Mrs CB wants a vacuum cleaner. Before we fork out the Baht, just a question for those who already have one...

I was wondering whether a vaccum cleaner is really more suited to carpeted floors & rugs. As everyone reading this would know, vacuum cleaners are generally not popular with the Thais. With this fine dust landing on either tiles or vinyl flooring, does the static stop the vacuum from lifting it (thus necessitating follow-up mopping anyway)?

Or do you just need a quite powerful vacuum to overcome this. Any particular brand and power level that folks here find reliable and effective?

Thanks

- CB

I use the vaccum cleaner (Hoover) because I'm lazy but I must admit that my GF does a much better job with a 10 baht broom. Anyways, whatever we use, we always mop afterwards. It's complementary.

Buying a vacuum cleaner isn't at the top of my "want" list and I'm a small appliance junkie. The staff at of the third floor of Central KSK all snap to attention when I enter because they know I'm there to buy yet another small appliance.

I just don't see much need to have a vacuum with a tile floor. With all this dusty weather, I run the feather duster over the furniture and then dustmop the floor every day. If someone walked on the floor in their bare feet (leaving footprints on the shiny surface), I follow up with a clean head on the dustmop and liberal application of the Mr. Muscle glass cleaner. It does a great job on shiny tile floors.

Our maid visits weekly and she brings her vacuum cleaner. I've watched her vacuuming and noted all the dust coming out of the back of the machine, all over the furniture she just dusted. Once, the handle came apart and dropped on the floor. The impact released a major cloud of dust. After using the vacuum, she always damp mops the tile floors.

This weekend I felt the lack of a vacuum cleaner for the first time. A swarm of winged termites emerged in unison. (It's a rental condo and the landlord knows about the termite problem but is in denial.) By the time we'd turned off all the lights in our unit and herded the termites to the light in the hall, we had a healthy crop of dead termites or wing-less termites on the floor and furniture. A vacuum cleaner would have made clean-up easier.

Incidentally, they have a great selection of vacuum cleaners on the third floor of KSK Central.

We use a Cylinder vacuum cleaner it does not require bags just dump and clean the container. It works well on tile floors as well as the area rugs we have in the house. I also use it to vacuum my cars and it does a fine job. I don't recall how much we paid for it but it is upper end quality, for Thailand that is, I seem to recall it was about 3,500฿ and we bought it at Index.

Vacuum, or Broom?

I put this vexing query to Mrs T who declared with a finality verging on the Word of God:

"Vacuum cleaners are for wimps; REAL women use brooms. Now get away from that computer and go sweep the bedrooms."

Curse you, OP (waves fist in air); why couldn't you have left me alone?

(Trudges upstairs, broom in hand)

Get a maid and stop worrying about mopping vs vacuuming.

The only reason we own a vacuum cleaner is for the cars, or when we break a glass on the floor.

Most of the vacuum cleaners I've seen and owned, fail to have any circulating things at the vacuums head, meaning they are practically useless. The only vacum I own now is a large one that sucks up water, too.