My new Dyson vacuum cleaner -- woo hoo!

My five year-old Eureka finally died, and good riddance. What a piece of crap. Nothing fit right, the hose kept slipping off surreptitiously so I was vacuuming with no suction, the power switch failed so I had to track one down on the internet and replace it, and if the brush got tangled in loose yarn from the carpet it was a one-hour job to remove, unravel, and reassemble. It was one of the experiences which inspired my wife and me to write our family slogan: "Never buy anything with moving parts at Costco."

Mrs. Fraggle has a central vacuum with about 600 horsepower in our house back in California (and a nice lady who comes around once a week and operates it) but she recommended a Dyson-ball for my basement studio here in Maryland.

It's actually not named after the Dyson sphere--a hypothetical artifact that surrounds a star capturing all its energy and which the SETI program should perhaps be scanning for as the ultimate evidence of an advanced power-sucking civilization--but after James Dyson, the guy who invented it. But I'm sure he was real happy to take advantage of the coincidence.

It is wonderful! You know how some days you look at your floor and say, "I really ought to vacuum today but I'm not up to it?" This thing weighs about twenty pounds (9kg), has a zero turning radius because it really is a ball, and will suck the rust off an abandoned Studebaker.

The ball is certainly a nice gimmick: one giant caster that rolls any way you point it with no turning resistance. But the real heart of this thing is the vacuum unit itself. Dyson discovered that vacuum cleaners lose half their power or more the first time you use them, because the fibers of the bag almost instantly clog up with dust, and the only way to fix that is to install a new bag every twenty minutes.

He invented a chamber that shapes the air into a cyclone, directing the dust to the sides of the chamber where it falls neatly into a container--the technology employed on a much larger scale by sawmills. This made it unnecessary to use a bag; it has a transparent plastic chamber instead, so you can see how close it is to full. His design first went into commercial production in Japan in 1986, where an amazed public considered it a status symbol and were willing to pay something like $3,000 for it. (I got lost in the yen-sterling-dollar conversion factors.)

The new Dysons have seven cyclone funnels. They were originally manufactured in England (Dyson is British) but are now made in Malaysia. The reduction in labor costs allowed the company to put more money into research and development, so they now employ more people in England than they did when they were a manufacturer.

I love this thing! Everything about it is perfect: the handle that telescopes down for compact storage, the effortless turning, the attachments that go on and off easily and securely, the simplicity of emptying the container, the RPM sensor that stops the brush from spinning when a captured bit of rug yarn slows it down so even though my carpet is ancient I've never yet had to turn it upside-down to untangle it.

I got the Dyson "Animal" DC24. It's a small model but it's all I need for this tiny place, and I do have animals. It's actually more expensive than the larger model--whether because miniaturization is costly or because a lot of highly-paid professionals live in small lodgings and they can afford it.

It lists for $550 at Target. But I went to the Target website and it was a hundred bucks cheaper online. You can get the large version for about $350.

When my wife first left home she had a British roommate for several years, and apparently the Brits call all vacuum cleaners "Hoovers," just as in some countries the word for "refrigerator" is "Frigidaire." We always talk about "hoovering" the house.

Now we're going to have to call it "dysoning."

 

We're three thousand miles apart due to my job, so all she can do is make sure I keep my place in Maryland clean. Besides, our "real" house in California is huge so we have a cleaning lady. With dogs and parrots and a (hilly) acre of lawn there's still plenty of work.

I don't know. I don't subscribe to Consumer Reports so I can't see their ratings.

The Wikipedia article on the Dyson Company said, au contraire, that the Hoover company tried to buy his patent just to keep the technology off the market! Remember when American companies were paragons of innovation? (Well of course not, you guys are all too young, but I do.) Nowadays they're just scavengers, buying up each other's rusting hulks.

The Roomba? Yeah, those are intriguing. Some people start to regard them as pets. I haven't been able to Snope this, but there was a report last year about people sending their Roomba in for repair. They would mark it in some out-of-the-way place so when it came back they could be sure it was their beloved Roomba, not a new one or somebody else's.

We have one, but when I go home now I notice that Mrs. Fraggle isn't using it any more. With eight dogs and seven birds (I have the other two dogs here with me in Maryland) the dirt just piles up faster than the Roomba can keep up with it. She has a miniature battery-powered vacuum cleaner that she uses for a once-over in the main rooms every day.

