Top Fill Or Bottom Fill Bags?

[alexhoovers94]

What style fill of bags do you prefere, the top fill style of the bottom fill style? I would say top fill because you get full usage of the dust bag but bottom full seams more original for these type of vacuum cleaners.

 

[turbomaster1984]

Top fill all the way

Easier to change, easier to empty and less hassle

 

[thekirbylover]

hi alex i prefer top fill as the dirt falls to the bottom of the bag therefore allowing for the whole bag to be filled up where as bottom fill only allows you to have about %25 of the bag fill

 

[jmurray01]

How does bottom fill work ? Surely the dirt would all fall back down the tube when the motor is turned off and it would all pour out.

 

[raycarter]

Actually I have never had that problem. I own a Hoover Convertible U4127 which uses bottom-fill bags, and I have never had a problem with dirt spilling out. The major bulk of the dirt does stay in the bag while it is installed in the cleaner because 1. The picked-up dirt is mostly a thick, fibrous mass in which the loose, gritty dirt becomes trapped, and 2. The rubber belt which.secures the bag.to the fill tube snaps into a groove in the center of the tube, which means the upper.half.of.the tube is inside the bag, which does.help prevent dirt from spilling.out of the bag. I've also found that the dirt actually does reach the "full" line and does not spill out when the full bag is removed. The secret is to lower the bag completely parallel to the floor before removing it, as the instructions advise.

 

[sebo_fan]

I prefer the top fill method. Bottom fill doesn't really pour dirt back into the chamber unless the bag is over full - this is because of the angle in which the bellow sits at before the main tube.

 

[twocvbloke]

To be completely honest I don't like either of the designs... :&#92

But, that said, the bottom-fill version is easier to work with as you have more room in the cloth bag to work with, giving room to play with different non-hoover bags to improve filtration, like my two Juniors here using cut-down Victor Europa bags, which have a few layers to help with filtration and airflow...

 

[gottahaveahoove]

I like both!

The top fill certainly holds more, providing greater suction. BUT, on those older models, 66,67,68,60, 1076, etc... that outer jacket was beautiful. If you follow the directions, you'll never get a mess changing the bags.

 

[jmurray01]

I still don't see how the dirt doesn't fall back down the tube...

It seems like a stupid design to have the bag upside down, at least to me anyway.

 

[alexhoovers94]

The bag is attached upside down on the fill tube with the rubber band sucureing it, the dust blows up inside the bag, the dirt fills around the filltube at the bottom and as the bag get's fuller the bag starts to lean against the space at the bottom of the outer bag, the filtube sticks up indide the bag to the fill line on the out side of the paper bag so if you emptied the bag when it reaches the fill line you shouldn't get dirt falling back down the tube.
The top fill style however allows the bag to get alot fuller.

 

[rolls_rapide]

Some of the bottom-fill tubes had a foam rubber liner too, which helped keep the dirt in the bag.

When I change the bag on bottom-fill models I unzip the bag, lower the bag parallel to the floor, pick the whole machine up and gently shake it, so that the dust falls away from the bag opening. Then the machine gets lowered back to the floor and the bag gingerly removed.

Top-fill machines had another problem. In my experience (U1104), the folded and glued bottom seam seemed to come apart, allowing grit to spill out. This was with genuine 1987 yellow Hoover bags. They really needed a bag clip.

 

[eurekaprince]

One of the main reasons North American Eureka uprights cleaned better than Hoover uprights in the 1960's and 1970's was Eureka's use of their wonderful top fill "Style F&G" disposable dust bags.

Air flow was better maintained in these Eureka upright bags because the dirt fell away from the air path at the top of the bag and never blocked it. With bottom fill bags, every time you start up the upright vac, you kick up whatever dirt is sitting at the bottom and you send a dirty stream of air up into the rest of bag, causing faster clogging of the tiny bag pores when compared to top fill bags. The fact that Hoover changed over to top fill bags in the 1980's signifies that the company realized this system is better.

 

[floor-a-matic]

Top fill all the way; however, I had a few Eureka uprights throughout my entire life & been happy with the Style F & G bags & haven't made ANY mess changing them.

As with the Hoover Convertible 33, I use Eureka F & G bags on the Convertible instead of Hoover Style C bags.

 

[thevacuumlover1]

Uh Duh, Top fill.

Top fill bags provide a more beneficial bag lay out for the modern vacuum cleaner. It allows the dirt to be compacted in a more efficient manor than a bottom fill. Bottom fills also were very messy to change. Dirt spills out from the opening all over the machine, and the floor. Bottom fills also had an issue with fan clogging. The dirt that you have just vacuumed up slips back down the tube in to the fan chamber. When this happens the fan chamber becomes congested making starting up on the machine harder. In retrospect, The top fill bag was the best thing that could have happened to the bagged vacuum industry.

 

[twocvbloke]

With a cloth bag upgrade, even Hoovers can be fitted with F&G bags to improve their effectiveness...

