We started our search for the
ultimate vacuum cleaner long after our old vacuum had died. We
still used it after it had died. It didn’t pick up dirt any
longer, but we felt like we had done our duty by running it.
We immediately thought of buying an
Oreck vacuum. After all, that’s the vacuum ad we see the
most, and besides we could get a free iron. Never mind that we
don’t need a free iron. But we’d learned while we were
in dusty Tucson that Orecks put dust back into the air.
And, we pondered long and hard over
whether to get a vacuum for carpets or for hardwood floors. We
currently have carpets, but someday we’ll have hardwood and
tile floors that will be better for the chemical sensitivities. So,
do we buy for now, or do we plan for the future. I think our old
vacuum decided that for us, by groaning louder and louder, each
time we used it. We may someday get rid of our carpets, but in the
meantime, we needed to get them clean.
Then we considered Rainbow or another
brand of water vacuum. The theory behind these vacuums is that the
dirt is pulled into the water, so that it can’t escape back
into the air. Unfortunately another theory is that the dirt gets
trapped in water molecules which get released back into the air,
making it harder to get rid of. I’ve personally never seen
these water molecules myself. My wife tells me they’re
invisible, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve
never seen them.
My logic, as you can guess,
didn’t hold out, so we started looking into vacuums with
other types of filters than water. HEPA (High Efficiency Particle
Arresting) was the first type of filter we came across. HEPA does a
very good job of filtering out large particles of dirt. Then
there’s ULPA (Ultra Low Penetrating Air). ULPA does a very
good job of filtering out dirt ranging from very small particles to
almost large particles. There’s CPZ (Carbon Potassium
Permanganate Zeolite or Carbon Potassium Permanganate Zealot as my
spell checker would have it). But CPZ filters only come on air
filters and not on vacuums. At least they didn’t come on any
of the vacuums we researched.
At this point, I’m thinking, we
should just get a vacuum with a HEPA filter. It will obviously be
cheaper than one with an ULPA filter, and it will still clean
better than our old dead vacuum does. Once again, my logic did not
prevail. And I was even more disappointed that my logic
didn’t prevail when I found out that you can’t just
have an ULPA filter. First the dirt gets filtered by a HEPA filter.
Then the dirt that gets through the HEPA gets filtered by an ULPA
filtered. Otherwise, the ULPA filter would get too many large dirt
particles for it to handle. Or as some would say, “The dirt
would get too big for its britches (or filter in this
case)”.
Fortunately or unfortunately,
depending on your view point, the filter standards don’t end
with ULPA. There are two more standards – Clean Room and
Nuclear. Clean Room standards are for laboratory research. You
know, the kind where they’re playing with deadly biological
viruses. Nuclear is for Nuclear Power Plants. You know, the kind
where they’re playing with deadly nucleic particles. Vacuums
for Clean Rooms and Nuclear Power Plants start with HEPA and ULPA
filters and then go further. I’d say how, but my brain is
already stretched to the limit.
The Clean Room standards are used by
NASA, and we ended up getting a vacuum who was a distant cousin of
the vacuum used on the space shuttle. Needless to say, our vacuum
had a HEPA filter
and an ULPA filter
and a Gulpa price
tag.
Book 4 My World of Cleaning
Written by Dale Stubbart
Blessed by Terry Stubbart
