1600 W maximum on vacuum cleaners from from Sept!

[Zak33]

Nuff winding people / each other up dudes

I'm angry enough about silly laws on how hard my cleaner can suck without having to ban people for twanging each others bra straps

Right.....over clocked vacuum cleaner = clever

But KERS style recharge is genius!

Cleaner uses 1200W constant for motor and 400W into battery....

Hit the boost button and the voltage increases by lots for 15 minutes

The thing is...the motor would therfore be above 1600 watt potential

Dyson...poor sod is right too.....no bag in my two Dysons.....hand wash filters every 6 months in cold water and hang to dry

Both are over 12 years old and both suck....in a great way!

[Noxvayl]

But does the banning of the vacuums cover potential energy use or energy draw from the wall?

It is all well and good to come up with awesome ways to get around this law but you don't want to get it wrong before you begin production of your newly overclocked vacuum.

I must say that I love the idea though, sounds awesome

[peterb]

Nip over to France and buy one - the French Government seems able to ignore many EU directives with impunity!

[Noxvayl]

Sounds like I should be living in a French mountain rather than in Surrey...

[DanceswithUnix]

Did some more background reading this morning. So this has been brewing for years, and originally the EU was going to limit to 500W or 750W depending on type of cleaner. So they have backed off a bit.

The quote from Which? magazine that 5 of their top 7 reviewed models are banned plus their quote of:

Early indications showed “manufacturers that traditionally don’t do well in our tests have had ‘A’ ratings across the board” in the new self-regulated EU labels “while those that consistently do well haven’t scored as highly”.

Don't exactly fill me with confidence.

Thankfully my old Dyson DC04 while something like 15 years old is still going strong, and if it fails I would probably get a modern equivalent which seems to already be under the 900W limit. And yes, the 1600W limit is getting headlines atm but I have been in engineering long enough that I can't see anyone designing a 1600W model when they know it will also get banned in just 3 years. That just isn't long enough to make back any significant design costs. So any real engineering effort will go into the <900W designs.

A quick look on the Currys website, they seem to have a few half price 2KW+ models atm.

Edit to add: If it is 900W in airwatts, then I'm in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airwatt (looks like my old Dyson is 230 Airwatts).

[Leftfield_2k2]

I think it's a good idea, it encourages manufacture to engineer better and not simply rely on brute force/power.

It's a bit like the new F1 :-)

[ik9000]

I think it's a good idea, it encourages manufacture to engineer better and not simply rely on brute force/power.

It's a bit like the new F1 :-)

Except it doesn't. They are engineered very well. Restricting energy to lower power motors does not somehow make engineers able to rewrite the laws of physics and create better for less power. If it were that simple they would already have done so. Believe it or not engineers tend to default to "how can we best do this". It's the bean counters who usually ask for compromises. They higher end brands who aren't worried about being bargain bucket to get their sales have released products that get the best ratings (See Which et al) and have produced some fine pieces of engineering. They will have scoured the available motors to look at torque-load curves, efficiencies, durability (Miele offer 5 year warranties quite regularly with free vouchers at point of sale), tweaked the performance to get the best performance, refining it over time. Their supply line will be optimised to provide motors to their exact requirements. And so the EU decides to crap all over it, and affect everyone involved, the motor manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and vacuum manufacturers, and ultimately the consumer

The question becomes, how do you generate equivalent suction for less power? It depends on generation of negative pressure through the expulsion of air driven by the fan... So we have two key variables, the size (and number) of the fan blades, and the speed of rotation. The bigger the fan blades the greater the inertia, and the greater the energy required to get them moving. The faster the desired speed obviously the more power is needed to turn them. In what way could they improve efficiency with this power cap? Not with the fans (and therefore the motors) I think. Unless the motors are horribly wasteful of energy to begin with, which I very much doubt.

