Vacuum Cleaners Discussions

I'm not very impressed with the design, but there's a guy who offers a way to convert Kirbys from bag to dirt canister.  Unfortunately, it doesn't offer dual cyclone or better technology.  It looks like you clean the pleated filter after every use.  I think I'd rather pay for bags than this gimmick.

http://www.kirbybagsneveragain.com/

Severus wrote:
Well said Severus.

Venson

Carmine,

A rug would show damage if it were vacuumed with a rotating brush when it should not be. If you take a Kirby in with the bag on it, who is going to question the owner about whether or not they used a bagless conversion unit? The bagless cylinder only violate sthe warrany because Kirby wants to sell their bags. The same could be said of using off brand bags in the Kirby.

DIB, Severus, and Venson,

If you have ever seen a Kirby demo, or done one yourself you know that even in that small cavity there is a cyclonic action of sorts. What makes you think there is not some cyclonic action in the bagless conversion? The Kirby is producing at least 50% more ariflow than a bagless vac, with the possible exception of Dyson. Maybe the filter doesn't clog as quickly as you think in this application. People with large homes and multiplr pets are a large percentage of the people purchasing the bagless conversion. At the cost of the hepa bags, I can see where this could save them money.

Trebor wrote:
Hi Trebor,

This'll at least make DIB happy -- when Dyson started to become prominent the first line of defense by some manufacturers' nitwit designers was to take the easy way out with pleated filters so they could quickly come up with some sort of offering they too could call bagless. It's never worked. The pleated filters clog quickly, are hard to clean and usually require replacement every six months or more when they've become empacted with dirt that won't rinse out if "washing" is allowed.

Trust me, I have already lived this. First time round was with the Kenmore Evo. It used a pleated filter inside the dust bin. It was a little bulky but, overall, a pretty good cleaner -- at first. With a few months a drop in overall performance was quite noticeable even though the vacuum was frequently emptied and the filter washed. This experience also repeated it self by way of a couple of high-powered stick vacs I bought.

Later on down the line, I picked up the Kenmore Iridium, an LG designed machine with true cyclonics and there came a world of difference in the experience. There is no pleated filter in the collection bin but just one small foam pre-filter for the motor that washes out in seconds. As long as the cleaner is not allowed to overfill so that the air swirl produced around the shroud remains unhindered, only small amounts of fine dust land on the pre-filter. I washed the bin out maybe every five or six weeks to keep the air channels clean.

In the case of the Kirby doo-dad, dirty air is blown into the bin and cleaned by the pleated filter as it exits. Though the tap-n-clean fairy tale has it that all you have to do is dump the collection bin and give the pleated filter a couple quick taps against the side of your garbage can it's a lot of hokum. Those filters not only have to be tapped, nearly banged cleaned but also brushed clean to thoroughly get dirt out of the pleats. This only gets worse when you pick up a good amount of pet fur and/or fluff and lint.

Not only myself but several other posters here have tried out bagless vacuums with pleated filters and most of us experienced nothing but annoyance when it got down to maintenance and disappoint with performance. Use of cyclonics for bagless "clean air" uprights appears to have increased and the use of pleated filters has declined except in the "disposables".

The Kirby -- and probably none of the other direct air machines on the market -- is designed for this new gadget. And the only way you can live with it is to run outside to dump it and bang the filter clean two or three times per cleaning session so that you never have any major amount of collected dust to impede airflow. If a direct air upright's bag becomes overly clogged with dust its performance definitely will drop the more its fan is rendered unable to force air out. As mentioned by Severus surface area for filtration is very necessary. The surface area of the pleated filters in these devices is much, much less than that of Kirby's bags. Even if some sort of cylconic air cleaning system could be developed for cleaning this brand's dirty exhaust air, more than likely, it would only make an already not easy to maneuver machine all the more difficult to manage.

You know I hate bag prices but in this case Kirby fares better with its regular bag set-up which allows for a generous flow of air that helps them work best. Kirby may well be in line for modernizing but so far it's good enough as is. Though it may prove a bit too complex for some due to attachments, etc., current bagged Kirbys clean well, have good emissions and last a long time.

