New Vacuum

Our old Eureka vacuum cleaner finally died. The brushes got looser, slower, buzzed loudly, and wouldn't pick up dirt. So we went vacuum cleaner shopping.

Over the years, many of our houses have had extensive carpeting. We have always had a vacuum cleaner, sometimes more than one. Our house in Bristol actually had a whole-house vacuum, with hose outlets in the wall - it never worked, and obviously hadn't worked for the folks before us judging by the dirt we got out of the carpet with a real vacuum cleaner.

Our current house is actually all hardwood flooring, but we still have large area rugs to vacuum . Up until now, our vacuums have used bags. Those days are gone, apparently. Every vacuum we looked at was bagless "cyclone", "helix", etc. We got a Bissell with very similar specs to our old one. Both are 12 amps, 15" wide path, HEPA air filter. Here they are side by side:

You can see that they are nearly identical in size. Some things I noticed:

• Detaching hose is inline with the brushes; not a separate pathway.
• The tools are simple and attach firmly.
• Assembly involved *one* screw. A real 'snap'.
• It is not whisper-quiet, but that is not a big deal.
• I suspect canister capacity is lower than bagging vacuums.
• Bagless vacs are a cinch to empty, so capacity doesn't matter.
• Don't try to wash it, it isn't important. Makes a muddy mess.

The old collection system:

And the new: