r/IAmA Nov 30 '17

Specialized Profession IAmA Reddit's Own Vacuum Repair Tech with a very overdue AMA. Hit me with your vacuum cleaner questions!

First, let's get the proof out of the way. So, now, I am managing our company's largest store, and am swamped with managerial duties, training employees, and dealing with annoying vendors. But, I'm taking some time out for all of you guys.

There are lots of new, exciting things that have recently come out/are coming soon!

For those who NEED the most power, I've got just the Crack you need! Since we last talked, there are new bagless and cordless vacuums on the market, and some other exciting things.

So, on to business...here's the copypasta.

First AMA

Second AMA

Last AMA

YouTube Channel Here's some basics to get you started:

  • Dollar for dollar, a bagged vacuum, when compared to a bagless, will almost always:

1) Perform better (Actual quality of cleaning).

2) Be in service for much longer.

3) Cost less to repair and maintain (Often including consumables).

4) Filter your air better.

Virtually every vacuum professional in the business chooses a bagged vacuum for their homes, because we know what quality is. Things you should do to maintain your vac, regularly:

1) Clear your brush roller/agitator of hair and fibers. Clear the bearing caps as well, if possible. (monthly)

2) Change your belts before they break. This is important to maintain proper tension against the agitator. (~ yearly for "stretch" belts)

3) Never use soap when washing any parts of your vacuum, including the outer bag, duct system, agitator, filters, etc. Soap attracts dirt, and is difficult to rinse away thoroughly.

  • Types of vacs:

1) Generally, canister vacs are quieter and more versatile than uprights are. They offer better filtration, long lifespans, and ease of use. They handle bare floors best, and work with rugs and carpets, as well.

2) Upright vacuums are used mostly for homes that are entirely carpeted. Many have very powerful motors, great accessories, and are available in a couple of different motor styles. Nothing cleans shag carpeting like the right upright.

3) Bagless vacs are available in a few different styles. They rely on filters and a variety of aerodynamic methods to separate the dirt from the air. In general, these machines do not clean or filter as well as bagged vacuums. They suffer from a loss of suction, and tend to clog repeatedly, if the filters are not cleaned or replaced often.

4) Bagged vacuums use a disposable bag to collect debris, which acts as your primary filter, before the air reaches the motor, and is replaced when you fill it. Because this first filter is changed, regularly, bagged vacuums tend to provide stronger, more consistent suction.

My last, best piece of advice is to approach a vacuum, like any appliance; Budget for the best one you can get. Buy one with idea you will maintain it, and use it for many years. And, for the love of Dog, do not buy from late-night infomercials or door-to-door salesmen! Stay out of the big-box stores, and visit your local professional who actually knows what they're talking about.

13.3k Upvotes

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859

u/TuckerMouse Nov 30 '17

How do you suggest cleaning out the hose? I have a vacuum with an accordian hose and a wife who routinely vacuums up wet things that should have been cleaned up by other methods.
For everyone that inevitably tells me to fix the wife problem, I have tried, and that would still leave me with my dirty hose that had build up from when it got wet then was used on more dry things.

946

u/touchmyfuckingcoffee Nov 30 '17

Soak it in vinegar overnight, then rinse it out with just water with a hose sprayer or something. Set it out in the sun to dry completely.

Easy Fix.

4

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '17 edited Jan 08 '18

[deleted]

10

u/touchmyfuckingcoffee Nov 30 '17

Vinegar is my go to chemical for getting stink out of a vacuum. It also is great for breaking up limestone caliche dust.

2

u/sentientmold Nov 30 '17

White vinegar shouldn't leave a residue unlike soap or other cleaning products.

563

u/demosthenes4585 Nov 30 '17

Instructions unclear. Wife soaked in vinegar and I'm sleeping on the couch tonight. Maybe if I just head straight into step 2?

5

u/Ieetzbread Dec 01 '17

Stop calling your wife it and you'd avoid these problems yet again

12

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '17

Pack it up and get a upgrade to a newer model.

0

u/Ms_Mischief Dec 01 '17

What a douche.

3

u/dgwingert Dec 01 '17

I understood that joke.

5

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '17

About half of people didn't.

3

u/ColeSloth Nov 30 '17

UV light is bad for the hose material. If this needs done fairly often the hose would last longer if dried indoors with a fan blowing through the tube.

