Vacuum Cleaners Discussions

Hello I decided to open a profile here so I could ask some questions about this new vacuum I just acquired.

Here's some background, perhaps unneeded but nonetheless I like to have as much info on a given subject when my advice is being asked for.

So my mother in law and my grandmother in law have been big fans of the Electrolux brand for longer than I have been in the picture. Makes sense to me, buy a quality piece of equipment once, have it serviced and enjoy many years of faithful trouble free service while also reaping the benefits that the higher price of admission commands. Easy.

My wife and I were given (from what was told to me an offset/sister company of Electrolux) a Pro Team model 15 roughly 7.5 years ago when we purchased our first home. This was an eye opener to me as throughout my life I was only familiar with Hoovers/eurekas/etc (lesser $ vacuums that could be had for under $200 from the local Target or wherever). I have always been thouroughly impressed with how the machine operated and performed its cleaning duties. Having only needed to be picked up by the local Electrolux repair man once for a new on/off/suction motor/agitator motor switch, agitator and belt costing ~$150 I feel its performed flawlessly and the previously mentioned replacements were justified and could be filed under maintenance.

Well this prior Thursday my wife informed me that some guy came to the door the day before (while I was at work) said she had won a drawing that entitled her to  some great coupons and then started asking her about indoor pollution/etc. and by the time they were done she had set an appointment for someone to come by the next day (Thursday) to demonstrate something and I needed to be there.

Being that I am in sales myself (car sales, Im an honest guy I promise!) I thought having someone over to try to sell me something I highly doubted I needed would only take a short amount of time and be kind of fun. Again as a sales man myself and having been one for the past 10 years successfully there is nothing I dislike more than an unprepared/un-knowledgable/dishonest salesperson trying to trick me/anyone into getting an unneeded item but in the same thread, there is nothing I like MORE than running into a skilled salesperson that handles their job like a pro and shows me why the reduction of money on my part is the worth while option.

We had the pleaseure of having the latter show up promptly at our home that Thursday. His name was Merle George, a young man that was confident in not only his demeanor but also his product and who wholeheartedly believed his vacuum was everything he represented it to be. The product demonstration was clearly a pre-planned tutorial (brilliantly planned IMO) where a question would be posed then either an answer was confirmed using the Hyla or a fault the bag vacuum possessed was shown by Merle by using he Hyla. It also brought to light many things I was not aware of nor would have even thought about about traditional vacuums that were quite alarming. It was a very in depth demo that showed my wife and I just how much crudd was left behind by our higher line vacuum. As a rational person who tries to make most his decisions on factual basis and what I believe to be the honest to goodness truth I found it somewhat annoying and at the same time really awesome that I couldnt argue with what I was being told/was seeing at my home, on my living room floor. There was a point where I vacuumed the same area with 52 back/forth sweeps (trying to simulate weekly cleaning for a year)  with the Pro team (you would think an area devoid of any nasties after that!) then Merle did maybe 3-4 back/forth passes with the Hyla in the exact same area, then revealed a cloth that was placed inline in it's hose that contained an amount of dust/dog hair that could only be described as appalling and frankly unacceptable. Again, I thought to myself "what am I missing here" could the floor simply be dirty, nope, did he do something to my Pro Team, absolutely not, was the bag in the PT full/clogged, nope I changed it no more than a week prior to this demonstration...

After about 2.5 hours of being shown again and again how my current vacuum was not as capable at cleaning the floors/keeping the house dust free and ultimately keeping my family as healthy it came down to the reason he was here at my home, me buying this vacuum. When I learned it was $2500 if I let him take our Pro Team when he left I thought that was pretty steep, then I voiced my concerns to Merle. Of course he broke it down into smaller numbers like the amount of $ we would save on dr visits (how can you put a price on that, I mean were talking about my wife and my beautiful 2 year old baby girl here???), the savings of never having to purchase filter bags, carpet cleaning products, having my wood floors professionally cleaned ever again, and on and on etc. I do this myself and while it sucks having it used in hopes of me to bending my financial resolve, it does help justification of a purchase. Then I was presented with the option of super low monthly payments (like $90/month) with approved credit which almost broke me.

