This is why we should all leave the EU

[GeoffS]

I'm single, what's a vacuum cleaner?

[Simon]

I'm single, what's a vacuum cleaner?

oih so am I, that is no excuse, it's why i care  last thing i want to do is waste 3 times what I would with a 2KW machine trying to make a 900W one do the job. If vacuum cleaners had an enforced efficiency rating on them that was realistic then that would be all that is needed, the rest would take care of itself.

Is it me or has there been no warning of this ? how long ago were manufacturers informed ?

[zapta]

Personal liberty is an endangered value. Utopians run amok. Around here supermarkets are not allowed to sell plastic bags with handles.

[coppice]

I'm single, what's a vacuum cleaner?

oih so am I, that is no excuse, it's why i care  last thing i want to do is waste 3 times what I would with a 2KW machine trying to make a 900W one do the job. If vacuum cleaners had an enforced efficiency rating on them that was realistic then that would be all that is needed, the rest would take care of itself.

Is it me or has there been no warning of this ? how long ago were manufacturers informed ?

I think the manufacturers must have known this was coming. If you look through some cleaner ranges the power goes up and up until the middle of the range, and the power of the next model up more of less halves. That's the point where an efficient motor enters the range.

I found it quite hard to get my wife to take the lower power models seriously when we bought a new cleaner recently. I think the kind of efficiency labelling you suggest would have made the efficient models an easier sell. A noise rating might help, too. The efficient models tend to be far quieter.

[bwat]

I'm a very ecological minded person, but i also look at the bigger picture.

What's in the bigger picture that takes precedence over your environment?

[zapta]

I'm a very ecological minded person, but i also look at the bigger picture.

What's in the bigger picture that takes precedence over your environment?

People.

[Monkeh]

My two household vacuums are both <400W.

I only see this being a problem for commercial and industrial vacuums, those of you using 2kW machines from Vax and Hoover need to experience a vacuum which doesn't overheat or make as much noise as a small jet aircraft taking off.

That said, you can pry my 1200W vac out of my cold, dead hands. But I don't need that around the house.

[HighVoltage]

The EU should legislate for quality of construction and designed lifespan if they want to cut emmissions. But no, no legislation cares about quality and the amount of stuff landing in landfill.

+1 to this, I'd love to see something like a minimum 3-year warranty on all consumer goods. Start getting things built to last again.

In eastern Germany, before the iron curtain fell, they had a law that a light bulb had to last 5000 hours.
And it worked!
The EU mostly comes up with ultra stupid laws.

[Simon]

I'm a very ecological minded person, but i also look at the bigger picture.

What's in the bigger picture that takes precedence over your environment?

Knee jerk reactions in one small area never help the environment, they just shift the problem elsewhere or cause side effect problems. The biggest problem is companies wanting to make a quick buck and loads of profit. It's like electric cars, sounds great if your one track minded and just looking at cars and their output, but as soon as you consider the wider picture and the true environmental concerns you find that your just shifting the problem elsewhere and making it worse. the solution to electric cars is to design and implement better and less carbon dependent electricity to put in those cars before you make a statement, throw loads of our money at incentives that actually costs ridiculous amounts to the tax payer and actually make the larger scale problem worse.

If only politicians were engineers...........

I bought a 120W hedge trimmer, it was useless, took ages to get the job done as it cut so bad. Then i found a battered 200W one in my out building that was abandoned by the previous house owner. Stuck a plug on it and gave it a go. I flogged the "new" 120W trimmer that was useless and kept the beaten up old 200W one and get the job done in under 1/2 the time. Tell me which trimmer is "greener"

[babysitter]

Most EU regulations make a lot of sense although presented differently at some "media". Great job, British beerdrinking company for eating that cookie.

Consumers take high watt number and big noise as signs of high vacuum power, which isn't. As the Dyson example shows, that is not necessary. Market self control (dont do acoustic design that way) didn't work out.

[bwat]

I'm a very ecological minded person, but i also look at the bigger picture.

What's in the bigger picture that takes precedence over your environment?

Knee jerk reactions in one small area never help the environment, they just shift the problem elsewhere or cause side effect problems. The biggest problem is companies wanting to make a quick buck and loads of profit. It's like electric cars, sounds great if your one track minded and just looking at cars and their output, but as soon as you consider the wider picture and the true environmental concerns you find that your just shifting the problem elsewhere and making it worse. the solution to electric cars is to design and implement better and less carbon dependent electricity to put in those cars before you make a statement, throw loads of our money at incentives that actually costs ridiculous amounts to the tax payer and actually make the larger scale problem worse.