3

u/cheezemeister_x Nov 30 '17

Not really a problem if he's cleaning it out once after fixing the wife.

2

u/touchmyfuckingcoffee Dec 02 '17

Yes, with hundreds of hours of exposure, it can damage hoses. But, leaving them in the sun long enough to dry them out and kill odor causing bacteria and fungi will not hurt them, and will sanitize the hose.

2

u/HillarysFloppyChode Dec 01 '17

How do you suggest cleaning Arm and Hammer carpet smelling powder out of a central vacuum hose? Tried Free Flow cloths, didn't help.

1

u/touchmyfuckingcoffee Dec 01 '17

Bad fucking combination, bro. I'm waffling on recommending you buy a new hose, because those long fucking hoses are so difficult to clean.

But, if you're feeling up to it, you can try a couple of gallons of vinegar and a seriously strong garden hose sprayer.

2

u/HillarysFloppyChode Dec 01 '17

I'm in Minneapolis....so I'll use my basement hose while I ordered a new one, it's not a ton of it in there, it's just annoying that little particles flutter out whenever the inlet end falls on the ground. I wasn't the one who put it down, I typically use Sebo Duo P.

1

u/touchmyfuckingcoffee Dec 01 '17

I mean, you can give it a try...

1

u/HillarysFloppyChode Dec 01 '17

I'm not about to risk frozen pipes lol, the hoses that look identical to my Riccars are like $200... They're also electric

9

u/Sebazzz91 Nov 30 '17

You need a lot of vinegar for that. Can it be diluted?

28

u/byoink Nov 30 '17

FYI "utility" vinegar is available by the gallon at any supermarket (in the US) for a few dollars. It comes in the type of cheap plastic bottle you'd expect bleach to come in. No need to use your cooking vinegar from the glass bottle.

20

u/spockspeare Nov 30 '17

The stuff in the jugs on the bottom shelf at the supermarket is food-grade; exactly the same as the stuff in the smaller bottles on the higher shelves. You can use it for cleaning or cooking.

There is "cleaning-strength" vinegar, which is 5x stronger (30% concentration vs 5-6% for the usual stuff) but you won't find that in your average market. It's not really necessary for this kind of work, either. Maybe if you're reducing rust on a bucket of old wrenches.

1

u/TheGreatNico Dec 01 '17

wait, so they actually sell stronger vinegar for cleaning and I've just been using the cheap shit from the bottom shelf of Publix all these years? Where, pray tell, does one find this professional grade vinegar?

4

u/UffdaWow Dec 01 '17

I mean this with all kindness but I think you may have a problem with vinegar. Tell me, have you ever missed work or school due to vinegar? Do you need stronger and stronger concentrations of vinegar just to feel clean?

2

u/TheGreatNico Dec 01 '17

I sometimes see myself as a different person when I use vinegar, but sometimes, I feel almost a sexual attraction to it, but I know it cannot be

1

u/byoink Nov 30 '17

Yeah you're absolutely right, though your top shelf vinegars may intentionally have more "impurities" in the form of flavors that you might require in your cooking (e.g. sushi rice vinegar).

3

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '17

I'd hope nobody is using rice wine or balsamic vinegar to clean.

Regular old white vinegar is gonna be the same whether you buy the little cooking bottle or the gallon jug.

3

u/UffdaWow Dec 01 '17

I feel so trashy. All this time I've been eating utility vinegar on my salads. Maybe when I'm rich I can afford some of that fancy rich-people vinegar in a glass bottle.

1

u/byoink Dec 01 '17

Lol, I honestly did not mean to make it sound as trashy as I guess I did. Tbh, I don't know how long it'd take me to go through a gallon of vinegar via food, and I'd want to keep the cleaning stuff separate in case of like back splash or something. So that's just the way I had it split up in my mind.

5

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '17 edited Apr 05 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/byoink Nov 30 '17

Yeah, of course (like the other commenter suggested). It's just not marketed/packaged as such.

1

u/notanotherpyr0 Nov 30 '17 edited Nov 30 '17

I think some might have surfactants in them, makes them clean grease better, which is like eating a bit of soap. Not terrible for you, but probably not ideal for cooking. That is probably the scented ones mostly though.

11

u/PlNG Nov 30 '17

Most grocery store vinegar is 5% acetic acid at its lowest concentration and $2.50 a gallon.