This one is my very briefly owned Senior 652A, the original bag (hanging there on Stripey Cat to dry out after hand washing) was waaaaay too small to take an F&G, but that didn't stop me trying it out...

Of course, fitting a Eureka style cloth bag would work, but I didn't have one spare at the time...

 

[jmurray01]

Sweet mother of God, that's a bag an a half eh David!? Ha ha!

Actually Brian, it was the 70s that HOOVER started using Top Fill.

 

[twocvbloke]

It's a pretty standard bag for us Sanitaire owners, it's the Hoover ones that are tiny...

And just for fairness, here's a Hoover H1 cardboard bag fitted in my ZC-880...
(though, it really really really restricted performance!!)

 

[eurekaprince]

Thanks for that correction Jamie!

We were a Eureka Upright Family (260, 2083) when I was growing up, and I always volunteered to change the F&G bag on them. It was easy to tell when the bag needed changing - if the bottom of the soft bag was solid for about one foot from the bottom (about 30 cm), it was usually time to change the bag.

We had a lot of wall-to-wall carpeting in our house and all that carpeting got comprehensively "Eureka'd" by our cleaning lady at least once a week - with Mom doing a quick run through of high traffic areas probably 2 more times in the week. Our homes were never large - small "bungalows" as we would call them in Canada in those days. Our carpeting was always deep plush wool with lots of fibres.

Those F&G bags are so large, that even with all the plush carpeting and all that vacuuming, I never had to change the bag more than 3 or 4 times a year. Removing a full F&G bag is a little like delivering a "baby" - you dig into the cloth bag with both hands and move the heavy bottom out of its "home" before sliding the throat spring down to release the paper throat.

After installing a fresh F&G bag, it was always a little disappointing to see how "flacid" the cloth bag stayed for a week or two! The top-fill design pushes the air up the paper throat and out the top of the bag, and until the pores start clogging and pressure builds up, the rest of the bag does not expand that much. It's an excellent design - from way back in 1960!

 

[eurekaprince]

Addendum.....

It's no wonder Sweden's Electrolux Company had their eyes on Eureka before they bought it in 1974. This was the golden-age of Eureka Williams in Bloomington, Illinois. And the products they created were for the most part great performers; especially the uprights - an area in which Electrolux had yet to excel.

 

[twocvbloke]

Well, Electrolux (Proper, as opposed to the splitters) certainly backed the right brands, that's for sure...

I've never gotten any of my vacuum bags to the fill line, it's kind of hard when you have multiple models which use different bags, so they take ages to fill individually, I just change them when they start getting skanky smelling, so I've never had to "deliver a baby" with the Sanitaires to date...

 

[jmurray01]

Oh, on the subject of top fill bags being hard to fit, I've just changed the bag on my 1977 HOOVER Senior Ranger today and have a piece of advise to make it super easy:

ROLL the belt over the lip of the bag, don't try and stretch it over. I did it and couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before.

 

[alexhoovers94]

With all dew respect jamie, but that is how you are supposed to do it, loll

 

[vintagerepairer]

I have seen many an Electrolux commercial used with a Hoover Junior / Senior paper bag. The main problem I found was that dirt fell right back out onto the floor as unlike the bottom fill pipe on the Junior and Senior cleaners, the design of the Electrolux does not allow the dirt to stay inside the bag.

 

[jmurray01]

I know Alex, but somebody in this thread (I believe) said it was hard to STRETCH the belt over the bag, which insinuates he tried to stretch it over rather than rolling it over.

 

[alexhoovers94]

Ahh right, ok fair enough

 

[rolls_rapide]

It is actually quite easy to roll the bag retainer band (or spring, on the earlier models) over the bag.

I am actually rather taken with "Twocvbloke's" photo of the grey Hoover bag. I seem to remember my gran having grey paper bags for the 1334 Junior.

Which year did they switch to bright yellow paper?

 

[twocvbloke]

I got those bags off ebay (according to my feedback, in May 2010, so 2 years ago), they were sealed in a clear plastic bag (could have been re-packed), so don't know how old they were... :&#92

They were as stiff as card though, dunno how on earth they breathed, and they really did poorly even in a Junior, one of the vacs that they're meant for, but they just clogged right up when I tried them out in the Sanitaire in the pic above... :S

 

[rolls_rapide]

I remember around 1986, seeing genuine yellow hoover bags which were sealed in a clear cellophane wrapper. A year or so later, they launched the blue, white and red packaging which had multiple drawings of suitable machines.

Current HooverCandy are idiots. At least with the old packaging, below, a customer who was unsure of the exact model number could see their machine depicted.

 

[anthony]

top fill

in my opinion the topfill was the best improvement Hoover made to this already exellent machine . my mums old hoover junior from 1963 didnt have a rubber band holding the bag on its got a belt thats a metal spring but changing the bag is easy i just undo the knurled screw on the front take of the whole bag asembly turn it upside down and change the bag my mum was rough with her junior i once found a clothes peb in there how it got past the fan i will never know