He is (or should be) quite a celebrity for inventing this, and he's one of your people so I'm sure he was on every talk show in the U.K. Over here no one knows who he is, or who or what the machine is named after. And I didn't mean to imply that millions of Americans are familiar with the concept of a Dyson sphere, or have even heard the term. Only sci-fi fans and the SETI enthusiasts--two populations that must surely have a huge overlap.

Yes. I noted that the larger model was cheaper and speculated on the reason.

I don't need the large model, I don't want to bother schlepping the extra mass, and frankly this place is so small that I appreciate the smaller storage footprint. There's no room for it in the laundry room so it sits in a corner in my tiny kitchenette. So I'm perhaps the perfect example of someone who would spend more for less. My wife, the family CFO, recommended and authorized the purchase. With her little battery-powered dingus she is well aware of the negative correlation between the mass of a cleaning appliance and the frequency of its use.

When my old vacuum stopped working the first time, I threw it in the trunk of my car (that's "boot" to you guys) and drove down the main street of Montgomery County until I saw a business with a giant HOOVER sign. I parked and carried it in to ask about a repair. The man took one disdainful look at it, then looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "Sir, this is a Hoover shop. We do not sell or work on Eurekas."

 

I'm not real fond of hard floors--wood, tile, lino, Pergo, bamboo, any kind. I like to walk around barefoot in warm weather and I want some cushioning. And in colder weather, hard floors are VERY cold, even with slippers on.

Of course a nice hardwood floor is perfect, with a beautiful, warm Persian rug on top of it.

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As for cleaning, when you've got a house full of dogs you get some detritus dragged in from outside that takes more than a wet mop to clean up!

 

I know. We're generally happy with what we buy there.

We have returned many purchases and they never complain. They always ask why, so they can keep track of quality problems.

Back home in California, where unpackaged food that has been returned has to be thrown out because it's illegal to resell (they're not even allowed to donate it to a food bank), Costo still gives refunds on it. I was in line once behind a lady who was returning an entire carload of groceries because she decided that the party she had planned was too much trouble. The clerk slipped and dropped a melon on the floor where it broke open and the customer said something like, "Watch it, Stupid, those things are expensive!" The clerk's face turned an interesting color but she held her tongue. I broke the news to the customer and got a big "Eh!"

Still, in the years we've been shopping at what was originally the Price Club, we have consistently found it to be a mistake to buy anything with moving parts there. In some cases they may be factory seconds, in others they simply bought the cheapest thing they could find and it's a piece of junk.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that it's purple, my favorite color. The "DC25 Animal" is the one I bought. Mrs. Fraggle knew she wouldn't have to twist my arm once I saw the photos.

You need to read what you write before you hit SUBMIT.

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No, it doesn't matter to me. I never adjusted it on my Eureka. As I mentioned, I live in a walkout basement studio and the floors are either lino or cheap thin carpet. But it's crowded and some of the narrow spaces are very difficult to get through so I appreciate the small footprint and the easy maneuvering.

Oh yeah, it explains that right in the (pictorial) owner's manual. Probably not quite so often since I don't even fill the dust bucket in a month. I had to clean the filters on the Eureka and that was a horrible job.

When it comes to household stuff I do my shopping at AlwaysDoExactlyWhatYourWifeTellsYou.com.

I'm waiting to pull the Tom Sawyer fence whitewashing trick on somebody. "Ooh what a cute little purple hoover!" "Yeah it sure is, light and nimble too." "Wow! It must be easy to use then." "Sure is, want to try it out?" "Oh can I really? You wouldn't mind?"

I just don't like walking on hard surfaces. Even when I'm outdoors I often walk on the greenspace between the sidewalk and the steet.

So is this the next generation of Pergo? The living room in the upstairs of my townhouse, which I rent out, is Pergo, and everyone who's lived there liked it. It must be pretty sturdy because one guy who came over to see the place but didn't take it managed a liquor store that had Pergo floors. Nonetheless, they always put a rug over it.

Yeah, the heater ducts in the main part of my place are in the floor. Of course that's not so great in summer when you would want the air from the A/C to blow down from the ceiling. Unfortunately in my basement they're in the ceiling so it's not easy to get the place comfortable in winter. And since I'm half underground with a northern exposure I hardly ever need the A/C in summer.

This thread is about vacuum cleaners and nobody here is selling them. You seem to be a seller of this product, so please do not advertise it here. That's a violation of the forum rules.

If you're just a really satisfied customer and want to share your good luck with others, then I apologize, but in that case please try not to come across like a salesman.

And you're still on the wrong thread because this is still about vacuum cleaners.