boeingman1's Full Review: Black & Decker CHV1400 Bagless Handheld Cyclonic V...
I like to keep a tidy house as much as possible. Just keeping the little bits of food, paper, dirt, etc picked up is a chore. With three people and two dogs in the house it is impossible.
I got tired of lugging the 30 foot hose around. I have a built in vacumn system.
The vacumn is 14.4 volts I believe. I purchased it at Lowes for 39.99 on September 4th 2005. It is about a buck or two cheaper at Walmart and Target but it would take that much in gas to go there and I was at Lowes already when I saw it. I had been researching cordless vacs and decided to purchase this one.
First off it is cordless and comes with a wall mount charger and a couple screws/anchors.
The vac is a bit on the heavy side but that is mostly due to the high voltage battery and the fact it is probably a cheap nicad type battery.
It has two speeds which I thought would be useless at first but find I use the low speed most of the time. It has ample suction and obviously conserves battery life.
The power button is a little difficult to use. I am a 34 year old male that builds planes for a living so I am used to using tools and doing heavy work, but this switch needs to be redesigned. It is difficult to slide the switch back to the off position. An elderly person or someone with arthritis would have a hell of a time.
The dirt container holds 23 ounces of dirt I believe but there is really no reason to let it get that full since it is easy to pop the cover off and empty.
When the dirt goes into the vac it goes in and then goes 90 degrees sideways and has a little rubber flap that keeps debris from falling out. So far so good there.
Inside it is a bit different than the old dustbusters. The main filter is a large one piece plastic deal with lots of little holes that cover up a conical pleated plastic/paper filter. This does a good job of keeping large debris away from the filter. This large plastic piece also has a rubber seal around it that seals up the main debris chamber quite well. Once you pop the main chamber off, you remove this plastic piece that gets you to the conical filter.
This vac has a quick clean feature that enables a person to rotate a wheel on the outside of the vac which in turn, turns the conical filter against the large stationary plastic filter. Little notches in the plastic filter flick the pleats of the conical filter and dust falls into the receptacle which temporarily increases power.
Attached to the bottom of the vac is a crevice tool that comes in quite handy. If you snap off the crevice tool you can remove the little brush/upholstery tool. This tool is good for dusting a table top without scratching it. The only gripe is that you must remove the crevice tool to access the brush.
Next to the crevice tool is a flip down door where the vac exhaust come out. Attached to this door is a sponge like material that is supposed to be a rudimentary exhaust filter if any dirt gets through. Seems like more of a gimmick that actually usefull. Mine isn't dirty yet.
One poster somewhere commented how the exhaust that shoots out the bottom can stir up more dust and blow dirt around. This is true it you hold the vac parralel to the floorm but the exhaust comes out at an angle and if you hold the vac at an angle to the floor like you are supposed to you won't have a problem.
I have no comment on battery life except this is just a vacumn to pick up little things for a minute or two. It is not designed to vacumn an entire room. I guess I might use it to vacumn a car but I bought it knowing its limitations and have been pleasantly surpised.
So far I have used it to vacumn under the table, the carpet, picked up popcorn seeds on the floor, cleaned the countertops of crumbs, used the crevice tool in the couch and along the baseboard, and it worked great to pick up the confetti shredding that got on the floor when I emptied the shredder. I also used it to clean off the coffee table and sucked all the dust bunnies that accumulate on the edges of the floors. It also works great on the stairs.
The little hairs that get all over when shaving get sucked up quite nicely.
So far I am happy I purchased this item and wished I had purchased it earlier.
I used to just leave the 30 foot house out all the time since I was always vacumning something. Now I put it away and can see I will be able to vacumn once a week with the main vac and use this little gem for everyday pickup.
UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oct 12 2005. I noticed that if I removed the plastic screen there would be a large amount of "lint" between it and the conical filter. I was surprised as the accumlated lint was much larger than the little holes in the plastic screen. Point here is just because the cup is empty doesn't mean you shouldn't pull the screen off and check for accumulated "lint"
Cyclonic action filter system means more power longer because dirt won FTt stick to the filter. 14.4V motor provides power for all cleaning jobs. Quic...More at doitbest.com
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