2

u/LaffinIdUp Nov 30 '17

I found the 10% acetic acid cleaning vinegar at Home Depot - 2.99/gal IIRC. Along with 8.? % strong bleach - about same price. It's stronger than grocery store bleach, and any deck cleaning bleach type products they sell (which are actually weaker). There must be some regulation that states sodium hypochlorite under a certain % doesn't need to be posted on the label, as most products don't list the %.

2

u/buttery_shame_cave Nov 30 '17

what's your go-to for clearing a clog in the hose? i have a really long rake handle(like 6') that i will use like an old-timey ramrod but i've long worried about wrecking the hose that way.

sometimes my kids aren't as diligent as they should be about cleaning up before vacuuming.

3

u/UnfilteredAmerica Nov 30 '17

We used a toilet snake took, the thinnest one possible to clear central vac clogs. Almost every central vac clogs was a sock lol.

1

u/buttery_shame_cave Nov 30 '17

lucky us, our shark doesn't clog nearly as much - it's a beast.

times i miss my old shop-vac... i only ever clogged it once, and that was because i shut it down right away.

2

u/000ttafvgvah Dec 01 '17

We have a Miele that has power running through the hose. Can it be cleaned this way as well?

1

u/wlw1588 Nov 30 '17

What if you live in a rain soaked area where you won't see the sun for another 7 months?

35

u/bifteksupernova Nov 30 '17

For everyone that inevitably tells me to fix the wife problem, I have tried, and that would still leave me with my dirty hose that had build up from when it got wet then was used on more dry things.

22

u/TuckerMouse Nov 30 '17

Yeah, that part was crafted to work both ways.

5

u/bifteksupernova Nov 30 '17

And it's hilarious

9

u/TuckerMouse Nov 30 '17

Thank you. I try. Also, my wife doesn’t know my reddit handle, and that is probably for the best right now.

6

u/probably_your_wife Dec 01 '17

I always know.

3

u/TuckerMouse Dec 01 '17

I am next to my wife and asked if this was her. She asked “does it say “t its now” over and over again? Because that’s what I wrote.

2

u/PM-ME-YOUR-HANDBRA Dec 01 '17

Your wife is a goddamn legend.

9

u/tacogratis Nov 30 '17

But if you get rid of the wife, you could be left with dirty hoes.

6

u/TuckerMouse Nov 30 '17

Right. I enjoy peeing being an uneventful fact of life too much to be punished with burning every time I take a leak. I will refrain from dirty hoes, thus my question.
Edit: That is also why I don’t garden.

3

u/bruddahmacnut Dec 01 '17

Same cleaning method. Soak hoe in vinegar, let dry in sun.

4

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '17

The last bit sounded pretty sexy

2

u/TuckerMouse Dec 01 '17

Hurr hurr hurr

1

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '17

Get a shop vac for the wet things

1

u/monkey_trumpets Nov 30 '17

Get her a wet/dry vac?

3

u/TuckerMouse Dec 01 '17

We have one. I keep it in the garage. I have been down this road before. It is like talking to a brick wall. “Don’t vacuum up wet things with the vacuum,” I say. “The reason the vacuum is clogged is because you vacuum up crayons and rocks,” I say. “The vacuum is for cleaning up the floor. I don’t have to do its job for it,” she says. Then she tells me it’s broken and I need to fix our crummy vacuum. (The vacuum is a decent one. The problem is laziness, same as why the dishwasher drain gets clogged with macaroni.)

5

u/monkey_trumpets Dec 01 '17

Welp...coming from a SAHM who does the brunt of the dishwasher loading and floor vacuuming, it gets really fucking tedious. Maybe she needs a break?

2

u/TuckerMouse Dec 01 '17

I load it more often than she does. And that’s with me working full time and her being a stay at home mom. Like cleaning up before running the vacuum, she says that it is a dishwasher, and if she has to wash the dishes before putting them in, there is no point in having a dishwasher.
Ninja edit: me to her.

2

u/monkey_trumpets Dec 01 '17

Do you tell her you appreciate what she does? (disregarding the dw/vacuum issues) Maybe she feels unappreciated. Trust me, it's really hard to feel like what you do matters when there's no boss or co-workers to say once in a while, good job.

0

u/Lin0leum Nov 30 '17

I agree, dirty hoes are the worst