Vax Carpet shampooer is not sucking up water.

[frustrated4512]

This topic has been raised before, but I was advised by Mumsnet to start a fresh thread. My Vax Powermax has not been sucking up the dirty water. I looked up the Vax troubleshooter. Its most useful advice is to take off the dirty water tank, turn on the motor and check the hole by the motor to see if it is sucking. It was blowing rather than sucking. Getting competent advice from the Vax Chat on troubleshooter, was a waste of time. The staff could not offer an explanation of the fault or how it could be rectified, except to buy another machine. The model does not have any hand attachments nor a switch to reverse the motor direction. Can anyone help?

Thank you to all who posted comments on how to fix a water tank on a vax carpet cleaner that was not allowing water to flow through.
Managed to clean the hole that was not allowing this to happen, and the water flows through perfectly.

Hello. What was the resolve for this issue. I am having the exact same problem. My dirty water tank is not filling and my carpet is soaking!

No answers on how to get Vax to suck ? Same problem here, got wet carpet and vax doesn’t suck ?? Anyone know how to fix it ?

Did any of the above posters find a solution to this, I’m in the same position, it’s not sucking up the water 🙈!

Yes, I found two factors which was causing my Vax to not suck up water from the carpet. The 1st problem was that my dirty water container wasn't secured properly meaning air was escaping and stopping the machine collecting the water, I simply pushed the container down firmly and secured it in place with the clips ensuring it was sealed. The second issue I found was that in my Vax model the filter in the dirty water container is supposed to be able to move freely and it wasn't. Mine is bright yellow, other models may be different, when I was turning the machine on I noticed it wasn't moving, I cleaned the spongey mesh around the filter and checked that the yellow stopper part could move up and down in it's chamber freely then tried the Vax again and sure enough it was working. I hope this helps.