Venson

Venson,

No question Kirbys are durable and perform well. They really are not all that difficult to manuever, although there is a shallow learning curve to putting the machine through all its configurations. Most people are just too lazy to bother.

But I come back to my previous points:

1) There is cyclonic action (however brief) in a dirt meter, ergo it makes sense that there would be cyclonic action in this cylinder, and 2) it would make a difference because the air is being blown into the chamber at a rate far greater then a Big Box upright. According to JIm the horizontal units work better. The container is to be emptied and the filter cleaned after each use, that is a given.

There seems to be  resistance to even entertaining the notion that maybe this is better than the bagless units we have seen up until now. I haven't seen one in use, but then neither has anyone else on the forum (unless they are being coy and not putting their 2 cents in.) I'm not saying it's the greatest thing since the rug renovator, I just think Jim Keeler has done something no one has marketed until now, and it deserves to be tried before being prematurely dismissed as just another dimestore bagless. These have been selling for a few years now. The price has come down significantly, which is feeding demand. Are people that resentful of another's success? OK, Maybe it is a piece of crap and Jim is huckstering his was to fame and fortune, on the other hand, maybe for reasons I have postulated, it's really quite good. When I have a Kirby and a Keeler bagless conversion to play with, I'll post my findings.

Trebor wrote:

As long as the unsrupulousness can be concealed w/o a possibility of detection, it's alright.  Sounds like a rogue defense.  

You may have one or two others who agree with you and possibly the inventor is one.  Their freedom of choice but it is not mine. 

Carmine D.

Carmine,

Sorry, just didn't think about it that way

Trebor

I am with Carmine on this one.  Kirby's bags, though expensive, do a excellent job of filtering.  They are very large and hold a lot of dog hair before they have to be changed.  I do not see a bagless design being able to filter to the same level as the Micron-Magic bags, I do not see the bagless allowing Kirby to have the air-flow that they are capable of producing.  In the scope of things, is $3.99 per bag any more expensive than the bags for a Meile or Sebo?  Are they more expensive than a filter that has to be replaced every few months?

What I see is that this is a design to make someone some quick bucks, much like the paper bag conversion that were offered with the Eureka F&G bags back in the 70's.  I don't see it as a mainstream adaption, more of a niche market for a short time.  I predict that users will tire of it quickly and go back to the convenience of the bag once again.  BTW--Up until the G series you could still get a shake out bag for Kirby that allowed you a "bagless" dust cloud, but the convenience of not having to buy bags.

Now I am going to agree with Trebor for a minute.

Kirby up until the G series did have an Sani-emptor that produced a swirl to pull heavier dirt to the bottom to be emptied and allowed the lighter stuff to be forced into the bag.  This system did have some inefficiencies, however,  With the G series by straightening out the air flow, you will notice the exhaust is now pointed upwards instead of backwards.  This reduces the turbulance and allows the Kirby to generate a greater air-flow.  They redesigned the mini-emptor, I think about the G-6 to current model to further reduce the turbulance.  In any case it doesn't appear that Kirby is relying on the swirl anylonger.

Whether anyone here is impressed with the Keeler conversion is totally and utterly irrelevant. Check out the feedback on his E-bay store. He has 100.00% positive feedback. He has been selling these in high numbers for well over a year now, and Mr. Keeler has not had one returned.

One thing that has been omitted from this discussion is filtration vs.cleaning power. As Kirby (and others) have increased filtration, the retention of smaller particles has been increased significantly while the pickup of heavier dirt and sand has been significantly DECREASED. Try a G-3 bag in any successive model Kirby. Pickup power is greater by far. When we did the salt test in the demo, we always used the standard filter pads as opposed to the micron magic, because it picked up the salt a lot faster. The very hardest vacuum to kill was an older KIrby with the cloth bag where the owner not only used it regularly, and emptied the bag, but also regularly changed the belt and cleaned and adjusted the brushroll. (That and an old,old, OLD  hoover) I remember having to go back to customer's homes with a CLOTH bag on a mini-emptor to pull up ridiculous amounts of carpet fresh with their recently purchased Kirby vacuum. If your vacuum can't pick it up, it can't filter it. If the dirt is really removed there is less of an allergen problem to be concerned about. Open a window and you have let in TRILLIONS of particles like the few million you just filtered with you HEPA vacuum.

