Vacuum Cleaners Discussions

We just had wool berber wall-to-wall carpeting installed in several rooms of our home. The manufacturer recommends a suction only vacuum, without a beater bar to "avoid excessive fuzzing."
First, is a beater bar and a brush roll the same thing on a vacuum?
And second what's my best bet for a vacuum? We have 700-square-feet of wool berber carpets, 600-square-feet of laminate and 200-square-feet of tile (including stairs) to vacuum. We own two boxers (dogs) that shed short hair and live in a dusty (agricultural) area.
At the recommendation of a local shop we tried out a Miele Titan (with 217 head) with the brush roll on (they're some of the softest brushes according to sales person). We used it for a while on a remnant of our carpet and I noticed what I think is some fuzzing so I worry that with extended use we will really wear into the carpet. Is there anything with some kind of brush roll or option other than straight suction to really get the dog hair up? Or something with enough suction not to worry about it?
The Miele seemed to do a very nice job but we're struggling for an accurate comparison point.

THANK YOU!!!

Brush rolls haven't had beater bars in a long time. It used to be that brush rolls had one or two rows of bristles and another row with a hard bar nearly as long as the bristles that literally beat the carpet as the brush roll turned. Great for bouncing dirt out of the nap and into the airflow where it was sucked into the vacuum. Nobody that I am aware of sells a modern vacuum with a beater bar brush roll but there are certainly plenty of older machines soldiering on out there with these old beater bar brush rolls hence the warning not to use them on your carpet. I'm not sure if considerations of carpet wear or the desire to sell quiet vacuums are what killed the beater bar. It certainly is an effective way to deep clean carpets but it was usually noisier than we are accustomed to today.

I don't know what your budget looks like, but I have the Shark Navigator Rotator at home and it works great. Costco (or Amazon) sells them for ~$200

Last year I ended up buying a Hoover Linx cordless stick vac and the Bissell Pet Hair Eraser hand vac, as I was so frustrated with our old Miele White Star. Both are decent for day-to-day touch-ups, but my Miele has now totally bitten the dust and I need to buy a new vac this week. As much as I'd prefer an upright vac, I use my hose and attachments all the time to vacuum my very textured adobe walls, furniture, crevices, lampshades, etc., etc. I've spent a lot of time this morning searching The Wirecutter and Get Cleaning Done. But, every time I check out the customer reviews there are always complaints that the rollers still get bound up with hair and have to be continually cut off. Or that the vacuums are falling apart! I found one that seemed to work well . . . as long as you got down on your hands and knees and used an attachment to get it up. I've been doing that for years with my Miele White Star and am so done with that! For a vacuum that expensive (back then it was close to $500), shame on them! Is there a vacuum out there that actually really works with pet hair on rugs and hardwood?????? I need recommendations and ones NOT to buy quickly, please. Help!

Mieles are over rated. Go to the nearest Sears and look at their Kenmore branded canister vacuums, specifically the 600 Series 81614, Elite 700 Series 81714 and Elite 800 Series 21814. The Elites are originally Panasonic designs and are the most powerful canister vacuums made. The 600 is a Cleva Industrial design. Test them against any Miele and I think you will be surprised at their basic excellence. Kenmore has almost always been about high airflow and the Elites in particular have massive airflow, more than even a Kirby. The Kirby sales guy was surprised to see my hard working Elite match the airflow of his brand new Sentria measuring them both at the hose end with his BAIRD meter. Then compare attachments, especially those on the 600 series with Miele's. The Kenny has traditional American sized attachments including an excellent horse hair dusting brush. Then look at the tiny little attachments Miele provides. Mieles dusting brush is especially frustrating as it has such a narrow cleaning path. The Kenmore dusting brush is wide. And where Miele gives you a cheap turbo hand brush that will bog on anything soft for lack of airflow, Kenmore gives you an outstanding electric motor driven Pet Powermate hand brush that almost never bogs. It out cleans any turbo tool. But if you are really determined to spend a bunch of money on a vacuum cleaner, look at Aerus Lux. Their Classic and Legacy canisters are made in the US and have been in production with very few minor changes since the late 1980s. Aerus Lux like Kenmore provides an outstanding electric motor driven hand brush called the Sidekick. These are top quality vacuums that will last decades given reasonable care. Reasonable care means using only cloth HEPA dust bags and changing the pre-motor and exhaust filters every sixth bag change. If there are big accumulations of dust in the bag chambers clean the bag chamber so the dust can't be sucked into the motor where it can clog and damage it. Suction air is what cools your vacuum motor. Anything that reduces airflow like clogged filters are dirt accumulating in the motor starves airflow and that will overheat and ruin a vacuum motor.

