Silly Aerus Lux 5500
We have an Aerus Lux 5500 canister vacuum cleaner. It “features” things like a bag full detector, temperature protection, etc…
Unremarkable, but nothing to complain about. Has a fine particle filter on the exhaust port that actually does a decent job of catching mold, fine dust, and other nasties.
It worked well enough until recently. Suddenly, the damned thing decided that the bag was always full. Put a new bag in, it would run for two seconds then shut down with the bag full light lit.
Annoying. But, wait, the fine particulate matter filter is on the exhaust port. That’s dumb. That means that the really small crap has to float through the whole suction device beyond the bag.
Could it be that the “bag full” detector is simply a sensor that measures the difference between the suction before and after the bag? If it is too great, the bag must be full?
Gotta open it up to find out.
Which immediately put me into design hell. The stupid vacuum cleaner clearly follows the snap together model. Not a single useful screw. The outer shell clearly has a top half and a bottom half with a bit of rubber on a plastic thingy in between. The rubber bit comes off, but the plastic does not move. An end cap snaps off, but only after deflecting the plastic by a half inch or so.
Further examination reveals that the plastic strips on the side actually slide out, but only after you but the ever living hell out of them because they have these fun little “only slide one way” teeth.
Clearly, this thing was not meant to be disassembled and reassembly is obviously going to be painful.
OK– so, now I have it apart. And, sure enough, there is a little network of clear plastic hoses inside that lead to both the power switch and the “how much suck do you want?” dial.
There is a tube connected to the inlet into the vacuum and another one of the tubes is connected to the back of the chamber that holds the bag. With no filter. The tubes lead to a little clear plastic chamber that has a bit of foam in it. The tube is completely coated with fine dust on the inside and the foam is full of dust, too.
Yup, that’s right. The tube connected to the back of the chamber has no filter. So, any random fine particulate matter now has a choice. Go through the motor? Or, maybe, it can head off into the bag full suction comparator.
Easy enough to fix. Remove the stupid tube and seal the whole in the back of the bag chamber. I’m not going to mess with disassembling the bloody tube network further and, frankly, the notion that I don’t want the damned vacuum cleaner at anything but full force is laughable.
Clearly, the designers of this thing assumed the customer was too stupid to check the bag periodically. That may be true for them, given the design decisions made, but I think I’ll manage.
February 5th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
Thank you so much for solving our vacuum cleaner mystery! We, too, were having the identical problem you described so articulately! My husband is an engineer and agrees that this design was intentionally mean to keep all but people who know “your little secret” out of the machine. After reading and following your instructions, we too have a functioning vacuum cleaner. We too feel that we are intelligent enough to remember to periodically check the bag!
You are our hero!!!