If only politicians were engineers...........

I bought a 120W hedge trimmer, it was useless, took ages to get the job done as it cut so bad. Then i found a battered 200W one in my out building that was abandoned by the previous house owner. Stuck a plug on it and gave it a go. I flogged the "new" 120W trimmer that was useless and kept the beaten up old 200W one and get the job done in under 1/2 the time. Tell me which trimmer is "greener"

I don't think you've answered my question. If you did can you reword it and possibly make it less verbose for me?

[Kjelt]

I could sympatize untill you wrote

No i have not read those doc's as if I have time.

So you are waisting our time with a cheap newspaper headline while being to lazy to do some research.
I hope you,re not an engineer since engineers allways first read the documentation and then draw their conclusion 

[Rufus]

In eastern Germany, before the iron curtain fell, they had a law that a light bulb had to last 5000 hours.
And it worked!

And was equally stupid. Incandescent lamp design is a compromise between efficiency and life with some consideration of the cost of fitting the replacement. The optimum life of an incandescent lamp depends on the cost of energy which has continuously risen and 5000 hours is unlikely to have ever been optimum.

[Bored@Work]

As the Dyson example shows, that is not necessary.

Well, Dyson is a rather bad example. Nothing but marketing claims. Comparatively less performance than other brands to begin with. So they are actually one of the reasons the directive makes sense. Bad suction/Watt. 

And the claim they never loses suction is an outright lie. Unless you never fill the bin up to more than 1/4 of its capacity. And unless you always want to spend some time after each usage to cumbersomely clean the filter and the bin. Build quality of ours was also bad. Just month after the warranty ended the bin broke. A bit later plastic parts from the handle broke off. Or first Dyson was our last.

[Rufus]

Most EU regulations make a lot of sense although

Just lol - you mean like the one that causes something like this

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To appear on half the web sites I visit because I don't keep any cookies past sessions?

[zapta]

Err it's based on the BBC "interpretation" i originally posted. No i have not read those doc's as if I have time.

So you argue from ignorance. Thanks for clarifying that.

Do you say that he misstated the law? Do you say that his argument is invalid? 

Instead of debating the topic you resort to ad hominem.

[kingofkya]

We have a Kirby.  It's about 15years old, still works as well as it did when it was new.  The only repairs it's had are a minor gearbox repair and a lead repair (I ran over and damaged the lead).  Made to last, but not cheap.

Yeah i have a filterqueen all steel canister vac it has had 2-3minor  repair in the 10years (total age is about 20 years 1 vac moter replacement)i have had it. But the kicker is the  spinning brush has a 600watts moter all by itself, it just works. And the main vacuum part has a select-able 480 or 960watt hi/lo switch. Even on the low mode it it works very well. SO maybe the first tier is not that far off?
And you can fill it up to the hose inlet before it loses suction.

But like everyone else has said how about product quality over watts...

[G7PSK]

Reduce the power and it will take longer to achieve the same level of cleanliness.
I know a company that makes 120KW vacuum cleaners, their products will be useless if this is an across the board directive and runways will be unsafe. 

[DenzilPenberthy]

Err it's based on the BBC "interpretation" i originally posted. No i have not read those doc's as if I have time.

So you argue from ignorance. Thanks for clarifying that.

Do you say that he misstated the law? Do you say that his argument is invalid? 

Instead of debating the topic you resort to ad hominem.

Yes, he has misrepresented the new law. it is not just about a limit on power, it also included energy efficiency labelling and some indication of how the vacuum performs under test (not just it's rated input power) the reason being people are using rated input power as a proxy for overall performance. I'd argue, yes that makes his argument invalid.

An example of an ad hominem attack would be Simon's original post referring to the 'prick' that came up with this legislation.

Arguing that someone is speaking from a position of ignorance when they have stated "Err it's based on the BBC "interpretation" i originally posted. No i have not read those doc's as if I have time.", is a simple statement of fact.

