Vacuum cleaners downgraded by the EU to tackle climate change in Europe
Story submitted by P. Wilson
Anyone wanting to buy a powerful vacuum cleaner has only 10 days left to be certain of getting one – following new EU rules that come in next month.
From 1 September, companies in the EU will be banned from making or importing vacuum cleaners above 1600 watts.
Hoover – based in South Wales – said that most of its cleaners were in that category.
It has been replacing its models since July with less powerful versions, but a few are still left on the shelves.
The new European rules are part of the EU’s energy efficiency directive, designed to help tackle climate change.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28878432
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I don’t see the point of this. Vacuum cleaners run for a few minutes each week. The amount of energy saved in this transient use of the appliance will be miniscule in the scheme of things.
I visualize a black market developing for more powerful vaccum cleaners, an aftermarket retrofit to replace motors with more powerful ones, and a lot of purchases made outside of the EU.
One more reason to dump the EU- they are going to make criminals out of average people who just want to keep their home clean. – Anthony
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As far as I can make out from all the confusing reports. it is any vacuum cleaner over 1800 not 1600, but reports vary, can anyone verify this?
Also from 2017 (3 years time) any vacuum cleaner over 900 watts are also being banned.
There are some specific 1200w vacuum cleaners being banned on September 1st, just not all of them.
It will take you twice as long to vacuum a carpet with a 900w motor than with a 1800w motor, which kinda defeats the purpose of banning the 1800w motors in the first place.
Pet owners are going to notice that a 900w vacuum cleaner is half as efficient at removing pet hairs from a carpet than a 1800w vacuum cleaner.
There is a reason for higher wattage vacuum cleaners, they are more efficient than 900w vacuum cleaners for certain tasks, I have wooden floors so I’m fine with a 900w motor when all it has to do is lift dust. but someone with a lot of carpets has just had their work load doubled.
This is just so dumb it’s amazing. worse than banning the 100w bulb and when they tried to ban patio heaters in a country that gets very cold.
Patio heaters are banned too.
It’s more likely that he’s been promoted.
It will be difficult separating home appliances from industrial dust extraction but you can guess what is happening. If people insist on choosing cleaners by Wattage rather than by recommendation then power consumption will rise, endlessly. OTOH, imposing a power limit is confessing that education is no longer a possibility.
One of the biggest pests, fleas, to life for humans was in carpets or wollen floor coverings. So the “Club of Rome” is reaching its goal of killing poeple.
I had to look at the Calender. No, it is not April 1, it must be Stupid Day!
I have a 1400 W Dyson that has very strong suction, so much so that on older carpets it can difficult to push. So 1600 W should be more than enough for a well designed cleaner. Dyson led the way in the transition to more efficient cyclone bagless cleaners and now dominate the UK market. The Hoover brand in the UK is owned by Candy, an Italian washing machine and white goods company and their floor cleaners are probably designed and made outside the UK. Hoover cleaners were very slow to adopt cyclones as the throw away bag filter was the most profitable part of the product offering.
I would think only a very small proportion of cleaners on the UK market are over 1400 W.
Not everything the EU does will be big money savers though. Some things are, such as the requirement to limit stand by power consumption on some home electronics to 1 W. I have a small older Sony hi fi that consumes 25 W on stand by….so the EU must have made some bif power savings there.
And haven’t they mandated that all phone chargers are mini USB to stop the proliferation of different charger connectiors we used to have?
I foresee the Brits building numerous supercharged V12 powered vacuums and holding an annual national ‘Suckoff’ at a nearby abandoned runway, with Status Quo and David Bowie appearing on the main stage interspersed with phenomenal wet T-shirt competitions, whilst waiting the English-Electric Lightning powered vacuum cleaner to light its afterburner and pull the pavement up to wild and rebellious cheers and a mass parody’s of frog-marching. That’s about what would happen here.
Patrick says:
August 23, 2014 at 2:13 am
“Patio heaters are banned too.”
They tried to ban them in 2008, They are not banned bars and clubs need them because of the indoor smoking ban. lol
It’s got to the stage where one ban effects another ban.
Stupid. Dunno but I suspect vacuum cleaners contribute very very little to European emissions.
Pissing around with peripheral things like this distracts everyone from the real problem and gives oxygen to those who don’t like what science is telling us is happening.
We all need to stop stuffing around and tackle the main controllable source of emissions – transportation.
This sucks.
There’ll be blowback.
From the (sort of) people who brought you the 55 mph speed limit.
Are you sure it will take twice as long with a 900W as it would a 1800W vacuum cleaner?
Because there’s a minimum of force needed on lifting assorted objects and chunks of stuff, off the floor and into the cleaner, the 900W may not have enough suction. In crevices and among the deep carpet fibers, there’s stuff that takes so much force to dislodge before it can be sucked up.
If the 900W only has half the force you need, it will take considerably longer than twice as it may never get done.
So how do you double the lifting force? Reduce the cross-sectional area of hose and nozzle by half. Which will increase the clogging, prevent the sucking up of larger pieces, and increase the number of passes to clean a certain area.
Only twice as long is an optimistic prediction.
“I don’t see the point of this. Vacuum cleaners run for a few minutes each week. The amount of energy saved in this transient use of the appliance will be miniscule in the scheme of things.” ~A.W.
