Living in Cyprus, we don’t have any carpets. Our floors are tiled, and although the first house we lived in had carpets in the bedrooms, the one we bought nine years ago does not have any. So most of our floor cleaning happens with a broom or a mop.
However, we have a biggish rug in our living room which helps the acoustics if we want to watch a DVD or listen to music. And rugs need vacuuming, particularly when the household consists not just of humans but contains three cats, who moult extensively at this time of year. I usually vacuum our soft furniture too, and sometimes, if there are a lot of crumbs on the dining room floor, I might run the vacuum over that - if it’s out - to save an extra brushing.
We had an elderly bag-free cylinder vacuum cleaner, bought when we first moved to Cyprus. It did its job, but I always loathed emptying it as dust would fly everywhere. And it wasn’t all that powerful, either; it would get extremely hot at times. It had an attachment for carpets, but no rigid extending pieces, so it was always a bit awkward to vacuum a carpet.
So when our son moved out and ‘borrowed’ it, we decided to make it a gift to him, and invest in a new vacuum cleaner ourselves. So, nearly seven months ago, we went out on a date to the large local supermarket which has a good selection of appliances upstairs, and were immediately overwhelmed by the possibilities.
OUR REQUIREMENTS
We knew that we wanted another cylinder vacuum cleaner. We have a large drawer in the kitchen where a cylinder cleaner fits nicely, but have nowhere to store anything bigger. Besides, we knew it would only be used for vacuuming furniture and one rug, but I wanted to take it upstairs sometimes and upright vacuum cleaners are usually quite heavy.
We had also decided in advance that we wanted to spend under a hundred euros. That turned out to be easy since the majority of the cylinder style vacuum cleaners in the store were around the seventy euro mark. We had chosen a bagless machine last time because it was so difficult to find replacement bags in Cyprus, but there were plenty of options in the shop this time, and a quick browse of Amazon on my husband’s phone assured us that we could get inexpensive clone bags for any of the available options from the UK.
I vetoed an orange monstrosity, and my husband ruled out a couple of brands he had not heard of. After much discussion we decided to opt for the Bosch BSN1900, which was also called Arriva. The brand is one we trust, and it was quite powerful for its size at 1900 watts, whereas many of the others were 1600 or less. We also felt it was good value since the €70 was, for the week, a discount on the usual €100 which would have put it at the limit of our budget.
There was a standard two-year guarantee which seemed reasonable.
UNPACKING AND PUTTING TOGETHER
We arrived home with the box, which the cats evidently thought was for their benefit. The Bosch Arriva is black: not my favourite colour, but it’s not as if it’s on display. Putting it together was straightforward, and we checked that everything worked. The suction was excellent, but it was not as noisy as our previous vacuum cleaner, and the included bag seemed strong and sturdy.
There are two basic attachments: there’s one for carpets and rugs, with two extendable rigid metal parts so that it can be easily adjusted for people of different heights. They can be pulled apart easily, and fold into smallish pieces that fit tidily into our allocated drawer. There’s also a smaller piece which is for use on furniture, and it’s reversible: the other end of this little piece is a more pointed nozzle for getting into awkward corners.
After trying it out, we checked the instruction manual which is in twenty different languages, thankfully including English. The safety instructions were brief, warning us, among other things, not to allow children to use it unsupervised, not to immerse in water, and not to vacuum animals. We were also warned not to use it to vacuum up rubble on a construction site. Not something it would have occurred to us to do!
The rest of the instructions let us know that we’d put it together correctly, and gave us the correct names for all the parts, should we wish to know what they were (perhaps useful if we need to replace any of them). It also told us how to change the bag, and informed us about the microfilter, something we might not have known about (but have ignored).
THE BOSCH ARRIVA IN USE
Since our purchase, I’ve used this little machine once a week to vacuum the furniture and the rug. I find it much easier to use than our previous one; it’s slightly heavier, but not significantly, and the rigid telescopic pipes (I just checked what they’re called) enable me to grip it at a comfortable height, rather than having to lean over.
The flex is quite long; I usually plug it into an extension cable in any case so that I can use the vacuum cleaner in any of our rooms on one floor without having to re-plug it. It has an automatic re-winder which is activated by giving a slight pull to the wire. The on-off switch is a knob on the top which can be use by hand or by foot, and the suction can be adjusted, although I usually keep it on full power.
Cat hair is easily vacuumed up - from the sofas and rug, not from the cats - and although our rug doesn’t get particularly dirty, it always looks a lot cleaner and brighter after I’ve finished. Perhaps I should vacuum more often to keep it pristine. But I don’t, unless we have mid-week guests of the kind who would notice.
CHANGING THE BAG
It was after I’d been using this machine for about six months that I realised the suction wasn’t as good as it should have been. There’s supposed to be a filter change display which tells me when to change the bag, but I never understand those, so I opened the back and felt the bag. It was, indeed, quite full.
My husband had ordered some ‘K type’ bags from Amazon, which claimed to fit our particular machine, and, indeed, they were a perfect fit. I was pleased to find that on releasing the bag from the vacuum cleaner, it sealed itself so there was no cloud of dust, and I was easily able to dispose of it. Fitting a new bag was a slight fiddle, but then I’m not particularly good with this kind of thing. However, I managed it in the end, without assistance, so I suspect for someone more three-dimensionally aware than I am, it would be easy.
2022 UPDATE
This vacuum cleaner has continued to work well, and has been used (for instance) to vacuum the car, on the stairs, and in awkward corners where brooms don't easily reach, as well as on our rug. We replace the bag about once every six months, which has been adequate, but haven't done anything about the micro-filter. it's now eight years old, which is about the life one expects of an appliance like this nowadays.
However... in the past six or seven months it's had very little use, because earlier in the year we decided to buy a Roomba Robot vacuum cleaner which we run daily. The amount of dirt it lifts, even when the cats are not moulting, is, at times, shocking. The rug looks much cleaner and brighter than it ever did when vacuumed with our Bosch Arriva; perhaps I should have done it daily, but I suspect that the suction just isn't good enough for embedded dirt and cat hairs.
So while I'd still recommend the Bosch (or its update equivalent) for.a budget, small vacuum cleaner that's reliable and easy to use, the Roomba now gets my vote, particularly in a household where there are cats.
No comments:
Post a Comment