A TOP Dyson designer has revealed exactly how fast to move your vacuum cleaner – and going slower can actually save you time.
It turns out that racing around your house isn’t necessarily the best way to get the cleaning out of the way quickly.
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Vacuuming an entire house can be a bit of a nightmare, especially if you’ve got loads of furniture, carpets, and a dog or cat.
So going fast can be tempting now that vacuum cleaners are often wireless and lightweight – just look at Dyson’s impossibly thin new PencilVac.
SPEED TEST
I took a trip to Dyson’s Oxfordshire campus where I heard from Dyson designer Jonny Gray, who revealed the exact speed you’ll want to be moving your vacuum cleaner.
“To be exact, about 0.3 metres a second is probably where you want to be in terms of speed,” Jonny explained.
That’s a 30cm ruler, so if you imagine moving across one of those every second, you’re getting it right.
“I’m sorry to say that the slower you go, the cleaner your floors will be,” Jonny said.
Of course, he warned that you can also end up going too slow.
The Dyson design whiz said you’ll get “diminishing returns the more you go over it”.
So it’s important to not go too slow or fast – and stick to the 30cm rule.
“The IEC standards that we get are 0.5 metres a second,” Jonny, Senior Design Manager at Dyson, told us.
“But we have demonstrated that you get around 100% pick-up over the course of three passes with 0.3 metres a second speed.”
If you rush around, your vacuum cleaner will end up missing bits.
And if you go too slow, you’re simply wasting time – and it won’t be worth the wait.
FOOD FOR FLOORS
Jonny, who works on vacuum cleaners at Dyson’s gigantic Malmesbury campus, spends time trying to pick up all manner of difficult debris.
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And he also told The Sun that Cheerios are one of the trickiest things for a vacuum cleaner to collect due to their size.
But he warned that US-style Froot Loops are even trickier to collect.
Dog biscuits are also difficult for vacuum cleaners to pick up, Jonny revealed.
But the brainy Dyson designer explained that if you follow the 30cm rule, you should be able to get a “100% pick-up” rate – even during a nightmare Cheerio spillage.
WHAT’S IN DYSON’S SECRET FOOD CUPBOARD?
Here’s what The Sun’s tech editor Sean Keach found inside the Dyson cupboard…
- Porridge oats
- Rice
- Pasta
- Long-grain rice
- Nylon pieces
- Japanese sushi rice
- Japanese tea leaves
- Sugar
- Bread crumbs
- Finishing plaster
- Cotton wool balls
- Cheerios
- Popping corn
- Cat food
- Hair
- Tapioca pearls
- Froot Loops
- Dog biscuits
- Bicarbonate of soda
- Cat litter
Picture Credit: Sean Keach
Dyson’s Lab includes a cupboard filled with different materials for testing with its vacuum cleaners.
That includes porridge oats, British and even American rice, sugar, cotton wool, and cat litter.
And they even have Japanese sushi rice and tea leaves, to make sure that the vacuum cleaners they flog to Japan are up to snuff.
Read iconic British inventor Sir James Dyson’s exclusive comment piece for The Sun here.
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