Tristar Compact Hepa Filter - How Much Is Enough?

[twocvbloke]

"There is no pin involved in this part of the TriStar, m

Take another look, there should be a plastic pin within the basket to lock either the buttplug filter or the hose end in place, if it's not there, your basket is broken...

 

[kirbylux77]

Patriot Filter Basket....

Sandy, when I mention the Filter Basket, Part #34 is EXACTLY the part I am referring to. If you take a look at the Filter Basket on your TriStar, on the inside there is a plastic "pin" or "nub" that catches onto the slot on your hose connector when you insert the hose for blowing. That "pin" or "nub" on the Patriot's filter basket is METAL, not plastic; it's a metal pin that's been riveted in place on the inside of the filter basket, same as the pin that's on the inside of the bag cover of the TriStar or Patriot. The Patriot's filter basket is otherwise IDENTICAL IN APPEARANCE to the TriStar filter basket; it has the same tabs the Filter Fresh filter attaches onto that can be broken, & the company does supply a cap, same as TriStar's that is attached when the Medik-Aire HEPA filter is not in use. The Filter Basket is riveted in place on the vacuum, same as a TriStar would be.

As a matter of fact, I have seen an Ebay shop that sells Patriot vacuums & they include the Filter Fresh filter from the TriStar, not the Medik-Aire HEPA filter.

Rob

 

[danemodsandy]

Oh, That.

Okay, now I understand what you're talking about.

But does this mean that the Patriot's filter basket is all metal? That little pin was not broken on the original filter basket of my CXL - the locking tabs and flange took the hit.

 

[kirbylux77]

Sandy, the Patriot's filter basket is black plastic, same as the TriStar. Like I said, the two are IDENTICAL, with the exception of the metal pin on the Patriot's filter basket.

Rob

 

[danemodsandy]

Rob:

Thanks for the info. That means using the Patriot basket instead of the TriStar one would not have prevented the damage that was on my particular machine.

 

[twocvbloke]

All the more reason to use a dome filter and an exhaust diffuser...

 

[danemodsandy]

David:

That's what I do. The filter basket was broken by the previous owner. You'd never catch me with a Filter-Fresh fitted; I personally dislike the looks of the things so much I am very glad the standard afterfilter is available. The Filter-Fresh is ug AND lee.

 

[twocvbloke]

I think the Buttplug filter looks pretty cool, kind of like hotrods of old where they had the air filters sticking out of the bonnets, just doing the job in reverse, but like the hotrods, the exposed filter is more of a hindrance than a help, especially in the average british home where there's just so much useless loose furniture crammed into small terraced houses that were built in the mid 1800's for miners or millworkers, so plenty for my poor tristar to get caught on, and that's without the buttplug attached!!! :S

 

[danemodsandy]

David:

Britons have no monopoly on small houses. My own, built in 1950, is all of 480 square feet, though there is a basement of equal size. It was an intentional downsizing; my former house was nearly ten times the size of the present one, and I was heartily sick of caring for it. My front lawn is thirty feet by thirty - a far cry from the old house's half-acre.

Do I have room for everything I used to have, or might like to have? No. But I have much less work, and more free time than before. To say nothing of extremely reasonable bills for gas and electricity.

 

[twocvbloke]

My first house was a lot smaller than that, it was an old back-to-back cottage type thing, the living room & kitchen were one room, and upstairs was even smaller being poorly split up into a bathroom & bedroom and a rather over-sized landing & stairwell, it was to small even for me, and had no heating system... :S

May as well have lived in a shed for what it was worth... :&#92

 

[danemodsandy]

Well....

....It's small by American standards, even in its day. The average size of an American house in 1950 was 850 square feet, making my house a bit over half the normal size for its time. Today the average size of a new American house is around 2700 square feet.

Durham County is fairly close to Yorkshire, isn't it? The Pennines make for beautiful country in that part of England. Whenever I watch "Last of the Summer Wine," I sigh at the scenery.

 

[danemodsandy]

Oops!

"Durham County"

I meant County Durham, of course!

