Vacuum cleaner woes. Advice needed.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I did a search and the last vacuum-specific thread was done in 2006, so I’m starting a new one since I need answers.

Here’s our problem: We have some sort of Hoover that works GREAT on our downstairs shag carpet, however we’ve discovered that it’s NOT working on our upstairs medium pile carpet (it’s a very dense pile, manthous brags that it’s the remnant carpet from some professional athlete’s house :rolleyes: ). In the traffic areas where the pile is shmooshed down, the vacuum will not touch the carpet, even when it’s put on the lowest setting. Sometimes the bristles will catch an edge of the carpet, and when I pull back the vacuum toward me, there will be intermittent lines where the brush caught a bit of the carpet, but the carpet is not being fully brushed, and although we have confirmed that the suction is strong (the old hold-a-string-in-front-and-see-if-it-gets-sucked-up test), it isn’t suctioning at all on this particular carpet (as evidenced by the gag-inducing amount of hair found on our upstairs bathroom carpet upon getting on hands and knees and looking up close.) We’ve taken it apart, made sure the brush is actually rotating, we’ve checked everything…

We need help fast.

But what’s the answer? Is the carpet just a piece of crap? Or do we need to spend a little bit of extra coin on a good (i.e. Dyson, Oreck, Kenmore) vacuum cleaner? How do we solve this problem without buying, testing, and attempting to return 15 different vacuum cleaners? It seems that 90% of the vacuums we find at Kohl’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Target, even Costco—are overpriced, mediocre-at-best models.

Advice? Opinions? Recommendations?

2

Cheapest and easiest would probably be a carpet rake to use on the high traffic areas before you vacuum.

ETA: you can get them as attachments too.

3

Ugh…who wants to rake before they vacuum? :smiley:

4

Or after, which is what we had to do when I worked as a housekeeper in highschool.

One reason my house is nothing but berber from end to end. No Rake Required! :smiley:

5

Did the vacuum cleaner once work well on that type of carpet and now doesn’t? Some vacuums are just not suited for certain types of surfaces, some are better than others at picking up pet hair, etc. Consumer Reports often covers vacuum cleaners, I would check one of their publications and see if your vacuum is suited for that surface.