Help &
Advice

Vacuuming of carpets.

When I was studying furnishings at the College for the Distributive Trades in London over 40 years ago, someone asked the floor covering lecturer what was the best vacuum. His reply was very telling.

"It is more than my job's worth to mention a brand name," he said, "but lets just say that anything that beats as it sweeps as it cleans is knocking the living daylights out of the carpet."

The student went on to challenge the lecturer. "But people have always beaten carpets, since long before vacuums were invented."

"0h yes," said the lecturer, "but they always beat them from the back, never the front." The reason that carpets were beaten from the back was that it knocked the dirt, dust and grit out.

Whilst dust tends to sit near the top of the carpet pile, grit tends to get right to the bottom, the very roots. A vacuuming system that beats and hammers the carpet pile down onto the hard grit is unlikely to be doing any good to the carpet and could well be damaging the pile.

The drums that do the beating have raised beater bars alternating with brushes to vigorously brush the pile while the vacuum tries to suck up the dirt.

Now static electricity makes things cling. Have you ever had a problem trying to throw away a bit of plastic wrapping that has become statically charged? You pull it off one hand and it sticks to the other. Have you ever stuck balloons to the ceiling at Christmas by brushing them on your clothes? Brushing vigorously creates powerful static and in the case of a vacuum at the one moment that it is least wanted, when you are trying to get the bits off.