Both daughter and daughter in law have Dyson Vacuums - the ones with the big ball wheel. We have an old bagged Electrolux Powerline 1000. To all intents and purposes identical to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD3ZWG2aweg
It's a pleasingly simple machine. Nice big powerful motor which really sucks and drives the brush bar via a cheap rubber belt. The motor suction is applied to the bag container and a flex pipe can be either plugged into the brush bar housing or detached and used with attachments to clean in nooks and crannies etc. In all the years we've owned it - probably about 35 years - all I've done is replace bags, of course - but they're a nice big bag so last well, £1.00 approx per bag, drive belts (genuine belts last longest, maybe for 2 years at a time), beater roller once and I've twice stripped it down and cleaned out the big filter round the motor and all the dust inside. Also the wee filter under the bag which stops anything big getting to the motor. (cleaned once a year and replaced maybe 3 or 4 times - it's only a foam square and costs peanuts)
The Dysons seem to need constant "fettling" and although the filters can be washed, when you do replace them they are expensive. That wee toggle which switches the suction between the floor and handle seems to jam up a lot on both machines. The tubing is nothing like as large as the Electrolux so more prone to blocking in both households due to pet hair and children's "debris" (troll hair, fairy stars, lego , etc, etc.) the Electrolux just seems to happily swallow the lot - with the occasional rattly protest!
A few weeks ago daughter in law's machine stopped picking up, again. So I brought it home as a "Lockdown project" and completely stripped it and checked it out. The first problem I noticed was that the brush beater roller was not rotating. I've had problems with this before due to the assembly not being clipped into the front of the machine properly so the electrical supply to the roller motor is not made, daughter in laws seems to do this more than my daughters one does, so maybe more down to a "hashy" operator? However this time was different, my granddaughter's long hair had wrapped itself around the spindle inside the beater roller and was preventing the roller from rotating. This was only visible once the roller itself had been removed from the spindle so wasn't immediately apparent. My own daughter had long hair as a youngster and that would wrap round the Electrolux brush (and before that the Hoover we had) but that was easy to clear. Clearing it from inside the Dyson's brush roller - actually just diagnosing what the problem was in the first place - was far more difficult. Lots of "breakable" plastic fittings to undo too to get the roller out. In fact the roller brush was in poor general condition so I bought a pattern spare from Edinburgh Components (my local and very helpful trade parts supplier) and it's working just fine. I also found that there was a wad of "stringy" dust blocking the airway at the top of the dust container which was severely limiting suction. I dismantled most of the cyclone system after I found that and blew out what couldn't be dismantled with my garage airline - BIG MISTAKE! there is a hell of a lot of dust in there! I almost asphyxiated myself! I had to hold my breath and run away until the dust had settled. Mrs J said I looked like Mr Pastry! For younger readers he was a children's entertainer who was always doing silly stuff with bags of flour - lots of flour! Thank goodness I did it outside the garage otherwise I would be still trying to clear up. Although I personally wouldn't have one I have to say that when they are working the Dysons do clean well, although the Electrolux does well too, I just don't like the complexity of them.
My older boy has a Henry and all I've ever done to that is to remove the slow speed control module when it failed and direct wired it through so that it runs at fast speed all the time. I checked with Numatic - the manufacturer - and they said this was OK to do. In fact they don't now make them with 2 speeds any more and they said the 2 speed module had proved to be not all that reliable. Of course they did it to save electricity. The latest models have a less powerful, less "hungry" motor with improved air flow dynamics to make up for it. I'm extremely impressed with his Henry which I used to hoover our house just to be sure it wasn't going to burn out after I eliminated that module. If the Electrolux croakes I'll probably replace it with a Henry, or one of his many variants. At present I'm leaning towards James because of his very simple cable management system. In my book "simple" is always better! The only draw back, if you can call it that, is that the Henry design doesn't have a rotating brush so you hoover with rather more of a "scrubbing the kitchen floor with a mop" type of action. However you are only handling the "wand", not the whole machine, so it's not arduous. Oh, and the bags are BIG! They'll need changed much less frequently than the Electrolux ones.
Darn it, forgot to click on the "quote" box again! This post in response to PB and Charlie's posts.
