 
"Proof that not every home in the UK is built in 1800 st

Well, I know that funnily enough, just as not every business lives in a skyscraper, or every school is a dark and depressing victorian affair, what I was saying is that most UK homes are old and more solidly built making adding something like a central vac difficult and more costly...
 
Sorry but I don't agree - not all homes in the UK are one set design - especially the 1970s ones for the push for Danish, open design planned homes, or those fitted with breeze blocks.

As I reiterate - buyers or owners will buy what they need regardless of cost -from solar panels to electric garage doors, gates, underfloor heating, even double glazing windows on listed buildings where they can only use secondary glazing inside. A lot of owners in terraced houses will still pay out for things like that - including a vented hole for the cheaper vented tumble dryer compared to the condenser types.
 
"Sorry but I don't agree - not all homes in the UK a

You don't agree that most of the housing stock in the UK, in towns, cities and villages, is not old and not built to more modern standards? Seems like a rather dense view of things...

Down here in England, you can go to any town which housed millworkers, miners, ship builders and other long deceased trades, and you bet your backside that they have street after street of 1800-1900s terraced houses, of various designs, near to the inner parts of the towns, then as you move outwards, later 1930s style houses, and on the outskirts you get the wood-framed estates with hollow walls and trampolines for floors...

Just put your TV on to BBC1 at 10am to watch Homes under the Hammer every day this week and look at all the different houses, you'll start noticing a pattern as to the types commonly sold...

Yeah, people can rip apart houses to upgrade and refurbish, but for those looking at just adding one item, it can end up costing them more than the worth of the item they want to add, especially if something were to go wrong with the installation...
 
David:

Not many Americans have much concept of British housing aside from the terraced houses seen so often in BBC America television programs. The semi-detached houses of the 1930s, the late 1940s prefabricated postwar houses and 1950s/1960s housing blocks, and the modern design explosion fostered by the Festival of Britain are all pretty foreign concepts over here. Designers like Ernst Race and Kenneth Grange are unknown, and even Americans with a fair amount of design knowledge have no clue what G-Plan furniture was.

It's too bad - Britain was inventive after the war in ways Americans never dreamed of. Rationing of materials - and the ever-so-slow end of rationing - saw to it that materials were used much more wisely than here, as in Ernest Race's BA chair, which used newly released stocks of aluminum to create one of the most attractive and long-lasting chair designs of the postwar era.

And few Americans understand that concepts they are just getting used to have been commonplace in Britain for a very long time, like flat-pack kitchen cabinets and on-demand water heaters. The big, easy American life is meeting the same realities Britain has been dealing with for decades, and it's British solutions that are the ones carrying the day.

I only hope we never get your local councils. ;-)
 
I've had three different Miele's over the past 15 years and I never had a problem with any of them. Two of my machines were used, one of which I purchased already professionally refurbished at a vac shop, and a Red Velvet that I purchased brand new. All were great machines, but being a loyal Electrolux user the Miele canisters can be difficult to pull and steer around the house. As for build quality, they are top notch. My only complaint was the paint on my Red Velvet was a matte finish that could scratch easily, but if it has a glossy finish like my Blue Moon it never would have scratched. As much as I love Electrolux/Aerus machines, if I were in the market for a new high end canister I would buy another Miele in a heart beat. The 236 power nozzle on the Red Velvet was also one of the best pn's I've used.

I owned a Blue Moon and Red Velvet at the same time for a few years and the only reason I got rid of them was because I wanted a central vac. The Miele's do filter amazingly well but no matter how well they filter, a Miele or any other portable vac can never get rid of the smell of the dog hair inside the bag. If it weren’t for the smell, I'd probably still have my Miele's.

@twocvbloke, I can't comment on how UK homes are constructed, as I have never been to the UK before. But I will tell you that where I live in the US if you really want something and have the money then you will get it no matter how high the cost may be. A high quality central vac unit, attachment kit, and installation in an average size home will probably run close to $2k, possibly more depending on your requirements. This is certainly more than most portable machines and more than the average consumer would spend on a vacuum. It’s a totally different market and clientele, and if someone is willing to do the research and spend the money to purchase a central vac then they will go all the way to get it installed. Check out the video link, I believe I saw it several years ago on the Beam website and it is pretty informative. There are three different parts of the video, however they are incorrect in stating you can only put in electrified valves in new construction. I put them in my house without a problem and its 40+ years old. Regardless of how much I like vacuums, I am OCD and especially so about cleaning, and after having a central vac for the last 6 years I will never live in a home that doesn’t have one, no matter what the cost. They are worth every single last penny!


 
"So are you Saying that yall are better then us ?"

Very mature comment that, as soon as a discussion doesn't go someone's way, they bring out the superiority comments...
 
"I can't comment on how UK homes are constructed, as

I've seen Beam central vacs for sale here in the UK, and I've seen someone's installation of one in a later style british home on Instructables, but as I have kept saying here, it may work for some houses, but the majority of houses, like the one I live in for example which has been here since the mid 1800s, cannot be easily upgraded, so that $2k cost (usually for things on sale here, you just swap the $ sign for the £ sign!!) would rise significantly, meaning the cost outweighs the benefits...
 
David:

You have to understand that the average American has never been in a house that was not built with what is called a "balloon frame" over here. The spindly framework of two-by-fours faced with Sheetrock inside and some sort of synthetic siding outside has been the way America builds houses for decades. Even before that, the balloon frame was used with lath and plaster inside and wood siding or brick facing outside. Having a house built with post-and-beam construction, or real stone masonry, is nearly unknown here and has been for a century or more.

So, most Americans have no frame of reference for the difficulties Britons face when remodeling; American houses are almost ridiculously easy to tinker with, even ones that are many decades old.
 
How you describe that is like how modern british homes are built, but usually with a brick or stone outer wall, inside it's all timber framework and plasterboard, nothing really "solid", so those sorts of houses are easy to fiddle with as you say, but the older stock which is still in use, well, it's not as easy to fiddle with, as stone interior walls are not as easy to pass simple things like phone cables through without interfering with the structure, let alone pipes for plumbing in a central vac or the cables for powering it, and with "sebo_fan" being a resident of the UK, I'd have thought they'd know about it, but I guess not...

So, what was that about miele again? :P
 
"Perhaps.... ....Sebo_Fan lives in Poundbury, where thin

Dunno why, but "Poundland" springs to mind..... :P
 
Oh Im sorry - don't Eng-land seem to have the majority of AGA cookers? Don't they need stone floors - and NEED TO BE PLUMBED IN?? C'mon now don't bother questioning my knowledge of buildings in the UK! I've stayed in England far too many times than I care to remember - no, hang on - oh - I lived in London - so maybe that's not really "proper" England. I lived in London for 15 years and in quite a few different properties including terraced homes - with under "bloody" heated flooring that was never part of the original design.

Do you get what I am saying here to you? Granted your home can't have a central vac - I understand that - the foundations would be too thick to tunnel the necessary work to put one in. Yet, a lot of these homes never originally had the AGA or Rangemaster hobs, yet people seem to be able to put them in now...
 
well

the rainbow i used at my friends house and , they have dogs. and the rainbow gives off a nasty smell. well no vacuums perfect . thats why i love central vacs
 

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