Exciting vacuum cleaner news ! WSJ has article about people and their many vacuums.
Houses Bristle With Vacuums, Thanks
To Niche Cleaning, 'Commodity Chic'
By CLARE ANSBERRY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
When pursuing dust balls, it's best to consider location.
At the junction of tread and riser on a staircase, try the squat little hand-held
model that looks like a piglet without legs. In the furnace room or garage,
home to clunkier, grimier pieces of dirt, use a wet-dry vac. If the dust ball
retreats into a corner, grab an electric broom with a triangular head that jabs
right into right angles. Whatever settles into carpet requires power. Consider
the Hoover WindTunnel with dual-duct nozzle and dirt-retaining systems, or
maybe the Dirt Devil Swivel Glide Vision with Sensors.
Lucky Survives
This is niche cleaning, and it is more than one vacuum, even with several
attachments, can handle. Cindi Finder of Pittsburgh has eight machines -- and
she has accumulated some expertise while doing research to replace the two
that broke down on her during the past couple of years. A Hoover survived
Lucky, the dog, who chewed through the cord and caused all the household
fuses to blow. Lucky was lucky and survived himself. But the Hoover, with a
new cord, caught fire after Ms. Finder sucked up metal shavings left by the
cable-installation man; then a Eureka choked to death on a Lego piece. "It just
croaked," she says.
Her latest acquisition, a Sears upright model, features headlights, rubber
bumpers and special filters to trap pollen. She runs it only on the carpets on the
first floor. For the carpets on the second floor, she uses her personal favorite:
a 20-year-old hand-me-down blue Hoover that her mother-in-law gave her. It
happens to be the same model her mother still has, although her mother's is
pink.
Ms. Finder has a third upright in the basement. Having one on each floor
eliminates the need to lug one up and down stairs, which isn't good for her
back. Then, she has two electric brooms for hardwood and linoleum, one
upstairs and one in the basement. Again, no need to carry. A Shop Vac in the
garage can also corral leaves into a pile. A small hand-held unit does the
carpeted stairs. And a battery-powered Black & Decker Dustbuster in the
kitchen takes care of cereal and toast crumbs.
At her local appliance store recently she spotted a steam vac for deep carpet
cleaning. "We have a puppy and kids. They spill things," she says. "I'm
dreaming of that one."
All of which pleases Clifford Wood. "Looks like another record year," says the
executive vice president of the Vacuum Cleaner Manufacturers Association in
North Canton, Ohio, which tracks sales. This year, he expects 18 million units
to be sold-breaking last year's record of 16.3 million -- in large part because of
such multiple-vacuum homes.
'Commodity Chic'
Studies show that 60% of all U.S. households have two or more full-size
vacuums. Of that, nearly 30% own three or more vacuum cleaners. Mr. Wood
himself has four, which he considers a modest number but still exceeding his
closet space. One upright stands out in the bedroom. But it looks pleasant, he
says.
Companies go to great lengths to make vacuums attractive. "Commodity chic,"
they call it. Hoover has determined, after tracking men's and women's
fashions, interior design and automotive colors, that yellow is becoming very
hip. So it's adding a tint of yellow to its green, which will become more
avocado than teal.
The presence of several vacuums doesn't mean homes today are any cleaner
than they were. Chances are, most people grew up in a very clean house with
only one machine devoid of headlights, bumpers and wind tunnels. Nor, despite
the multiple-vacuum-household phenomenon, is the populace vacuuming more.
On average, Mr. Wood says, people vacuum one hour a week -- far less than
recommended, especially for heavy-traffic areas that should be vacuumed daily
with seven strokes for thorough cleaning, experts say. One hour a week means
52 hours a year. For a six-vacuum household, that translates into roughly nine
hours of annual use per machine.
Since busy people have less time to vacuum, they want to make sure they do
so efficiently. That is where dirt sensors come in, taking all the mystery and
guesswork out of vacuuming. Little lights change colors indicating the floor is
really, really clean. The Hoover Embedded DirtFINDER has a circuit board
programmed to distinguish dirt noise from other noise, like voices, music and
the vacuum's motor. When the sensor hears dirt rushing toward the bag, the
light is red -- i.e., incoming dirt, stay put. When it no longer hears dirt, the light
flashes green, indicating it's safe to proceed to the next spot. The Eureka Dirt
Alert, with ESP (extra suction power), prefers an infrared sensor, which, it
says, is better than microphones because it can detect the very quiet pet hair.
Pets do present a special challenge. Some people will assign one vacuum
strictly for their pet. Mary Kay Binder's son Brad had a pet rat that the science
teacher donated to him after the end of a class experiment. The rat lived in a
cage in the family's Chagrin Falls, Ohio, basement but always managed, as
most rodents do, to flick the cedar-chip bedding from his cage to the floor
surrounding it. She wouldn't use the same vacuum that scooped up the rat
chips for her family-room carpet, for fear of contaminating the rug, although
that runs counter to the whole notion of vacuuming -- to pick up, rather than
deposit.
She has another one for pests, like dust mites, which are notorious for causing
allergies but have done wonders for vacuum-cleaner sales. In recent years,
people have been bombarded with photos of these nasty looking bugs that live
everywhere and drop eggs but are only as big as the period at the end of the
last sentence and cause misery for allergy sufferers. Those concerns prompted
a run on vacuums with high filtration systems. Now many models come with
filters that retain 99.98% of common grass and ragweed pollen, or any
particles down to three-micron size, as well as 100% of dust mites and their
eggs.
"I think for a small industry, we're quite progressive," says the Mr. Wood. "I
say, 'What can they possibly do to improve the product?' and they always
seem to come up with something."
Indeed. Eureka unveiled Robot Vac this year, a round, cordless machine 15
inches in diameter. Put it on the floor, turn it on, and it's off gliding straight
across the room until it senses a table leg and takes a detour. Once it finds a
wall, it hugs the perimeter of the room, completing a 360-degree circuit and
then crisscrosses the room for about an hour before it needs to be recharged.
It hasn't come to market yet.
If it does, the question is whether it will be able to get the meal droppings that
hide in the shadow of table legs. Such remnants continue to elude Malcolm
Koval of Pittsburgh and his eight vacuum cleaners. He has three uprights --
two sturdy older models that he and his wife, Patty, moved from New Jersey
years ago, and a new one with an extra long cord and hose and special HEPA
(high-efficiency particulate air) filters. They have two Dirt Devils for carpeted
stairs, one Dustbuster and two Shop Vacs, one of which he takes to work. Mr.
Koval is a contractor.
None of them, though, seems to be able to get the crumb or dried macaroni
lurking by the table leg. He could bend over to pick it up, but it's the principle.
"I think, 'C'mon you cost me 150 bucks. Get that thing up.' " Still, after far too
many futile swipes, he gets a wet sponge and snatches up the crumb by hand.
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