EU bans powerful vacuum cleaners

[bernardgreen]

An EU energy label, to be introduced from 1 September, means manufacturers will not be able to make or import vacuum cleaners with a motor that exceeds 1,600 watts.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/21/anger-as-eu-bans-most-powerful-vacuum-cleaners

 

[footprints]

My wife went away for a few days and the vacuum stopped working till she got back, so my home has done it's bit for the environment this year

All this fuss about eco solutions and they want to build more airport runways to encourage more people to fly and ship in soft fruit from halfway across the world!

Need to use energy to build more houses on green belt, to house the extra people we are shipping in who will drive cars and need infrastructure! Oh dear! Now you have got me started just when I was about to wind down and go sleep

Mutter mutter grumble..................................

 

[fidom]

I bought a new vacuum cleaner about a week ago. It is a Zanussi 1400 watt. That was about the lowest power machine I could find, a lot of them were about 2000 watts. There should be no need for such high powered motors. The old Hoover Junior used about 250 watts and the Senior was about 650 watts maximum. Those were the machines that first popularised vacuum cleaning and they did work well. It does seem crazy to be changing all our light bulbs for low energy or LED ones then use the equivalent of a 2 bar electric fire for sweeping the floor.

 

[footprints]

The fault lies in the design, I have had 2200w vacs that are next to useless the henry on the other hand which is around 1000 is fantastic. The trouble is the size of the actual fan the henry is pretty large but most of the high wattage ones are "compact" with a fan not much bigger than a large hair dryer. The answer is to build the appliance around the maximum size of fan then you will get good performance from an "eco-friendly appliance"

 

[ericmark]

Define a vacuum cleaner? I was told when I called a cleaner a vacuum cleaner it was not a vacuum cleaner but an air volatility cleaner as if you placed a brick under the nozzle with nozzle on the ground it would not suck up the brick. But if you have around 1" gap around bottom of nozzle it would lift the brick.

The air velocity cleaner in question was powered by a diesel engine around 140 kW never mind 1.4 kW and there is no way we can clean our streets with a 1.4 kW motor on a road sweeper.

Clearly there will have to be an exception for industrial units be it a road sweeper or a 3kW barrel type used to remove water and debris before starting a concrete pour. Shops often have ride on units with very wide nozzles to allow fast and efficient cleaning.

So it will be just like the tungsten light bulb you will still be able to buy them but they will have a rough service label.

 

[JohnD]

I can easily lift a brick with my vac, but it won't fit up the nozzle.

 

[ericmark]

The "vacuum cleaner" I referred to would often be called a road sweeper. My point is they come in a huge range of sizes and it would be near impossible to do some of the jobs with a low powered machine.

I used some "Pnewvacs" to suck water out of concrete blocks when pressing them which used a lot of compressed air so did experiment with commercial vacuum cleaner motors instead. These seemed to be a standard size of 1kW and commercial vacuum cleaners have one, two or three of these motors fitted into a unit which fits on a standard drum.

It caused me problems as with 110 volt versions they use more than 16A and with a 20A MCB they will work all day but with a 16A MCB they are forever tripping the MCB. So 110 volt versions are around the 2200 Watt with all tree motors running.

With lower powered units they will not suck up the bits of tie wire always found after the steel fixers have set the rebar.

So there would have to be exceptions for commercial use so it would be like the tungsten light bulb it may mean Tesco stops selling cleaners over the limit but you will still get them.