The point of it all is control.
From here: http://markstoval.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/the-state-answers-winston-smith/
In the dystopian novel 1984 by George Orwell, Winston Smith was a party member but he was not one of the Inner Party. Rather he was a member of the Outer Party just as most of our federal bureaucrats today are not part of the ruling elite of our own Empire. At one point he says to an Inner Party member, “I understand how, but I don’t understand why.” He wanted to know why the Party did all those immoral and rotted things.
One of the Inner Party leaders explains:
Orwell captured the essential nature of the State perfectly in this speech by the party member to Winston Smith. Far too many people in the modern age have watched the American Empire start endless wars and grow ever more tyrannical without allowing themselves to ask the question: “why“? It is the same with the EU.
The CO2 scare has always been about aiding in the enterprise of extending more and more control over the citizens. As H. L. Mencken observed: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
I have Wertheim vacuum that is nominally 1800w but a peak of 2200w in powerbrush configuration and it is brilliant. Luckily it is a recent purchase so will see me through the madness of the unelected EU. Good news of course is that Switzerland and Norway are free countries and will be able to vacuum at any power level they like. Will smuggling vacuums from there in white vans and selling them at car boot sales become the new thing?
Re ‘Smart’ meters: in the UK you currently won’t be forced to have one – but in the cause of saving the non-warming planet that could all change. A bigger and much more difficult problem is that the meters need a mobile phone network to communicate and there are large areas where that isn’t possible. The lame selling point to the sheeple of these devices is that you get a portable readout that shows you how much energy you are using so you can cut down. I have 2 of these already – free I should point out – and lost interest in them a few months after. One can even produce data on your pc. These need to communicate with the meter and in flats and apartment blocks, this isn’t possible. Even more dumb is the claim that it means no more estimated energy bills – it is as if we aren’t in the 21st century where every energy supplier has the facility to take meter readings online. If you are too stupid to submit regular readings then you deserve what you get.
In the UK at least – it’s obvious where the final battle line will be drawn.
Today it’s our Hoovers – soon though it will be our electric kettles.
The kettle is the most iconic symbol of what it means to be a Brit. The biggest fault line in our relationship with our American & European cousins is the pathetic temperature of the tea they offer us.
British tea is highly energy intensive. The kettle is powerful & allowed to boil vigorously for several seconds before we’re absolutely sure the water will be hot enough. Then we boil it for a few more seconds – just in case. Our reliable local kettle manufacturers understand the importance of this ritual, and adjust their kettle thermostats to fill our kitchens with enough steam to convince us that the tradition is being honoured.
I expect, even as we speak, some gaggle of whey-faced, grey suited, EU apparatchiks are working themselves up into a self -righteous frenzy over the sheer waste of energy involved.
They will, inevitably, come for our kettles – and that will be where they meet their doom.
ISIL will be pussycats compared with the Brits defending their kettles.
Chesterton understood this, and could well have said:-
We hear men speaking for us of new tea strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man breweth as we brew in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God’s scorn for EU governing. For we know our tea is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget
Michael D says:
August 22, 2014 at 9:57 pm
We have too many Hoovers anyway. Most of them are just gathering dust.
My neighbours just asked why I let out a groan.
Just FYI, from the Dyson website: “Dyson has never engineered a machine with a motor rated higher than 1600W. We campaigned for motor wattage caps for vacuum cleaners, and welcome the fact that the energy label will introduce a maximum power input for new vacuum cleaners, capping motors at 1600W in order to reduce their electricity usage”
Personally, I use a Sebo upright (1300W), and quite frankly, I can’t imagine why a vacuum would need to have much higher power than this beast. And I have no problem with a general drive towards more efficient designs – the automotive industry has made some amazing progress.
Still think the new regs are lunacy, though – the actual impact in total energy usage will be “in the noise”…
And then they came for your vacuum cleaner…
About the EU buerocrats : Hey, can you explain the word “vacuum”? Eeeh, i just can’t get it, but I got it in my brain!
People will not use more passes, since they cannot see whether the carpet has been cleaned or not They’ll assume that whatever they passed over is clean.
Most people won’t actually notice, but whatever money and environment is saved in electricity will be paid out a thousandfold in the rise of avoidable diseases from a dirty environment that affects people with a weakened immune system, asthma and allergies.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 23, 2014 at 2:48 am
“If the 900W only has half the force you need, it will take considerably longer than twice as it may never get done.”
That’s true, a persistent dog hair in a thick rug/carpet may never be dislodged by a 900w vacuum cleaner which would result in a person removing it manually, therefor the extra load would be time it takes to manually remove the dog hair times the amount of hairs, it could actually more than double someones work load, this is why I mentioned that “There is a reason for higher wattage vacuum cleaners”
Would this ban effect industry? or can a person by a industrial carpet cleaner for domestic use? because this is what will happen.
This ban gets dumber the more you look into it.
*buy
The logic behind this ban seems lacking.
But I guess the idea is that banning anything makes people think it’s haram and so encourages people to think about other forms of energy usage.
What I’m thinking is that flying Eurocrats around is wasteful of energy.
They should be detained in one small place to work more closely together in an ever closer union..