Hepa Vacuum Cleaners: Why Allergy Sufferers Need Hepa Filters

Hepa vacuums explained

by Mercia Tapping, President, AllergyBuyersClub.com

A vacuum cleaner can offer a healthy way to clean up dust, dirt and allergens. By using the hand tools, you can remove all the dust with a vacuum cleaner from all hard surfaces, upholstery and furniture. In fact, we recommend frequent vacuuming as your first line of defense. The trouble with most vacuum cleaners is that they are not completely sealed and the filters are poor, so when you vacuum, you end up inhaling all sorts of dust which is getting exhausted from the machine into the air. In addition, the vacuum cleaner needs to be powerful enough to suck up all the particulates.

INFO LINKS Vacuum Cleaners Overview - view all Vacuum Cleaners sold by AllergyBuyersClub.com Vacuum Cleaners Comparison Chart - a comparison with pluses and minuses of all the best Vacuum Cleaners Compare vacuum cleaners by manufacturer: - Miele vacuum features - Eureka vacuum features Best Vacuum Cleaner Articles - Editor's top picks on vacuum info

How a Vacuum Cleaner Works
Most people use a vacuum cleaner on average one hour per week. Incidentally, when vacuum cleaner manufacturers talk about the life of a hepa filter, they are basing it on one hour of weekly usage. A vacuum cleaner usually works by having a power head attachment to a canister or integrated into an upright, which has some rotating brushes, which first of all loosen up the dirt on the carpet. At the same time, the vacuum cleaner contains a strong fan which sucks in the loosened debris into a special multiplayer filter bag and exhausts the air which first passes through a hepa filter before entering the air.

What most people do not realize, is in order to get a carpet really clean, you should not just pass the vacuum cleaner once or twice over the target area, but in fact as many as eight times.

If the vacuum cleaner is not completely sealed, or all particulates sucked into a hepa filter such as in Miele vacuum cleaners, then a delightful allergic mixture of dust-mite feces, cat allergen, household dust, pollen fragments, mold spores is blown back into your face where you inhale it. For this reason, many asthma and allergy sufferers are advised to have someone else do the vacuuming for them. For those of us who do not have that luxury, dislike wearing a facemask, a good hepa vacuum cleaner is a necessity.

Interestingly enough, you should only half fill a vacuum cleaner bag because as the vacuum cleaner bag fills up there is no longer so much air flow and hence the vacuum cleaner loses its suction capacity. Both the Electrolux Oxygen3 and Miele vacuum cleaners have a mechanism, which automatically closes the bag completely when you need to change the vacuum cleaner bag. In the newer cyclonic vacuum cleaners, the suction power is not decreased as the collection bin gets full .The problem with cyclonic vacuum cleaners is that they are very awkward to empty for an allergy sufferer who has to endure a completely unsealed container of dust and allergens when they empty the container. So although a cyclonic vacuum cleaner completely eliminates the need for vacuum bags, we do not recommend them for allergy sufferers, unless someone else does the vacuuming for them.

Canister versus Upright Vacuum Cleaners

As you are doubtless aware, there are two main types of portable vacuum cleaners- the canister and upright types. Each type of vacuum cleaner has its proponents. Quite frankly, we think that upright vacuums are heavy, difficult to maneuver, and almost impossible to lie flat to get under furniture with the exception of the Sebo Automatic X4 and X5 . What's more, an upright often does not have tools on board, or only has a very short hose at the back to which you can attach tools. The long and short of it is you have to torture an upright to use hand tools and in torturing it, it often keels over. Therefore, after having been brought up with uprights we are now canister vacuum converts. Why? They are lighter, easier to maneuver and the better ones such as the Miele Solaris or Electrolux Oxygen3 lines have their tools on board. Our observation is that if the tools are not on board you will never you use them- and you SHOULD use them.

What is Hepa?

The "hepa" in hepa filter stands for "High Efficiency Particulate Arresting". These filters are made out of a media such as fiberglass, bonded together by a synthetic resin and the construction is so tight that almost all the tiny particulates up to .3 microns get trapped permanently in the filter.

Hepa filters were first designed by the Atomic Energy Commission in World War Two for trapping plutonium particles. Since the hepa media is very dense, hepa filters need heavy-duty fans to move the air through them. Pollen ,one of the largest particulates at 10 microns, is easy to filter. Cat allergen is much smaller. Since there are hepa filters and "hepa like" filters you need to be sure that as an allergy sufferer, the filter you are buying will really do the job you want. Miele vacuum cleaners offer a "certified hepa filter" to assure its customers that they are getting a high efficiency filter.

Some useful links for vacuum cleaners:

A vacuum cleaner comparison chart between all vacuums on our site

A Miele technical features comparison chart

 

First Published: early-March, 2001
Updated: April 2007

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