Kirby???

[Joe Baker]

IFive months after I bought it, I installed wood floors throughout the house. If I were any smarter, I would probably be close to a moron.

No moron you--wall-to-wall carpeting has to be one of the filthiest inventions of the 20th century. You can steam it until it's parboiled and it's sill holding a ton of dirt.

I replaced the WTW carpeting with wood just moths after we bought our current house. Where there's not wood, there's ceramic tile. A few area rugs that get sent out for cleaning every couple of years completes the setup.

Laminate might be a good choice now, but I can't stand the look of it. Reminds me of the cheap wood-grain Formica that's sold for countertops.

You said it about carpet being filthy. We're renting 'til my son graduates High School, then we'll buy a house, and the first thing we'll do is yank the carpet. It'd be nuts to replace or cover a good hardwood floor with laminate, but I really have to say I don't think you've looked at some of the better laminates. The stuff we had in our den before we moved to Tennessee looked really good. You really couldn't tell it wasn't wood, but it was a lot tougher than wood. Kids, dogs, spilled drinks, you name it -- it still looked brand new two years later when we moved. Our "engineered real wood" (a very pretty real wood laminate on top of what amounted to 3/8" plywood) floor in the living room took much greater care to keep nice. I'll never do THAT again!
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Joe Baker, who likes that area rugs can be gotten much cleaner than carpets.

[ThomasDodd]

I don't need the vacuum to tell me the floor is clean. My parents and grand parents did all right without that feature. What are we comming too, needing a vacuum to tell us if the floor is clean? I don't like things that pretend to know better than me.

My grandparents did okay without a vacuum cleaner. And a carpet. And for some years without a floor. And electricity. And indoor plumbing, air conditioning, and a DVD player. I'm happy to have all of those things, AND the dirt sensor.

Somehow I saw that comming

I'm happy to have some, but not all. Like A/C, it nice, but has problems too. There rest of my family cannot spend much time outsind now, they quickly get exhausted from the heat, in the evening when it not sunny but still 85 degrees. Never mind trying to get them out in the noon sun.

In that regard I think A/C has lessened their "quality of life" and mine. No evening walks, now summer, outdoor activities at all.

The reason the dirt sensor is so valuable is that a lot of the dirt on the carpet isn't on top, but down in the pile.

That's what the shampoo is for
Lifts it to the surface where it can be vacuumed easily.

he indicator just tell you the vacuum canot get any more out, not that it's all gone. Depending on the sensitivity if could still miss a lot. The sensitivity will probably drop as it ages.

It might be handy with the kids though. Not that mine would pay attention to the sensor. He cannot even get dishes clean. Doesn't notice the stuck on food when taking them from the dishwasher to the cabinets.

[tubatooter1940]

Kirby is a good vac but too heavy and outmoded. I used to sell the Rexair
or Rainbow machine (mudpots,the Kirby salesmen called them).
I paint a lot and a good dust-remover vac is my friend. In the 60's I paid $250 for my first Rainbow and my wife almost divorced me. We still have it and only changed the motor brushes a few times and bought a few floor tools and hoses.
I put hot water in the pot and some menthol crystals and got this guy to breathe thru his nose for the first time in 20 years. His wife (a registered nurse) got out of her sick bed to drive me to her bank to get the cash to buy it.
A carpenter I worked with recently has a shop vac with a 6 horsepower motor,that can pick up 10 gallons of liquid and anything not nailed down on your shop floor. Wow!
We laid tile thrughout our entire first floor and found that all you have to do is run the ceiling fans for a bit and then vacuum around the edges of the room. Now we are getting older and are considering carpet to prevent breaking a hip or something else of importance.

[MaryAnn]

I have one with the red/green lights too...but it's a windtunnel. IIRC, I got whatever Costco had on sale at the time. I'm not sure that when the green light comes on the carpet is clean, but it's cleaner than it would have been without the red light. It's also a plastic hunk of junk though...parts break off if you're not careful with it.

I've found that cat barf from dry food is best left alone until it dries completely and then is vacuumed up; mopping away at it just grinds it down into the carpet fibers. I steam clean in November, after the summer hairball barf season is over.

MA

[Joe Baker]

"Clean" is a relative term. You'll never get the durn thing really clean; but I want to run the vacuum as long as it is capable of getting dirt out of the carpet, then move to another spot. Since the light is an indicator of whether dirt is being picked up, it gives me just the feedback I need.
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Joe Baker, who quit laying on carpeted floors -- even freshly vacuumed ones -- after removing a regularly cleaned, five-year-old carpet several years ago, and durn near puking at the filth it contained.

[Chuck(G)]

Joe Baker, who quit laying on carpeted floors -- even freshly vacuumed ones -- after removing a regularly cleaned, five-year-old carpet several years ago, and durn near puking at the filth it contained.

Which points to a huge advantage of area rugs. Vacuum them from the top, flip 'em over and vacuum the back, flip them over and vacuum up the pile of dirt that's left on the floor. Repeat. If they get too dirty, you can roll them up and take them to a commercial cleaning outfit.

[Rick F]

We had a Kirby for about 15 years until about 10 years ago we replaced it with a Hoover. I was amazed at how much better a cleaning job the Hoover did! The rug beater feature of the Kirby (I think they were the first one to offer that) was great but when it came to actually vacuuming, it really sucked... or rather didn't suck. The Hoover has power drive too - something the old Kirby did not have.

[windshieldbug]

Carpet (regardless of the cost of one's vacuum) smells like strong chemicals when it's new, and (at its best) smells like semi-perfumed dirty socks, rotten food, animals, pee, and farts after it is a few months old.

No, the post wasn't about how YOUR carpets would smell, if you had 'em...

[TMurphy]

I always liked Kirby, too....

[Lew]

I do seem to remember Consumer Reports reviewing vaccuum cleaners and determining that Kirbys didn't clean any better than machines that cost a fraction as much, and that the Kirbys were actually less reliable based on their stats.

Any idea when that was?

As I said above, I'm not real sure about the newer, Generation, series, with the transmission and lot's of plastic parts.

I guess any 40 year old vaccum is built better than the current, throw-away crap. The questioon then is which ones can you get parts for, how easily and how much.

Can you get parts for a 60's Hoover or Eureka?

I wanted to correct my statement. I received the September Consumer reports, and it was the Rainbow that I was thinking of as being at the bottom of their ratings, while costing much more than almost any other. Even so, the Rainbow's reliability was better than other canisters.

The Kirby was number 6 in performance, and tops in reliability. Still at 4 to 5 times the cost of others that worked better, it's hard to justify the new price.

[Rick Denney]

My home has one, but hauling the head with the hose around is a drag and the upright does a much better job on the rugs--and it's lighter.

One thing a central vac does is vent all the filtered air to the outside. So whatever gets through the filter goes out into the yard. The bag is also very much larger, requiring replacement much less often.

The outside venting is why they are recommended for those with allergies. No need for HEPA filters or the like--just send the really fine stuff out the vent.

I found a hose that stretches to 30 feet and is about 8 feet long for storage. Works fine.

Rick "who didn't realize the benefits of outside venting until he had it" Denney

[windshieldbug]

This topic sucks!

(Oh, c'mon! You had to see that coming 1.6km away!)