In most areas, there is a person nearby who can fix your broken vacuum cleaner. Whether they specialize in vacuum cleaner repairs only or if they do repairs on a wide variety of motor driven home appliances, they should be able to easily fix your broken machine.

If you have one of the less pricey models, you might want to consider buying a new one before having someone repair it for you. The hourly fee for labor and the costs of parts may not warrant the repair price, unless of course you simply have to have the vacuum cleaner that you’ve grown accustomed to for a long time. An honest repair service will tell you that upon examination, which is usually free unless the problem is not easily diagnosed on the surface.

In most situations, when you find a repair shop and bring in your broken vacuum cleaner, they’ll ask you a few simple questions. Obviously, if you knew what was wrong, you’d fix it yourself. All most people know when they bring in their broken machine is that it’s broken. The repair shop will ask you what was happening when it stopped. He’ll ask how old it is and a few other pertinent questions so he can make a quick evaluation of the problem. Then he’ll give a quick examination to the obvious moving parts and if he sees something, he’ll be able to tell you immediately what’s going on and what it will take to fix it.
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Industrial vacuum cleaners are designed with two basic functions in mind – the removal of debris of all types from the floor and the removal of debris of all types from the air in the working environment. The first application was tricky, to say the least, but the specific needs were dealt with until systems and units were produced that could handle almost any type of debris from the floor of a manufacturing company.

At first, the size of the debris was a question to be dealt with. Then there were wet and dry items that needed to be dealt with simultaneously. Extremely hot or corrosive elements were added to the mix and then radioactive debris had to be taken into account. All of this debris, a bi-product of some sort of manufacturing or large-scale commercial operation, had to be dealt with by vacuum cleaner manufacturers. Often, the special requirements of a company were dealt with on a case-by-case basis at the same time as the new plant was being constructed.

Similarly, airborne debris, dust and microscopic particles of whatever was being produced in the shop had to be removed from the air, either to protect the workers or to gather and store the valuable materials to keep from losing them. Huge vacuum cleaners were mounted on rooftops, and behind the factories themselves, that resembled air-conditioning units more closely than vacuum cleaners. But they performed precisely the opposite function. Where air-conditioners cool and then pump air into the factory to keep temperatures comfortable and controlled, these huge vacuum cleaners are sucking the air out of the factories, either from the ceiling levels or from beneath the floor, filtering out the debris and keeping it accessible during cleaning.
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The first person to patent a machine for cleaning was David Hess in the year 1860. Housewives all over America had turned to using rugs and carpets, a trait brought over by the waves of immigrants coming from Europe, to cover their bare wood floors and keep the dust and dirt to a minimum. When they were dirty, they had to be carried outside, suspended somehow in the air and then beaten with a metal rod or heavy wooden stick.

A bit later someone invented a small, tennis racket-looking device called a rug beater for precisely this purpose. Mr. Hess soon realized that there was probably an easier way to clean rugs without all the fuss and mess and he invented the Carpet Sweeper which had a rotating brush combined with a bellows system that created suction. His amazing invention also used two water chambers to trap the dust and fine dirt. The only problem with Mr. Hess’ machine is that there is no proof it was ever produced.

After Mr. Hess’ invention, there came a period of wilder and weirder inventions that sought to accomplish the same thing. In the late 1870’s, Melville Bissell (sound familiar?) marketed a carpet sweeper that picked up the dirt and dropped it into a pan behind the rotating brush. In 1899, John Thurman invented a gasoline-powered vacuum cleaner that is credited as being the first motorized version. In 1901 Hubert Booth of London invented the electric vacuum, a device so large that it was parked outside the house and a 100-foot long hose snaked its way inside and did the dirty work.
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Industrial vacuum cleaners are designed with two basic functions in mind – the removal of debris of all types from the floor and the removal of debris of all types from the air in the working environment. The first application was tricky, to say the least, but the specific needs were dealt with until systems and units were produced that could handle almost any type of debris from the floor of a manufacturing company.

At first, the size of the debris was a question to be dealt with. Then there were wet and dry items that needed to be dealt with simultaneously. Extremely hot or corrosive elements were added to the mix and then radioactive debris had to be taken into account. All of this debris, a bi-product of some sort of manufacturing or large-scale commercial operation, had to be dealt with by vacuum cleaner manufacturers. Often, the special requirements of a company were dealt with on a case-by-case basis at the same time as the new plant was being constructed.
(more…)