I imagine the quick fix is to reduce the size of the bag, so it can't get as full (and therefore needs less power to suck the air through the cumulative dirt), with the spin-off of people paying more for the bags (less efficient use of material), and having to buy more of them. Alternatively they could make the bags more porous, so worse at collecting pollen etc, so actual cleaning gets worse in the name of saving energy through needing less suction. People then end up doing more cleaning, or suffering more from allergies than they would otherwise need to. Or they could simply ditch the filters that have appeared in the last 10 years, and are a welcome addition IMO.

It will be interesting to see how manufacturers rise to the challenge, but I shan't expect wonders. It's not like the US car industry languishing at 23mpg and saying it's the best we can do despite clear evidence to the contrary.

And what really gets me is why this law is even necessary. The problem is we need to build power stations that don't pump out CO2 but proven to produce enough supply even for peak times. (i.e. nuclear) JFDI governments instead of this useless twaddle.

Oh and as for it being like F1 - well how much R&D does the average F1 team spend EVERY SEASON? Think how much R&D the vacuum manufacturers and their designers, suppliers et al are now going to have to spend, and the cost of re-tooling, etc. Who do you think is going to foot the bill for all this? It won't be the governments, or the EU will it? No. It will be us, the consumers. Way to go EU. Thanks a bunch.

[Top_gun]

I think it's a good idea, it encourages manufacture to engineer better and not simply rely on brute force/power.

It's a bit like the new F1 :-)

You're absolutely right, this video shows briefly how the Miele engineers have produced a lower powered 1200 watts vacuum cleaner without sacrificing cleaning power. Oh, the Miele Ecoline S8 is a Which magazine best buy model too.

[peterb]

ny vacuum cleaner that uses collection bags as part of the filtration bag is going to loose efficiency very quickly as the pores of the bag glog up - so if there is less suction, the vacuum will pump a smaller volume of air, so to get a decent flow of air (which is what carries the dust away) the area of application will be smaller. Volume of air is proportional to pressure difference and velocity).

So the efficiency of a bag vacuum is going to decrease over time anyway as the pores of the bag get cloggedn

So if you are using a lower power cleaner (900 watts as opposed to say - 1800 Watts) either the air flow will reduce, so it will take longer to do the job, or the size of the cleaning head will reduce, so it will take longer to do the job, or the bag will have to be changed more often.

So if it takes 6 minutes to clean a carpet using an 1800 W machine, that will be 180Wh of energy

But if it takes 12 minutes using a 900 W machine, it will use the same amount of energy, and waste time.

Now it might not take twice as long, but the bag might need changing more often - and there are energy costs associated with making the bags - so any energy savings will be reduced by that factor.

There may be ways to improve the conversion efficiency of the motors, although induction motors are fairly efficient (about 90%) anyway, but there my be improvements to be made in design. Lower suction might work with a better powered brush design (for an upright) for example.

So the only real way to make a more efficient machine overall is to do away with the bag, which is the way Dyson has gone.

I have just been looking at my Dyson - its power consumption is 1400 watts, so should that fail, I'll be looking to repair rather than replace (which is energy efficient in itself) as it works extremely well.

This directive has all the hallmarks of "being seen to be doing something" rather than a measured "do something really useful".

However, I see the sun has come out, and as my solar_PV_installation is generating considerably more than 1400 Watts, I'll go and do some really energy efficient vacuum cleaning.

[DanceswithUnix]

You're absolutely right, this video shows briefly how the Miele engineers have produced a lower powered 1200 watts vacuum cleaner without sacrificing cleaning power. Oh, the Miele Ecoline S8 is a Which magazine best buy model too.

So they made a new head, which looks really really narrow. That makes sense, halve the available suction, you need to halve the area of aperture that you are sucking through to get the same cleaning performance. The rest of the "information" in that video is marketing tripe and content free.

Now... If you halve the width of the head then you are going to have to double the number of stripes across a given carpet to clean it. Thanks EU, now I can enjoy vacuuming for twice as long, hooray!

Why do they still make cleaners with bags? Or possibly a better question, why do people still buy them?

[ik9000]

Why do they still make cleaners with bags? Or possibly a better question, why do people still buy them?

because it is easier to empty the things without making a dust cloud an the associated asthma attack that goes with it?

