Vacuum Cleaners Discussions

Hello all! We current have a 10 year old riccar 1700. It has treated us well aside from having to replace the hose once and a blown fuse we have had no troubles with it. Recent I purchased a dyson v6 cordless vacuum for spot cleaning. We first tried the dyson on a 8x12 area rug that had just been vacuumed, using the riccar, 24 hour prior. I was disgusted that we nearly filled the (small) dyson canister. It was at this point that I lost faith in the riccar. The bag was about half full (or emtpy) at this point and the filters were only months old. Is this typical of a riccar? Should I be looking at a new vacuum?

Depends. A vacuum will lose performance if not well cared for. Do you always use a cloth HEPA dust bag? Do you replace the pre-motor filter every sixth bag change? Do you inspect the exhaust filter at bag changes and change it when it is dirty? Dirt gets past a paper bag, leading to clogged filters, dust accumulation in the motor, loss of airflow and eventually an overheated motor. You can kill the best vacuum made by neglecting proper maintenance. In general Dysons do not have more cleaning power than Riccar or Simplicity vacuums and Dyson brush rolls are terrible. They are just plastic, use them hard and the plastic overheats and either melts or warps. Riccar and Simplicity use excellent steel or sometimes wooden brush rolls that are impervious to heat build up. Dysons also get brittle over time and their filters start to clog up with every use after about six months. A final thought, what you saw is what door to door sales people use to get you to part with a couple of thousand bucks to buy a new vacuum you don't really need. No vacuum gets everything up on the first pass (and you had a full day of dirt accumulation between using the Riccar and the Die-soon. When a door to door salesman comes in and vacuums your carpet with his machine, the whole point is to alarm you, oh look how much dirt your vacuum misses and look how much mine found. Here is the deal, the vacuum that goes first always looses. Always. I don't care which two you test, the machine that goes second always finds something the first missed. Don't get excited about this. Make sure your current machine is clean inside. Make sure the filters are fresh and you use a good cloth HEPA dust bag. If you have an air compressor or access to one, remove the bag and filters, blow all the dust and crud out of the bag chamber, then blow air through the motor. Put the nozzle into the opening behind where the pre motor filter was and blow any dirt out of the motor. The dust will come out from where the exhaust filter was. When you have removed all the dust (I disassemble machines and wash them but this is beyond what most owners can do) replace the filters and bags with new parts and see how the machine performs. Oh, make sure you have no clogs in the hose or power nozzle. Mahalo