Cleaner Format

Cylinder & Canister

'Cylinder' refers to cylinder shaped machines lying horizontally on the round side of the cylinder.
'Canister' type machines have a drum-shaped body sitting on its flat end on the floor (often on wheels).
Cylinder & canister types suck through a hose which is coupled to tools for cleaning.
Cylinder & canister vacs can clean a wide range of surfaces from floor to ceiling
Cylinder & canister vacs are slower & less effective on carpets than upright vacs.
Rotary brushes attached to these hoovers are usually of much lower performance than uprights, and are not usually worth having.

Upright

Upright, traditional 'Hoover' shaped machines are designed for cleaning carpeted floors
They are impractical use for other cleaning tasks
They have brushes and suction at the base
Some old vacs also have beater bars, which cause significant carpet wear
Upright hoovers are not recommended for cleaning tiled floors, as grit stuck in the brushes scratches the glaze.

Combination Vacs

Many uprights nowadays also have hoses for cleaning surfaces other than floors. Thus they can do the job of both upright and cylinder types.

Machine shop vacuums

Vacuums for machine shops are intended for debris removal from power tools, and to a lesser extent ambient air filtering.

They have 2 features for high debris volume:

a 2 bag arrangement where the top bag filters, and the debris then drops into the bottom collection bag.
wide bore hose, enabling use of longer hose runs
Some also have power take off.

Robot Vacs

The robot vac is the most recent type. These clean the floor on their own. There are 3 main machines available today:

Roomba

The Roomba is aimed at home use, and cleans both caprpets and hard floors. It is an effective cleaner, but not as thorough on carpets as a conventional upright cleaner, so occasional conventional cleaning is still needed.

The Roomba is primarily a carpet sweeper with an added very low power vacuum. This compromise is necessary for engineering reasons, but seems to work quite well.

The dust container is very small and can fill quickly.
Roomba is not durable enough to last long term when used daily.
There are different models of Roomba with varying features.
The optional IR beam barrier unit is needed to stop Roomba diving off steps

Trilobite

The Trilobite is a full size robotic cleaner costing 4 figures. It is suitable for commercial & industrial premises.

The random sweeper one

This is a bottom price hard floor sweeper. It uses impregnated cloths for sweeping, which need replacing or cleaning and re-oiling.

The motion is purely random, so a perfect clean is unlikely, but it is able to remove the great majority of loose dirt. It is not able to remove stuck dirt. It is thus useful to extend the times between hand cleans. It is not suitable for carpets.

Others

Various roomba competitors have emerged at prices well below the Roomba, but feedback so far does not indicate their performance to be adequate.

Floor Sweeper

The floor sweeper is not strictly a vacuum cleaner, but is a simple device that does more or less the same job as an upright vac, albeit less well. It is small, light, and much more convenient for small spot cleaning jobs.

Central Vac

While popular in the US, these have never caught on here. They consist of a fixed vacuum unit plus plumbing that feeds the suction to all rooms in the house. The user only need carry a hose & tools, which are plugged in at convenient vacuum sockets.

Motor placement may be chosen to minimise noise. Because motor weight is much less important, larger quieter motors may be used, a larger collection bag can be used, and with a little custom work the output could even be plumbed direct to a compost bin.

Historic Types

There are some strange historic vacs from the early years of vacuum cleaners. This was an era in which many vacs were non-electric, which as you can imagine poses some significant design problems.

One of the wackier ones used a tin cylinder built into the handle, which was pumped up & down vigorously to create the suction. Whether anyone actually managed to do this while manoeuvring it around the floor remains a mystery.

One of the more sucessful designs used a geared flywheel friction type drive. Such machines are capable of reasonable performance if the user is feeling athletic.

Electric vacs built into coffee tables to disguise their functional nature were popular.

Features

Wet & dry

These machines can suck up water. Useful for clearing up water spills, especially from carpet where suction can remove more water than mopping could. Also useful for removing small amounts of water from pipework e.g. when swapping over a valve live on low-pressure systems.

Blow and suck

Blow is useful for:

blowing debris away where suction doesn't work (though obviously messier)
blowing water out of pipework
pressurising pipework to detect leaks
and even for inflating garden toys such as large paddling pools.
clearing leaves outdoors

Power take-off

Mains power socket outlet on the machine for running power tools so that the vacuum switches on when the tool is operated, and switches off (sometimes after a few seconds 'run-on' delay) when the tool is switched off.

Cable retract

Self retracting cable is easier to use than winding flex round pegs. It makes the machine easier to carry. No hands are needed for the cable. It looks neater too.

Onboard Tool Storage

Storage for the machine's hose, rigid tubes, floor tools, nozzles etc is useful (but rarely found). It avoids trips to collect tools left somewhere else, and reduces the incidence of tool loss.

Light Weight

Light weight is useful for extended working times, or where the machine needs to be carried up & down stairs. They are also good for people with mobility problems.. Oreck is famous for its lightweight vacs.

Filter Types

Traditional domestic machines are mostly designed to catch debris in disposable (single-use) or reusable paper, or reusable cloth bags.

'Dyson' type domestic machines and some others have filters which require cleaning or replacing from time to time.

Cloth Bag

A cloth filter eliminates the cost of bags
less likely to clog than paper.
The bag must be emptied, which can be messy.
Performance is middling.
Old cloth filters generally need a thorough clean to restore full suction power.

Paper bag

The bag is disposable, making emptying relatively mess free.
A new paper bag every time means ongoing expense
Paper filters clog very rapidly on building dust.
When paper bags are reused, performance deteriorates significantly.

Cyclone

Cyclones are good for building dust

Some cyclones have additional filters that must be replaced from time to time.

Cyclone vacs with no other filter lose no suction at all due to the filter. In contrast, the back pressure produced by paper & cloth bags is significant, and worsens considerably as the pores clog.

This is partly but not 100% true for cyclones with additional cloth filters, as those filters will give some airflow resistance that increases over time. The presence of the cyclone filter means that much less clogging occurs, but they will still clog eventually.

Dysons have gained a poor reputation for reliability as well as price. Other makes don't generally seem to suffer the same frequent problems.

DIY Cyclone

DIY cyclone filters are easy to make, and can be added to any existing hoover or air filtration system.

http://www.internode.co.uk/cyclone/

http://www.woodcraft.com/articles.aspx?articleid=408

http://codesmiths.com/shed/workshop/techniques/cyclones/

Water

These uncommon vacs use a tub of water to trap the dust.

Presumably the water needs emptying after each use.

Reviews

Earlex WD1000 Combi Vac

Earlex WD1000

Earlex website

PROS:

cheap
blows as well as sucks (useful sometimes)
wet and dry

CONS:

really needs the wet+dry filter (£10 from Wickes)
filter needs cleaning: sometimes tapping or brushing off dust will do, from time to time washing and drying it, especially after sucking up lots of fine dust
mixing wet with fine dust quickly blocks the filter: it is better to empty the canister and remove the filter to sucking up mainly water (flooded floors etc)
when sucking up lots of water it can spit out (often filthy) water from around the motor housing as well as the blow orifice: workarounds are to station the machine outdoors, or putting a dustsheet over it to catch the spray
the filter just pushes onto its housing and can slide down, especially if the cleaner is bumped on the floor, resulting in clouds of dust being blown out of the machine
the filter has a tinplate body which eventually rusts through requiring replacement even if the filter material is still serviceable
no carrying handle
tends to tip over if pulled by the hose
hose just pushes into orifices and can get blown out when fitted to the blow orifice
short mains cable
no cable, hose or tool storage

Available from Screwfix, Wickes and others.

Earlex WD1200P Power Vac