[Simon]

I bought a 120W hedge trimmer, it was useless, took ages to get the job done as it cut so bad. Then i found a battered 200W one in my out building that was abandoned by the previous house owner. Stuck a plug on it and gave it a go. I flogged the "new" 120W trimmer that was useless and kept the beaten up old 200W one and get the job done in under 1/2 the time. Tell me which trimmer is "greener"

Your anecdote is worthless. It does not demonstrate a trend. On the other hand the EU has done significant research into the issue and demonstrated that the opposite to what you are implying is true. Motor power is not the important factor, quality and technique are.

Which was the point i made, as you say the motor is not important factor, so why legislate on it ? How about they legislate on efficiency rating

[Simon]

I'm a very ecological minded person, but i also look at the bigger picture.

What's in the bigger picture that takes precedence over your environment?

Knee jerk reactions in one small area never help the environment, they just shift the problem elsewhere or cause side effect problems. The biggest problem is companies wanting to make a quick buck and loads of profit. It's like electric cars, sounds great if your one track minded and just looking at cars and their output, but as soon as you consider the wider picture and the true environmental concerns you find that your just shifting the problem elsewhere and making it worse. the solution to electric cars is to design and implement better and less carbon dependent electricity to put in those cars before you make a statement, throw loads of our money at incentives that actually costs ridiculous amounts to the tax payer and actually make the larger scale problem worse.

If only politicians were engineers...........

I bought a 120W hedge trimmer, it was useless, took ages to get the job done as it cut so bad. Then i found a battered 200W one in my out building that was abandoned by the previous house owner. Stuck a plug on it and gave it a go. I flogged the "new" 120W trimmer that was useless and kept the beaten up old 200W one and get the job done in under 1/2 the time. Tell me which trimmer is "greener"

I don't think you've answered my question. If you did can you reword it and possibly make it less verbose for me?

I answered it perfectly but you don't want to listen!

[Simon]

Most EU regulations make a lot of sense although presented differently at some "media". Great job, British beerdrinking company for eating that cookie.

Consumers take high watt number and big noise as signs of high vacuum power, which isn't. As the Dyson example shows, that is not necessary. Market self control (dont do acoustic design that way) didn't work out.

Who said noise indicates effectiveness ? noise is power, so if your wasting it on making noise your not using it to suck, more noise is an indicator that you didn't design it properly. Did i suggest market self control ? No i've been suggesting realistic measures.

Do you think that when we are limited to 1.6KW or 900W those silly cheap 700W badly designed ones will go up or down in sales ? if vacuum cleaners were regulated on their effectiveness then vacuum cleaners using too much power would rate badly and end up costing more. Sometimes it is worth paying more, cheap low power vacuum cleaners are inefficient and break down quickly. My sisters 700W vacuum cleaner which is just 200W shy of the ultimate limit was so bad and so underpowered that it failed due to overheating, smart design!

[Rufus]

Motor power is not the important factor, quality and technique are.

Then I look forward to a new range of < 1W vacuum cleaners.

[Simon]

providing they are designed properly, but good design costs money and companies just see profits.

[bwat]

I'm a very ecological minded person, but i also look at the bigger picture.

What's in the bigger picture that takes precedence over your environment?

Knee jerk reactions in one small area never help the environment, they just shift the problem elsewhere or cause side effect problems. The biggest problem is companies wanting to make a quick buck and loads of profit. It's like electric cars, sounds great if your one track minded and just looking at cars and their output, but as soon as you consider the wider picture and the true environmental concerns you find that your just shifting the problem elsewhere and making it worse. the solution to electric cars is to design and implement better and less carbon dependent electricity to put in those cars before you make a statement, throw loads of our money at incentives that actually costs ridiculous amounts to the tax payer and actually make the larger scale problem worse.

If only politicians were engineers...........

I bought a 120W hedge trimmer, it was useless, took ages to get the job done as it cut so bad. Then i found a battered 200W one in my out building that was abandoned by the previous house owner. Stuck a plug on it and gave it a go. I flogged the "new" 120W trimmer that was useless and kept the beaten up old 200W one and get the job done in under 1/2 the time. Tell me which trimmer is "greener"

I don't think you've answered my question. If you did can you reword it and possibly make it less verbose for me?

I answered it perfectly but you don't want to listen!

I'm being quite serious. Your original claims seemed to be contradictory so I asked my question. If you don't understand the question then please say so. If you can't or don't want to answer the question then that's fine.