Dual cyclonic action and Hepa filtration would only complicate the design and manufacture of the bagless conversion, to say nothing of the maintenance of the unit. Einstein said "There are only two things which are infinite, the universe, and human stupidity, and I'm not positive about the former" Murphy's law "If anything can go wrong, it will. " And as someone said, "If you make it idiot proof, they just built a better idiot." What is the remedy? K.I.S.S. keep it simple stupid. 1)Vacuum, 2)dump the container, 3)clean the filter.

The fact that this design does not work well on a clean fan upright with MAYBE 60 cfm when the filter is new, and multiple seals along the air path has no bearing in this application. Dirt removing ability and filtration work against each other, always have, it's simple physics. We all know that many factors affect dirt removing ability. The distance of the air path is a big one, positive agitation, which is dependent on proper carpet height adjustment, is another. On those two principles alone the Kirby vacuum with any bag outclasses every bagless vacuum. LONG after the plastic bagless vacs have been consigned to the landfill or, hopefully, the recycling shredder, 40 year old Kirbys will still be sucking up sand the others left behind.

The filter in the bagless conversion IS susceptible to clogging if large amounts of fine power are picked up, such as drywall dust, carpet fresh, even mattress debris, so there is still a use for the bag. If you look at the USEABLE capacity of a Kirby vacuum bag, you are looking at a rectangle of approximately 11" x 6" (I'm being generous) that expands into something approximating a cylinder. The warning on the bag says "Do Not Fill Above This Line", because the filtration is blocked and insufficient air is passing through. No matter what bagless design you create, the fine dust will glom onto the filter, so simply clean the filter when the container is dumped, instead of trying to engineer around the laws of physics. Dyson has only slowed the inevitable fine dust clogging problem, but he sacrificed a great deal for it: reliability, ease of repair, and removal of heavy, deeply imbedded dirt and sand. Hmm, let's see, 1) vacuum the house, 2) dump the canister, 3) clean the filter. K.I.S.S.

As I have stated here before I vacuum daily, sometimes two or three times a day because I live with a White Eskimo Dog "Eskie".  The people at Kirby love me because I buy bags quite often. 

I have always felt the bag to see if dirt were up to the line, with Eskie hair you can't feel wher it is in the bag so I change the bags when I feel suction dropping off.  I can usually tell this by haveing to set the nozzle one click further down.  Last week when I was changing the bag, I thought.   "Gee, I'm throwing it away anyhow."  "I wonder what it looks like inside?"  So I cut the bag open with the sissors.  The bag that still had pretty good airflow, but not as good as new was packed everywhere but about three inches in diamater from the fill tube.  I wished I had taken a picture, but didn't think of it.    These bags hold a lot, though as I said most of my gatherings are dog hair, there is some sand and dirt mixed in. 

I personally wouldn't go bagless.  I don't see where this contraption would harm a Kirby as it would only increase resistance and reduce cleaning ability.  I don't see that there would be any damage as the motor cools itself via a fan in the motor case.  

Just wrote:

Hello Just:

I agree in theory.  In practice I would add the usual manufacturer and profressional's caveat:  If the user follows the inventor's instructions: Dumps after each use and cleans/replaces the filter frequently.  Something, not all consumers do, especially consistently.  While the KIRBY uses a top fan for armature balance and cooling the motor, the KIRBY inner/outer bags also serve a dual purpose, i.e. to contain the dust/dirt and assist the motor from overheating/running hot by allowing exhaust air out. 

I suspect if the invention's users do not follow directions carefully, there will be two immediate short term negative results:  (1)Motor running hot; and (2) build up of dirt on the fan and in the motor compartment of the KIRBY.  Both these conditions have adverse impacts.  Both [hot temp and dirt contamination] can be measured w/o the KIRBY vacuum being dissassemble.  At an absolute minimum, if I were so inclined to go KIRBY bagless and buy this invention for usage, [and I'm not], I would want to see independent test results for these two measurements by an ASTM, or some such recognized entity, to attest to the findings under normal and usual household conditions.  Short of this, I would be highly suspect of the affects of the bagless invention on the longevity of the KIRBY's operations and KIRBY's warranty.

Carmine D.