I have made an interesting discovery. Japan is canister vacuum heaven and their machines, though designed to run on Japan's 100 volt power (50Hz on the east side of Japan, 60Hz on the western side) work just fine on US 115 volt 60Hz house current. They can be purchased by US customers through eBay, Global Rakuten and Buyee.jp. The last two sites operate much like Amazon with multiple sellers offering products through the site. Buyee has an additional service where they will consolidate multiple purchases into a single shipment in one thick sturdy box with lots of "puchipuchi" (Japanese term for bubble wrap). You can use your US based credit or debit card or Paypal. Very clean and convenient. The Japanese market canister vacuums are cool looking and highly functional. They are also more powerful than the vacuums sold in the US. In the case of Hitachi a great deal more powerful. Their better canisters feature these interesting little power nozzles that work fabulous on soft carpets as well as on hard floors. Instead of a wooden or steel brush roll with stiff nylon bristles, they have mostly aluminum brush rolls with alternating rows of soft spongy material and soft bristles. Some even have three rows with the third row a strip of cloth. They weigh almost nothing, as light as some of the larger suction only hard floor nozzles. A few high end Japanese canisters have a setting that allows the brush roll to spin while the suction motor is off so you can wet scrub hard floors or shampoo a rug. After the shampoo dries you vacuum it up. Their hoses are lighter than anything you have experienced before, super flexible and don't kink. Most have their dusting brush built into the hose handle in a little flip out arrangement. Typical drawbacks of the Japanese vacuums are driven by their small size. Cords and hoses are short and the dust bags are small, but no smaller than a Miele FJM dust bag. You will also have to buy dust bags from Japan but those are available on eBay or Amazon and are still less costly than Miele bags. The Japanese vacuums and power nozzles are supremely quiet too. My recommendations are the Panasonic MC-PK21G or either of the Hitachi CV-PF300N or CV-PF300R (N for gold and R for red, otherwise identical). The Panasonic has 600 air watts (same motor used in the Kenmore Elite btw), compared to 510 air watts for the top of the line Aerus Guardian Platinum or 430 for the Aerus Legacy or Tristar CS series, all of which sell for in excess of $1700. The Hitachi has an astounding 680 air watts, which is more than most central vacuum motors can muster, and those motors pull a lot more than the 12 amp limit for household appliances. Hitachi has a tech paper on how they redesigned their motors to increase their efficiency through detailed fan design instead of just spinning things faster and using more power. A tad larger than the Panasonic and the dust bag is 1.7 liters vs barely 1 liter for the Panasonic. For soft carpets, area rugs and hard floors you would not go wrong buying either.

CountVacula, thanks for sharing your thoughts. You know what, I;ve tried dozens of vacuum cleaners, cause it's kinda my sphere of work, and I can say for sure that there is nothing better and more reliable in the vacuum cleaners world than model BISSELL Cleanview Swivel Pet 2252. You can look here a list, where also find this exact model. I can highly recommend it, especially if you have a lot of long hairs all around the house.

Bissell? I would buy a clean used Kenmore before spending the same amount for any new Bissell. I have a Bissell canister and power nozzle. It has much less power than any of the machines I mentioned. We have a 1982 vintage Kenmore we still use with more power than the Bissell. The Bissell brush roll is this twisted plastic thing that acts just like a loom collecting hair. Worse to me is that Bissell doesn't support their products. I cannot buy normal wear parts or filters for our Bissell canister. Interestingly Endust sells the HEPA filter for it in Canada but not in the US. I can also buy HEPA dust bags for it in Canada but not in the US. Though it has only been used less than a year the motor is showing signs of bearing wear (rumbling noise on coast down). Cheeeeep. I can get brush rolls (nice wooden ones), belts and replacement motors for the 1982 Kenny and none of these items are available for our near new Bissell. When the bearing noise gets louder I'll yank the motor and put a Panasonic motor in it, probably one used in the Kenmore Elite. Those make huge power and are durable.

If you are looking for a Best Vacuum for Wool Berber Carpets, Laminate & Tile then my strong recommendation will be the Hoover Power Scrub Deluxe Carpet Cleaner.

That's a shampooer / extractor, not a vacuum cleaner.