HEPA Vacuum Cleaners For Allergy Sufferers
Choosing
a Hepa Vacuum Cleaner? Complete buyers guide to the features you should
consider.
by Mercia
Tapping
A
vacuum
cleaner can be a healthy way to clean up dust, dirt and allergens. By
using the hand tools, you can remove all the dust with a vacuum
cleaner from all hard surfaces, upholstery and furniture. In
fact, we recommend frequent vacuuming as your first line of defense. The
trouble with most vacuum cleaners is that they are not completely
sealed, and the filters are poor, so when you vacuum, you end up
inhaling all sorts of dust which is getting exhausted from the machine
into the air. In addition, the vacuum cleaner needs to be powerful
enough to suck up all the particulates.
How
a vacuum cleaner works
Most people use a vacuum
cleaner on average one hour per week. Incidentally, when vacuum
cleaner manufacturers talk about the life of a HEPA filter, they
are basing it on one hour of weekly usage. A vacuum cleaner usually
works by having a power head attachment to a canister or integrated
into an upright, which has some rotating brushes, which
first of all loosens up the dirt on the carpet. At the same time,
the vacuum cleaner contains a strong fan, which sucks in the loosened
debris into a special multi-layer filter bag and exhausts the air,
which first passes through a HEPA filter before entering the air
in the room. What most people do not realize, is in order to get
a carpet really clean, you should not just pass the vacuum cleaner
once or twice over the target area, but in fact as many as eight
times, which is why we recommend highly machines with a dirt alert.
A dirt alert will signal you when the vacuum cleaner is no longer
pulling dirt out of a carpet or other surface. If the vacuum cleaner
is not completely sealed, or all particulates sucked into a HEPA
filter, such as in Miele vacuum cleaners, then a delightful allergic
mixture of dust-mite allergens, cat allergen, household dust, pollen
fragments, mold spores are blown back into your face where you inhale
it. For this reason, many asthma and allergy sufferers are
advised to have someone else do the vacuuming for them.
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For
those of us who do not have that luxury or dislike wearing a facemask, a
good HEPA vacuum cleaner is a necessity. Interestingly enough, you should
only half fill a vacuum
cleaner bag, because as the vacuum cleaner bag fills up there is no
longer so much air flow, and hence the vacuum cleaner loses its suction
capacity. Both the Eureka Oxygen3 and Miele vacuum cleaners have a mechanism,
which automatically closes the bag completely when you need to change the
vacuum cleaner bag. Thus you do not breathe in dust when you change the
bag. With a bagless vacuum cleaner, like the Eureka Sanitaire SC5845, the suction power is not decreased as the collection bin gets full .The problem with bagless vacuum cleaners is that they are very awkward to empty for an allergy sufferer who has to endure a completely unsealed container of dust and allergens when they empty it. So although a bagless vacuum cleaner completely eliminates the need for vacuum bags, we do not recommend them for allergy sufferers, unless someone else does the vacuuming for them.
What is HEPA?
The "HEPA" in HEPA filter stands for "High Efficiency
Particulate Arresting". These vacuum
cleaner filters are made out of a media such as fiberglass, bonded together
by a synthetic resin and the construction is so tight that almost all the
tiny particulates up to .3 microns get trapped permanently in the filter.
HEPA filters were first designed by the Atomic Energy Commission in World
War Two for trapping plutonium particles. Since the HEPA media is very dense,
HEPA filters need heavy-duty fans to move the air through them. Pollen,
one of the largest particulates at 10 microns, is easy to filter. Cat allergen
is much smaller. Since there are true HEPA filters and "HEPA like" filters,
you need to be sure that as an allergy sufferer, the filter you are buying
will really do the job you want. Miele vacuum cleaners offer a "certified
HEPA filter" to assure its customers that they are getting a high efficiency
filter. We believe that a HEPA vacuum cleaner is an essential part of any
allergy sufferer's campaign to reduce the number of allergens in their home.
Canister or upright vacuum cleaner?
There are two main types of portable vacuum cleaners - canisters
and upright
vacuums . Each type of vacuum cleaner has its advocates. Quite frankly,
we think that most uprights are heavy, difficult to maneuver, and almost
impossible to lie flat to get under furniture. What's more, an upright often
does not have tools on board, or only has a very short hose at the back
to which you can attach tools. The long and short of it is you have to torture
an upright to use hand tools and in torturing it, it often keels over. Therefore,
after having been brought up with upright vacuum cleaners we are now canister
vacuum converts. Why? They are lighter, easier to maneuver and have their tools on board.
Our observation is that if the tools are not on board you will never you
use them- and you SHOULD use them. In recent years, many canister vacuums
(Eureka Oxygen and Miele models) now include improved storage design features
such as a "wand parking system", ergonomic carrying handle, and
the canister can be easily stored in a stable upright position.
Central
Vacuums
With a built
in vacuum cleaner there is no possibility that allergens can be exhausted
back into the room, making it unequivocally the vacuum cleaning method
of choice for an allergy sufferer. Since they are stationary they often
have more powerful motors than portable vacuum cleaners. Dirt is either
collected in a container usually located in a garage or basement, or exhausted
directly outside a house. The connection hoses for central
vacuums have become lighter and easier to manipulate in recent years.
However, the biggest disadvantage of central vacuums is they do not have
any onboard tools and you need to carry them separately.They are also more costly initially to install, requiring
at least a half day of professional installer time. In addition, despite
design improvements many people find a 30 foot hose awkward to carry around.
As with all product choices, there are tradeoffs to be considered.
| Our Range of HEPA Vacuum Cleaners |
| We offer an excellent selection of hepa vacuum cleaners and we have rated each one. If you only have a studio apartment the Eureka Sanitaire 3683 Canister Vacuum could be all you need. On the other hand, if you want the best, the Miele Capricorn vacuum cleaners are our category winner and favorite. The new Miele S5 series are packed with user friendly features and designed using the most up to date vacuum technology. The Eureka Sanitaire SystemPro canisters along with the Electrolux Harmony and Oxygen3 canister vacuum cleaners are also interesting with their washable hepa filters. View all HEPA vacuum cleaners . |
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