 

[danemodsandy]

Oops!

"Durham County"

I meant County Durham, of course!

 

[twocvbloke]

Yeah, north of Yorkshire, no canals up here though, that's one thing I miss from living in Lancashire... :&#92

We're pretty much at the top of Co. Durham, bordering with Tyne & Wear, but not so far north that anyone can get away with calling us Geordies cos you have to live north of the Tyne to be called that...

The thing about the pennines is yes, they're nice when it's sunny, but most of the time, it's not, it's rain, fog, snow, ice, all that cold & wet stuff...

 

[danemodsandy]

David:

You see, that's the thing I like best about Britain - that blessedly cool, rainy, foggy climate.

I grew up in a place where that sort of thing didn't happen half often enough; it's sort of the reverse of rich Brits loving Mustique for the sun they never get at home. I grew up in America's hot, sunny South, and recently moved eleven hundred miles north to Iowa because I could not take ONE MORE DAY of Georgia's weather. I have snow four months a year now and love it.

 

[danemodsandy]

Just Occurred to Me....

....The HEPA dome filter would be essentially useless.

Why? Because it's in the wrong place in the filtration line-up.

The filtration order on a TriStar is: Incoming air and dirt hit the paper bag first, and a little dust might get through, so the cloth bag is there to catch as much of it as possible. Next comes the motor filter, which helps catch as much as possible of what gets through the paper and cloth bags. And last is the afterfilter, which helps with any remaining dust. So far, so good.

But the problem is, the motor generates a small amount of particulate dust from its brushes, and the dome filter is filtering what's going INTO the motor, not what's coming OUT. And my experience with TriStars tells me that very, very little dust from vacuuming even makes it to the dome filter in the first place. You're simply not getting any significant amount of motor protection from the HEPA dome filter, because there just isn't that much dust left by that stage in the filtration process.

So, in order to catch particulates originating from the motor, the correct place for a HEPA filter would be the vac's exhaust, not the intake side of the motor. And an exhaust filter would not only help take care of motor brush particulates, but also help with anything getting through the three stages of filtration preceding it.

 

[twocvbloke]

That's why they created the Buttplug and the FilterFresh addon filters, but the amount of carbon dust coming from the motor is so negligible that a post filter really isn't required outside of a hospital environment, and just serves as a catalyst to cause problems like asthma which often develop from lack of exposure to fine particulates, so a little bad stuff does the world of good for the human immune system to build it up...

 

[danemodsandy]

Yep!

Amen to that. On this side of the pond, our schools are seeing more and more kids with asthma and other immune system problems, and current thinking is that it's caused by over-use of antibacterials and HEPA filtration. The poor little sods are venturing out into a dirty world with immune systems that have never been primed to do their jobs, it seems.

I personally think that reasonably dust-free and soap-and-water clean are enough for healthy people, and that yesteryear's children were better off playing in the yard and getting dirty than today's hospital-clean darlings.

One good sign - manufacturers of dish soap (washing-up liquid to you) are taking antibacterials out of their products here in the States. Perhaps the hysteria over normal germs is abating. Perhaps.

 

[twocvbloke]

There's always going to be people who over-clean and over-sanitise, and so long as there are TV ads going on about chopping boards harbouring more germs than a toilet seat, then the clean freak mentality will remain...

Heck, Listerene was originally meant to be a floor cleaner, but they failed to convince people to buy it, so they ended up creating the fear of Halitosis, so they could sell their product as a mouthwash to combat this nasty trend that nobody at the time cared about... :S

Over here in the UK, I get sick of seeing the ads for automatic antibacterial soap dispensers, claiming that regular bars of soap or standard hand-pumped dispensers are coated in germs, but they forget the logic that when you put soap on our hands and wash them, then it doesn't matter what's on them, cos you're washing your hands either way, and under hot water too, hot water being a great way to kill off bacteria on it's own!!!

But anyway, it's kind of straying from the filter discussion now...

 

[danemodsandy]

Yes....

....There are a lot of Edie Pegdens in this world, aren't there?