what frustrates you most about your hoover/hoovering?

[xfabba]

II have been asked to ask you good people this question by my young niece for some homework-related research that I don't fully understand - project about designing a better hoover I think (I have told her James Dyson probably has it all patented anyway but I think it is just an academic exercise).

Mine is just having to do it in the first place really!

[stubbyfingers]

it wakes up babies

[BlueCowWondersSomeMore]

Always makes my back ache (upright, cylinder, whatever) - may be my technique though

Would like one that cleans my blinds properly, not just make the noise and ignores the dirt!

[ShannaraTiger]

Getting it out, filling it up, emptying and trying to clean the drum. Yes we have a h2o hoover. They're fantastic at containing all the dust whilst you're hooveing and cleansup spilt water (even 2 itre jug fulls worth). The drums are just a nightmare to try and scrub out afterwards!

[xfabba]

bump - more horror stories please. I've thought of another one - I have never found one you can clean carpeted stairs with without having to bring it up with you and everything toppling over.

[blossomsmine]

The stair thing, already mentioned, is a nightmare!!!
Also i get annoyed that to get into the edges you have to put the pointy bit on when you have finished hoovering and then go round again.....

[morningpaper]

Crap vaccuum design is where you don't have the tools on-board, or where you have to swap 'heads' and there isn't somewhere on-board to put the other head.

Bagless ones are annoying because all the dust goes into the air in a nuclear mushroom cloud. Likewise bagged cleaners where the bag doesn't have a 'seal' so all the dust puffs out of the hole when you remove it.

Auto-winding cables is ESSENTIAL, no one wants to faff around winding up cables.

My pet hate is when long bits of cotton get wound around the spinning brush part of the head. It takes 20 minutes to unscrew the whole thing and cut all the cottons off. There must be an easier way of dealing with that.

[GossipMonger]

stairs

corners

having to do it in the first place

it is sitting looking at me while I Mumsnet willing me to turn it on and I must.....in a minute.....as DH returns from Amsterdam with the children a bit later and he will think I have done nothing for 5 days.....which is true!!

[BlueCowWondersAboutPancakes]

Good one morningpaper about cotton around brush - those of us with long hair have the problem multiplied a million times. Always have to attack the brushes with long pointy scissors.

[GetOrfMoiLand]

Stupid over complicated Dyson hoover head which, if you try to hoover up bits of paper, get stuck and cannot be removed by mere mortals and reduce the user to a crying heap on the floor.

Surely in this day and age they don't have to be so noisy.

And why are they so heavy. Mine feels as if it is made of lead.

Why can they not be cordless? Surely it is not beyond the realm of man to have a racharging unit, so you don't have to trip all over the place and unplug the damn thing when moving from room to room. They can do it with cars can' they?

I loathe the bright colours. I wish james Dyson had not spent so long poncing about with colour charts and actually designed a lightweight, easy to use hoover.

As you can see I hate hoover. Now live in a house with no carpet anywhere, and now sweep the rooms with a brush like a victorian parlour maid. Much easier.

[GetOrfMoiLand]

And what GossipMonger said

[EustaciaVye]

what everyone else said.

The brushes getting clogged with hair is horrible.

Electical cords not being long enough so you have to keep unplugging from room to room.

The stairs.

[swanriver]

What about inventing a special stair hoover, which sits safely, has fine motor skills and no cord?

[BoffinMum]

The pipe getting kinked.

[TrillianAstra]

The noise.

Hair getting wrapped round the brush.

[purpleflower]

The fact that 5 minutes after I have finished I need to do it again!

[jobschmob]

Everything mentioned plus the fact I bang it into the walls/doorframes all the time whilst navigating corners etc. Would appreciate a cushioned hoover guaranteed not to break bits of the house off as I manoeuvre.

[xfabba]

I have destroyed our skirting boeards doing that - you're right, why cant they make them softer and easier to do round the sides

[StealthPolarBear]

emptying the thing
(it's a dyson)
"Oh you just unclip it and hold it over a bin bag
Do you *(&%$^
Fight to unclip it, hold it over bin bag. Nothing comes out. Take it off at the top as well. DUst all over. Empty cylinder bit. Bang middle bit with hand to dislodge clinging dust. Yank at dust. Pull most of it off. Fight to get the thing back together again. Hoover up the new dust that's now all over.
My next one will have a BAG - luxury!

[EyeballsintheSky]

Stairs, having to move furniture out of the way, rugs, hair.

[fiestabelle]

Dyson Animal - cylinder type. Very annoying as takes abouty 10 minutes to put it all together, and no-where on the hoover to store all the spare heads. Hose gets wound up, also bash skirtings so as someone else said a padded version would be good. A re-chargable one is a FAB idea.

[CamillaDyson]

Not wanting to look like a stalker...I will pass on the Dyson-gripes (and others) back to our engineers.

Any more suggestions will be very helpful!!

BTW - we've made a machine that sits on the stairs called a DC23...but that's enough of my Dyson plugs!!

Thanks,
Camilla (from Dyson)

[ThePellyandMe]

Stairs are a nightmare. I have a dyson ball thingamy which says it reaches the top but only on my stairs if you pull really really hard on the hose.

And the cable is that bit too short so I have to change plugs to do the whole of downstairs[lazy cow emoticon]

Its also really noisy but that works to my advantage as the ds's hate it and disappear when I hoover. My house is really clean during the holidays

[Indith]

Am I the only one that loves her hoover? I have a lovely little Miele. It has bags so no dust all over the bloody carpet after emptying. The packs of bags come with filters included so you don't have to trawl the internet and random shops to try to replace he filters. The cord is really long, i can plug it in in on place on each floor and do the whole floor. It has a nice quiet setting for every day sort of hoovering (well I say every day....more like once a week) but even the uber suck setting isn't too loud. It is black and sleek and wonderful and has all tools onboard. The hose is long enough to do half the stairs without having to balance the machine itself on the stairs so you can do half from upstairs and half from downstairs. Oh and my hair is almost to the small of my back yet I have not yet had any hair winding round the brush issues.

I think I'm still in hoover heaven having finally bought one after living with whatever the landlord had provided for years. Crap heavy things that were invariably bagless and didn't so much as suck up a crumb.

My big bugbear is washable filters. They don't bloody well work! Oh yes nice idea, never have to repalce it just rinse it out and pop it back in. The fecking things take ages to dry, you can't peg them as it squashes the bit where the peg is so they fall down the back of the radiator for your toddler to retrieve before you notice and lose for a few days then you put them back (slightly damp because your toddler redecorated the living room with cake) and the clog right back up again. And don't even get me started on washable bags....

[WouldYouCouldYouWithAGoat]

mine created a perfectly formed dust turd the other day took alot of fiddling with a coat hanger to removed. i had been hoovering up after striping dd's walls so some paper had got stuck and the dust gathered round it. a bit like an oyster and a pearl but not so aesthetically pleasing.

so some way of declogging would be good.