[watercooled]

You're absolutely right, this video shows briefly how the Miele engineers have produced a lower powered 1200 watts vacuum cleaner without sacrificing cleaning power. Oh, the Miele Ecoline S8 is a Which magazine best buy model too.

Advertisement snip

Because the manufacturers marketing material is the best source for reliable, impartial advice...

I think the F1 is an ironically good argument for the contrary - they spend *massive* amounts of money and end up with powerpacks which are built to such fine tolerance they need a team of engineers to keep them running for a few hours, and need to be kept warm through an external heating system so as to not seize. Not everyone has a few grand spare to waste on a greenwashed product and hire someone to keep adjusting things and replace parts when they wear out or get destroyed or use the system slightly outside of design specs...

And again, this is all sidestepping the argument of why the upper limit ban is necessary here - there is no reason, if by some magic there is room for huge improvement over what's already on the market, why higher power models cannot be made equally or more efficient, as others keep saying over and over. The efficiency push isn't the bit people have a problem with, provided it's not an excuse to rip people off, end up with inferior build quality/materials to offset the added cost, and that there is a provable saving OFC.

[Macman]

This is crazy.

What's next!! Who thinks up these rules, honestly!

[ik9000]

This is crazy.

What's next!! Who thinks up these rules, honestly!

Next it will be kettles. Max 250w. Then hairdryers. Max 60w Don't even mention microwave ovens. 10w will be sufficient right?

[Noxvayl]

Next it will be kettles. Max 250w. Then hairdryers. Max 60w Don't even mention microwave ovens. 10w will be sufficient right?

Less power is always better, because environment. - Anti-American (EU) argument

__________________________________________________________________________________________________


I find it so annoying that middle ground is ignored in these things. It is hardly ever the case that bigger is better or that less power use is better. It is almost always a combination of factors far more varied than those two options, and sometimes (only sometimes) will those two factors be considered beneficial to the application in question.

We already have more efficient vacuums available which begs the question: why make a law about power use now? It has already been made invalid by available products on the market and all it does is make some less than perfect products illegal. Better ways to tackle the insignificant problem have already been suggested. Going further it would be more beneficial for the economy, and everyone, if electricity production was significantly improved; like constructing thorium nuclear reactors that are disaster proof by the way in which the technology works; using thorium to replace old, inefficient, coal and gas power stations would be far more helpful than reducing appliances power usage.

This topic keeps coming back to the reasoning required to justify a ban on appliances using lots of electricity. I am finding it harder and harder to agree with the ban the more information and thinking is applied to the actual problem trying to be addressed; far better solutions exist for both the specific industry in question and the wider economy which seem to be unknown to the people making the decision.

[scaryjim]

... constructing thorium nuclear reactors that are disaster proof by the way in which the technology works ....

Repeat after me: "The main difference between something which probably won't go wrong, and something that absolutely can't go wrong, is that when the latter inevitably does go wrong, it is almost always completely impossible to fix"

As to vacuum cleaners, I think a peak power draw ban is probably sensible, because there is after all only so much suction you need to clean a carpet. I know several people have knocked the Henry but both me and the step-son have found it eminently capable of the task it is asked to do, at only 600W. I'm not saying everyone should get a Henry (tbh, if I could've found one locally I'd've bought the backpack vacuum numatic also make which is just too cool for words ), but it's obviously possible to create a good vacuum cleaner with a 600W motor, so why not put a cap on motor power? There's a hard limit on how efficiently you can vacuum that is determined not by the design of the vacuum cleaner but by how quickly people can push it around the house: giving my Henry twice the suction wouldn't mean I vacuum twice as quickly because I physically couldn't push it round the house twice as quickly. So you'll very quickly get in to a diminishing returns siutation; sure the vacuum cleaner is sucking twice as hard, but you're only getting a 5% boost in efficiency because it's spending most of the time sucking at an already clean piece of carpet. As with many tasks, one strongly suspects that the power of the vacuum cleaner isn't the primary deciding factor in how quickly one finishes vacuuming.