[Dave_Lee]

Ive got one I am about to put on E Bay full kit in box, I hardlyever use it. I also bought it on E Bay last year excellent nick etc Chorley Lancs £185.. and it anyones.
Dave.

[jacko]

Hi All.

Guy only wanted £45 for it - bargain i say... in excellent condition too. I will use it for dry cleaning, rug cleaning, and mattress cleaning.

[Mike Halliday]

jacko do you have a usual 2motor vacuum (sebo etc)

get some flower & sugar  and sprinkle it on the carpet, rub it in with you foot,  make sure you do it wide  enough so you can pull the Kirby & other vac across it, then compare them

might be interesting

Mike

[*paul_moss]

Mike what were your findings when you tried it.

[Mike Osbourne]

Those of you who like scrap heap challenge.

Imagine adapting the beater bar with small leather paddles and you have a mini rugbadger  for a tenth of the cost if that.

I bet Dusty's worried about his profits now.

 

[Mike Halliday]

Paul.
 an x-girlfriend of mine was a big wig in the UK Kirby  business, in the beginning when she was just getting started she practiced her demo in front of me ( I must have seen it 100s of times). part of the demonstration was this sugar & flour test. She rubbed it into the floor and asked the customer to us their existing vac and vac it all up, then she would pull the Kirby once across the test area.

The Kirby was fitted with a inspection chamber instead of the cloth bag, she would empty the container and show the customer how much their vacuum had failed to pick up.

It was a very persuasive test, the Kirby always removed more sugar & flour.

but this was against normal domestic vacs.

Mike

[glenda hollis]

but this was against normal domestic vacs.

This implies that a Kirby is some kind of commercial cleaner and that commercial cleaners are better than domestic cleaners. I disagree I have used more cleaners than i can shake a stick at over the years and an upright always pulls out more dirt than a cylinder, and even between uprights there are some with better sweeping power than others. Most of the houses i cleaned where i used the clients vacuum had at least two cleaners, usually one upstairs and one down, even if both were upright i would swap them over at some point as the carpets get used to a certain sweeping action of one cleaner so by using another from time to time it removes dirt that another cleaner has left.
What i liked about the Kirby was the large twisting roller brush that swept like nothing i had used before, what i didnt like was the weight of the thing and the fact that the fan on them shatters easily. The people whos house i cleaned who owned the kirby said they had replaced the fan countless times over the years as the first screw or nail that got vacuumed up always shattered the fan. In the 5 years i worked for them they had 3 new fans that i knew about. i guess it is because the Kirby is an old-fashioned design of cleaner that relies on the dirt being pulled into the fan before the bag, not like others where the dirt goes to the bag first. Also i am gald it was not me who had to buy the kirby bags as they cost a fourtune. I Have never been keen on the 2-motor uprights either as I always found the sweeping action to be week but then this was for weekly cleaning where i had to go round all the furniture, i suppose if like you guys you are vacuuming a large empty room it is different.

[Alan Brooker. Aqualink Carpet Care]

I've been using the g4 for a few years now and today I treated myself to the g10 sentria (whatever that means) it wipes the floor with my newly serviced g4 which in turn leaves my sebo bs46 in its wake.
I even talked the guy out of his demo jar and about a foot high of demo filters

Best vac on the planet by far.
Alan

[Mike Halliday]

Alan, put on the demo filter and vac your bed, you'll be disgusted what you've been sleeping on

Mike

[Alan Brooker. Aqualink Carpet Care]

I'm looking forward to trying it this afternoon - better not find any illegal immigrants in there.

[Mark Lane-Matthews]

I have a royal which I am delighted with and a bs36 with red commercial brush .The royal is fantastic in open areas but not great on edges and the attachments are not worth getting as they take to long to set up ,nearly always use both on every job

                                   Mark

[Alan Brooker. Aqualink Carpet Care]

I'm now selling my bs46 if anyone's interested. I'm near junction 6 M25.

Alan

[chris78**]

Hi There,
            We can supply fully reconditioned G6's for £310 including the post!

www.elidistribution.co.uk


Cheers

Chris

[Joe H]

I'd never buy one full price, no matter how far the vibration reached

the nice thing about them is stripping off the head and using them as a cylinder vac on upholstery,

Mike

Mike, done that today at home.
Stipped it down to a hand held and did the stairs.
Wow! what a machine.
Unfortunately its still heavy.

I have practiced changing it over to a machine with a suction hose and that is now quiet a simple job.

Doing the 2nd half of a care home job tomorrow morning and will be taking the Kirby (gives the Sebo a rest).

[Alan Brooker. Aqualink Carpet Care]

Here's a top tip. I bought a spare brush roll for my new g10 and installed it back to front in my g4 (for run of the mill work) - ok so the green light doesn't shine to say the brush is going round but do you need a light to tell you that? It's a much stiffer brush than on older generation models and boy does it pound the carpet.
Alan

[Joe H]

Alan,   why have you fitted it back to front in the G4 ?

[glenda hollis]

Best vac on the planet by far.
Alan

It probably is if you are cleaning vast expanses of carpeting in one go. The trouble with these machines when used for day to day cleaning is that they are so cumbersome and difficult to move around furniture. Also the outstanding performance of the roller brush is offset by the fact that there are no onboard tools and fitting the hose is time consuming- the Kirby users i've met never bothered with the hose very often, meaning that there was an accumulation of dust and debris above floor level, even if the carpets were beautifully cleaned. I have regularly used a Kirby Heritage and a G4 in the past. I loathed the Heritage as the cleaning head used to lift off the floor on the reverse stroke. It drove me insane. Also it spent a lot of time broken-down as that was the one where the fan kept shattering. The owners of that house also had a cylinder cleaner, not my first choice for carpets, but i did as much cleaning as i could with that and used the Kirby on the bits that the cylinder could not get clean. I liked the G4 as it was self-propelled. The people who owned that did not have any other vacuum cleaner so i had to use the tools on it. They were ok but getting the hose off and on every 5 minutes was a pain.

[Alan Brooker. Aqualink Carpet Care]

Glenda, yes it's a bit of a nusiance on small jobs but not a major drama. The G10 seems to pick up nearer the edge a lot better.

Joe, there's a small magnet on one end of the brushroll that swipes a contact on every revolution and makes the green light illuminate. A few years back Kirby changed this magnet to the other end and turned the brushroll round in an attempt to stop you fitting the better brush to an older machine because the green light won't illuminate. If you ask them they'll tell you that it won't fit / work.
The other reason you need to turn it round is that the brushroll would be off centre.
Alan