The GoVacuum Blog

Howdy blog-readers! Did you miss me? I was on vacation and neglecting my blogging duties. I hope to make it up to you with a helpful answer to an interesting and quite common question. On to your favorite column: Ask GoVacuum! Bum-Ba-BUM!

Are there any vacuum cleaners that can deal with lots of long human hair? I have fairly long hair, and apparently the need to shed it all over the house. Every vacuum I’ve used quickly ends up with a brushroll clogged with hair, and taking apart the vacuum every two minutes and cutting all the hair off is really getting to me. So, do you have suggestions for a vacuum that wouldn’t have this issue? For use mostly on low-pile carpet. Cost isn’t a big issue (the Dyson Animal would be fine if I didn’t suspect it only works on short pet hair), but I want to do regular carpet vacuuming without needing to anything more than empty a dirt vessel.

- Long Haired Lady

Dear LHL,

Rather than a suggestion for a specific new vacuum, I’ve got a simple solution. It’s slightly more complicated than just a once-over with some miraculous (read: non-existent) vacuum, but way easier than stopping to pull out your hair every two minutes. I could just suggest any vacuum without a brush-roller, but any experienced vacuum-er knows that won’t leave you with a very clean home.

So, what should you do? If you have an upright (which I assume you do, since you’re talking about a brush-roller at all), get some attachments to plug into the straight suction of your unit. Pick one that you think will be easy to run over your carpet (probably something with a wide base, and no bristles like this Miele Rug/Bare Floor Nozzle — use the “Rug” setting to prevent future scratching of your hard floors), plug it into a hose, plug your hose into the back of your upright and go to town. Suck up all the hair you can find with that, and then follow up with a quick and painless “regular” vacuuming with your upright and brush-roller on.

If you have a canister, simply make sure you’re not using an attachment with a roller, like this Powerbrush from Miele. You can, of course follow up with a regular deep vacuuming with a roller-using attachment.

Either way, you get your wish. You only have to empty that one dirt container in your vacuum — and no more long hair everywhere.

So we’ve decided to debut a new cleaning/vacuum advice column here at GoVacuum. It’s going to be creatively named (dramatic pause) … Ask GoVacuum! Ta-da! We’ll be answering reader questions and generally making sense of our vast messy physical world. Shoot any questions over to ShaliniGoVacuum@gmail.com. Now, on to our first question:

Why won’t my Shark HEPA vacuum roller spin on it’s own any more? The last time this happened we fixed it by getting rid of all the people hair that had twisted around the roller, which was at the time keeping it from spinning. Now, it only spins for a few seconds after I flick it into action. Currently, there is no obstruction, on the roller or the little spinner thing that seems to move the roller. The hose seems to suck just fine now that we’ve cleared the giant hairball/ plastic bag combo that one of my old roommates left for me to find.

The machine makes no ungodly noises; I have also not done any upkeep for this machine besides banging out the filter with each use (which I know is counterintuitive with my allergies). It’s clearly time to order another Shark brand filter from the internet, but I have to wait for a paycheck on that one.

Because we’ve lived in this apartment with cats for almost 2 months without using the vacuum, I’d like to take care of this.

- Frustrated and Sneezy

Dear F&S,

Thanks for writing in! Unfortunately, I don’t have much good news for you. It sounds like your roller is actually busted and you’re going to have to replace it. I say that because you’ve mentioned that you’ve already cleaned it out thoroughly (and that it has worked well in the past after a cleaning) and that it does spin for a few seconds when you first turn it on (which means the belt is on and probably working).

Normally in the case of a busted roller brush, I’d recommend you either 1) purchase a new one and replace the roller yourself (if you, like me, are the tinkering-type) or 2) take it into your local vacuum repair shop and just have them take care of it for you. However, in this case, you’re probably not going to have any luck with either of those options. It seems Shark parts are getting harder and harder to come by lately, and vacuum specialty stores around the nation (including us) are having trouble reliably maintaining them in stock. So, we recommend you call Shark directly and see what they can do for you. Their customer service number is 1-800-798-7395. I hope that helps!

Miele launched its new S5 Series of canister vacuums this week. They’re even more sophisticated than before, with a huge focus on increased usability. As always, they’re designed to minimize escaping dirt particles and ease daily life for allergy-sufferers and neat-freaks. And the German brand design style means they’re sleek, shiny and impressive to have around.

I’m impressed that Miele actually seemed to take the user experience to heart and spent considerable time and effort improving their products. Check out the new S5 series and see for yourself. Also, for your convenience, I whipped up a little chart that compares all the new models, so you can see which one has all the features you need (and none of the ones you don’t).