Europe Sucks

I was doing a few odd DIY jobs at my mother-in-laws last weekend and after fixing her spare bed I wanted to clear up the dust and wood chippings before putting the bed back in place. Unfortunately, her Hoover vacuum cleaner (a 1900W cylinder unit) refused to work. It made lots of noise and seemed to get very hot but it had absolutely no effect on the dust. I had a look inside and noticed that the filter was quite blocked. To clear this I tried to use her cheap, bought-from-Tesco, bagless vacuum (rated at 1700w).This didn’t suck any of the dust up and I only just managed to dispose of the fluff down it when I picked it out with tweezers and dropped it in the hose. In the end, I brought my old Henry vacuum round (rated at 1200w or 600w depending on the setting) and cleared the whole mess up in a few moments. Thus I laid bare one of the great annoyances of modern life. Vacuum cleaners that don’t suck (or at least they “suck” but only in the “not working” informal American sense of the word).

There have been plans afoot for a while to introduce minimum standards for vacuum cleaners via European wide regulations. This involves an efficiency label in a similar manner to those applied to washing machines, refrigerators and the like. This should make life much easier for the consumer as it will be easier to see how effective particular items are before they are purchased and it should also push the manufacturers into making more efficient and reliable appliances. Except this is not how it is being reported and has been causing an almighty stooshie, not only amongst the usual frothing-at-the-mouth Europhobes but also via Which? magazine who have been spreading misinformation and causing panic buying of vacuum cleaners that don’t meet the new regulations. In short, they have fallen foul of the manufacturers’ ploy of conflating power with effectiveness as far as vacuum cleaners are concerned.

The problem with this is that the power of the motor will only make any real difference if the design of the rest of the vacuum actually works – and hence why my old Henry can outperform my mother-in-law’s lackadaisical Hoover at a third of the wattage. Since some manufactures have opted to up the wattage of their cleaners to overcome the poor performance and then passed this off as being more effective, others have had to follow suit in an arms war of watts. The EU regulation aims to put a stop to this and to prevent ineffective, inefficient cleaners ever reaching our shops. The problem with the Europhobe right-wing press and, seemingly, Which? is that they don’t appear to have read the regulations. I have. It’s actually rather hard going as it is aimed at the manufacturers rather than the consumer (units are the rather obscure dpu – dust pick up) but the key areas as listed in Annex I are:

 

From 1st September 2014 vacuum cleaners manufactured or imported must have:

• a carpet pickup rate greater than 0.7 dpu
• a hard floor pickup rate greater than 0.95
• an input power less than 1600w
• estimated energy consumption of less than 62 kWh/year 

In short, this means that they are regulating the effectiveness of the cleaner. If the manufacturers are going to sell a vacuum it must meet at least a minimum standard of effectiveness and without just sticking a Cessna light aircraft engine on the back of it to try and compensate for the poor airflow. However it gets better:

From 1st September 2017 vacuum cleaners manufactured or imported must have:

• a carpet pickup rate greater than 0.75 dpu
• a hard floor pickup rate greater than 0.98
• an input power less than 900w
• estimated energy consumption of less than 43 kWh/year 
• dust readmission must be less than 1%
• the sound produced must be less than 80 dB
• the hose must be durable for at least 40,000 oscillations under strain
• the operational life of the motor must be greater than 500 hours

So not only must they work better and use less power but they must be durable as well. In short, a vacuum cleaner must be fit for purpose. This is good for the consumer in 3 years’ time but what is useful at the moment is that information on how effective cleaners are must be provided on an efficiency label so that the carpet cleaning, hard-floor cleaning and dust readmission are rated on a scale of A-G. The energy efficiency and noise levels are also provided. I can see some problems with this (in a similar way to how car manufacturers frig their fuel consumption levels) and it is not entirely clear how this will be policed but I can, at least, see that this is a good thing for the consumer and it might just prevent my mother-in-law from purchasing yet another waste-of-space domestic appliance.

Of course this doesn’t stop the mindless British press ranting on about how this impinges on the British sovereign right to have crap appliances and pay a fortune in electric bills but then I’d rather keep the cash and not have to live in a pig sty. Maybe it’s just me?