After all of this and about another day or so of calls/txt messages to Merle we finally came to a number that I felt I could not pass on and the deal was sealed.

I could honestly type 4 times the text I did above about the demonstration process and how I just kept thinking to myself things like "how could anyone not get this Hyla" and "here we go again, im about to be showed yet another reason I would be an idiot were I not to purchase this vacuum" and lastly "how can I work this kind of simple yet astonishingly convincing conveyance into my presentation/demonstration at work". Again, it was a very well thought out sales pitch that was just as proficiently performed by our sales rep. It was quite entertaining honestly and I really did enjoy the process.

All right so now to my questions.

It is really tough to find info on certain operational aspects of the Hyla GST. There just isnt a ton of info out there like most any other product you might use in your home. I realize the GST is only a year or two old and it is a relatively low volume machine too. The youtube videos are somewhat out there but the majority of them aren't in English, plus forum talk is next to non existent as well. Perhaps no one here can offer any insight either. If you have a Rainbow or other similar machine I feel your input could be helpful so dont be shy! This is NOT a my brand vac is better than yours in any way, only a search for a few answers by a home user.

What's up with the "home air filtration" aspect with this machine? I get it and again, it makes perfect sense but honestly, can a unit that moves air like this really filter all the air in a ~2400 sq/ft home? Im skeptical but perhaps given the proper placement (by the furnace in the basement???) it could clean the air acceptably. It certainly doesn't take long in air filtering mode to muck up the water in the machine!

Whats up with putting Glycol in the filtering water and it's effectiveness (if any) at reducing bacteria/mold/viruses and thereby helping to rid your home of sickness?

Whats an effective method using this vacuum to remove carpet stains like spilled drinks/food/pet accidents?

Also anything else anyone with first hand knowledge/use with a vacuum like this can give me.

I would truly prefer anyone who is thinking of posting that has only feelings/beliefs/pre-concieved notions and not true real world experence or factual evidence to support their position/claims to please leave it for else where. I am a very open person who enjoys hearing views from every angle, especially rational ones that are opposite of my own but in order for me to honestly consider that POV it must be based on fact/actual experience. 

Thank you for your help and I look forward to your responses!

ps-sorry about any grammatical errors or punctuation flaws its late and I'm spent, also for some reason Firefox's spell check doesn't jive with this site...I'm sure someone could figure it out.

speaking of Hyla's I saw some pretty neat ones at my local home show.   the local Hyla distributor had paid an artist to airbrush a picture of a razorback pig on her personal Hyla.

Most door to door vacuum (dtd) salespersons are very slick.  The salespitch is designed to make you think your current vacuum is a failure and that your wallowing in slop if you don't buy their vacuum.  The demonstration can be terribly misleading because (1) you have no idea how much dirt your vacuum picked up in the test, and (2) you have no way of knowing whether their vacuum would have picked up as much dirt. Most people don't realize that no vacuum gets all the dirt out of thei rugs.  Most people don't vacuum nearly enough, so they are easy prey for dtd vacuum salespersons.  If you had reversed the test, you would have likely found that your old vacuum picked up dirt missed by the Hyla.    It's also possible that your "old" vacuum could have picked up more dirt than the Hyla. You just don't know because dtd salespersons don't run a fair test.   If your vacuum was old, it's possible that you could have made it like "new" by installing a new brush roll.    Every vacuum is somewhat unique in how it vibrates the rug to get the dirt out.  Almost any vacuum will pick up dirt missed by another. 

Let's assume that your old vacuum was not performing.   There's no reason to assume that the Hyla is the best replacement.  Maybe it is, but do you really know that for sure?  It's usually best to test drive vacuums outside of the shadows of a person who doesn't really have your best interests at heart.   I do hope the Hyla is a good vacuum for you.  Water filtration vacuums like Hyla and Rainbow are great for people who like aromatherapy, since you can add scents to the water.