High wattage vacumn cleaners to become obsolete in Ireland?!

rustyzip

Was listening to the radio this AM and heard something about vacuums over 1600 being banned by European law. Anyone know anything about this?!

byte

Yeah, that's true alright.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/21/anger-as-eu-bans-most-powerful-vacuum-cleaners

What's even more crazy, is that EU want vacs to be no more than 900W by 2017, which seems even more ludicrous!

Some existing vacs already comply, like Henry, or Nilfisk GS90, Dyson, etc. It'll be interesting to see what the popular Miele will come up with, to replace their very popular vacs of 2000W and up.

I have a central vac system and the unit is 1200w and gives more than enough suction. I assume that these regulations are only for ordinary domestic units as opposed to specialised industrial/professional ones.

coylemj

Deleted User wrote: »

I have a central vac system and the unit is 1200w and gives more than enough suction. I assume that these regulations are only for ordinary domestic units as opposed to specialised industrial/professional ones.

There isn't really anything they can do about centralised systems since they vary based on the acreage being covered and anyway the pump is a separate unit that you could replace with a jet engine if you choose to.

SpaceTime

I've cross-posted this from another thread, it raises some very good points about the vacuum cleaner power issue.

SpaceTime wrote: »

PS: Totally off topic but, beware of British tabloids and their reading of EU directives.

What the EU is doing is simply breaking the marketing link between input wattage and perception of performance. The labelling will measure the suction and dust collecting capabilities of vacuum cleaners i.e. what they do rather than the power input in Watts (how much electricity they use). They did pretty extensive research and actually show that a significant % of low-end machines use 2000W+ yet perform quite poorly. Basically you're usually paying for a badly designed, faster rotating, smaller fan and a noisy DC motor. If you look at the performance of some of the eco-orietnted models from higher end brands, they pull through more air per watt used through better fan blade design, and better filtration design. Basically, they're trying to ditch the era of €50 vacuum cleaners that use 2kW, make loads of noise and don't actually do much in terms of sucking up dust.

Cutting down to 900W in 2017 is probably totally unrealistic though. 1600W is sensible enough.

Bear in mind that the Nilfisks of the 1980s only used 700W and could still lift up the carpet they were so powerful. It's all about filter design, fan design and airflow. The easy way to achieve high suction is to just jam in an over-rated noisy motor. The clever way is to design your filters and suction systems right.

No Dyson for example breeches the 1600W limit (already).
900W is taking the ... though. They'll probably have to drop that idea as the manufacturers and a lot of other people are up in arms about it.

The labelling makes sense, but the arbitrary wattage limit doesn't really. They should give the info and let the customers decide.

I have to agree on the highlighted point as my system is 1200w and is more than adequate for the job.

SpaceTime

Just spotted your move there.

Have an actual read of the directive implementation.

I think the 900W is a bridge too far but the rest of what they're doing seems sensible.

I recently bought a 2000W cheapo supermarket own brand vacuum in France for 38.00

To say it was totally useless would be an understatement!

Noisy, smelt of burning plastics and wouldn't suck up very much and also had useless hoses.

It did clean an apartment once though.

ted1

byte wrote: »

Yeah, that's true alright.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/21/anger-as-eu-bans-most-powerful-vacuum-cleaners

What's even more crazy, is that EU want vacs to be no more than 900W by 2017, which seems even more ludicrous!

Some existing vacs already comply, like Henry, or Nilfisk GS90, Dyson, etc. It'll be interesting to see what the popular Miele will come up with, to replace their very popular vacs of 2000W and up.

A watt is no reflection on the appliance to carry out the task. Designers must look at getting more efficent designs with better suction per watt.

A 8w led lamp produces the same luminance as a 100w. What's crazy about banning inefficient appliances

SpaceTime

There's very little you can do with electric motors generally but the suction is lost through things like badly designed filters, you can add high filtration to meet HEPA requirements the easy way which massively reduces airflow so you then put in a huge motor to compensate.

You can also have bad fan designs and you can have leaky tubes and all sorts of stuff.

ted1

SpaceTime wrote: »

There's very little you can do with electric motors generally but the suction is lost through things like badly designed filters, you can add high filtration to meet HEPA requirements the easy way which massively reduces airflow so you then put in a huge motor to compensate.

You can also have bad fan designs and you can have leaky tubes and all sorts of stuff.

It's how you use the motor. Plenty of ways the control air flow, look at the Venturi effect or Dysons cyclon its time to innovate.

SpaceTime

They're also rating reliability to reduce the volume of appliances going to landfill.

They think that because manufacturing costs in low labour cost markets are so low that almost disposable appliances with short lifespans are being produced.

They do damage by increasing volumes of electrical rubbish to be disposed of and polluting the environment and wasting finite resources at point of production.

Also flooding the market with ultra cheap junk tends to do serious damage to decent manufacturers.

ted1

SpaceTime wrote: »

They're also rating reliability to reduce the volume of appliances going to landfill.

They think that because manufacturing costs in low labour cost markets are so low that almost disposable appliances with short lifespans are being produced.

They do damage by increasing volumes of electrical rubbish to be disposed of and polluting the environment and wasting finite resources at point of production.

Also flooding the market with ultra cheap junk tends to do serious damage to decent manufacturers.

What has cheap junk got to do with it? Prices will go up as innovation increases.

ted1

ted1 wrote: »

What has cheap junk got to do with it? Prices will go up as innovation increases.

Generally, the opposite is true.
Most stuff made these days is much more sophisticated and complex, does more stuff more efficiently and is cheaper than its predecessor.

At the cheapest end of the market, the quality of the materials used appear to be deliberately chosen to ensure a short lived product.

But stuff that's been designed to last a good few years, usually does.

rustyzip

I'm going to buy a Miele today! The one with the pet technology, it's 2200w

coylemj

It's pretty ludicrous because in the case of vacuum cleaners and hair dryers, it just means that the lower power motor will have to work for longer to achieve the same effect and at the end of the day the same amount of energy will be consumed.

It will be grist to the mill for the eurosceptics in the UK who are pressing for an 'In/Out' referendum on membership of the EU.

Faceless bureaucrats in Brussels deciding what power hoover you can use in your own home - can see the Daily Mail going to town on it.

SpaceTime

It actually doesn't mean it will take longer. Many vacuums already fully comply and even exceed the requirements : all the major British brands Dysons, Henry (850Watts) etc are already super efficient.

Vacuum cleaners are actually not all about motor wattage. There's a lot of issues with filtration. For example, one of the major problems is that people are looking for HEPA filtration which requires heavy filters. To do that and still have good airflow, you need a fairly high tech filter. if you just use a big lump of foam, you overcome that with a huge motor wasting energy pushing against the filter.

There's also a lot of issues with fan blades designs.

However, from the EU's point of view its a fairly bizzare target to attack. Try making something that actually uses vast amounts of fuel more efficient like heating and cooling buildings.

They've just scored a huge own goal with what seems to be a very minor technical regulation.