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New EU Rules Will Limit Vacuum Cleaners To 1600W
AmiMoJo writes "New EU rules are limiting vacuum cleaner motors to 1600W from 2014/09/01. The EU summary of the new rules explains that consumers currently equate watts with cleaning power, which is not the case. Manufacturers will be required to put ratings on packaging, including energy efficiency, cleaning efficiency on hard and carpeted floors, and dust emissions from the exhaust. In the EU vacuum cleaners use more energy than the whole of Denmark, and produce more emissions than dishwashers and washing machines."
1600W is about two horse powers, and if you think you can keep a house clean with two horses running though it, I have a barn to sell you.
/me shows self to door
it's more efficient to have plumbing systems.
shoveling shit used to be a real job you know.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
In the US our consumer-grade vacuum cleaners are already effectively capped around the same wattage. The standard household electrical outlet is rated to provide 15 amps and does so somewhere between 100 and 125 volts. That's 1500-1875 watts as the maximum any single device clet an expect to pull without requiring a special outlet. Nothing in reality expects the higher end of the spectrum because it's by no means guaranteed.
Somehow we get along just fine, residential or commercial, with pretty much the same as what this limit allows. /me awaits some Brit who's come to explain how their 240v 13A outlets allow them to suck the carpet right off the floor with their cleaners.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
They can have my 2000watt vacuum cleaner when they pry my cold dead hands... Wait, the EU? Nevermind. Whar's mah beer?
Wowser, I feel better about my laziness already. My room might have a 3/4" layer of dust on the floor, but I'm saving the ice packs one lie-in at a time!
Our Vorwerk vacuum cleaners only use around 200 W...
Denmark uses about 34TWh/year. EU has about 500M citizen. A vacuum cleaner is using about 2kW.
That gives about 30 vacuum-hours per year per citizen, or about 1h per 10 days (rounding in different directions).
Seems remarkably reasonable.
I don't understand the meddling of capping the power though. Just make sure everything needs to be marked with how much !/W you get from the items. I'm sure most consumers are interested in the actual work performed by the vacuum, not how much you put in. But the sellers are of course interested in hiding it.
(. Soon they will cap your hifi at 40W and tapwater taps at 1dl/minute. .)
The EU found yet another way of telling me what to do. They should mind their own business, and stop wasting tax money.
no, I don't have a sig
My Roomba is using about 30 Watts for its vacuum and that is more than enough.
If 1600W is enough, then just buy two vacuum cleaners. Duh.
My vacuum cleaner has official Windows XP and Windows 7 stickers.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I've heard rumors that they have a nice tea party in Boston.
©God
Vacuum cleaners
Last time I looked 1400W was common, now 2400W is common.
I'd be happy if they banned putting the Wattage in the product title as a temporary measure, no doubt some of these 2400W are still crap and edging towards being a fire hazard with that much power enclosed in a small space.
What do you do with your vac' when you've finished with it? Shove it in the cupboard with lots of highly flammable materials, perhaps underneath the stairs?
Quick search confirms it happens:
https://www.google.co.uk/searc...
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
> consumers currently equate watts with cleaning power
I equate the word 'Dyson' with cleaning power.
I have hardwood floors. I use a broom. It's peaceful and meditative. I do not understand why people like carpet. It gets dirty FAST, it traps bad things, it offgasses weird chemicals, and vacumn cleaners are loud and annoying.
It's about consumer, not industrial/medical, moron.
Do they have commercial class vaxuums in the EU? For people that run a cleaning business, or for hospitals etc.
A friend of mine ran a cleaning business in NZ, and used backpack vacuum cleaners. Not sure of the power rating but they could really suck.
Don't ban it. Don't tax it. Educate people and you won't have to do either.
Lightbulbs as well as high wattage vacuums are not really in the interest of the user. All you have to do is to tell people. People are not stupid. Especially when you tell them how to save money. And this goes directly to their wallets. Both of them. More efficient light sources and vacuum cleaners mean less power used, and less power used means less money spent. Even if the initial cost goes up you can easily break even long, long before the item expires.
If the EU wanted to put their money where their mouth is, they'd promote the efficient solutions and offer tax rebates or subsidies for people using them. It would be far more sensible than 99% of the subsidies they hand out already.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's still a real job, but today we call that a politician.
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Are people addicted to noise? What's wrong with a broom and an occasional mop?
(OK, I can understand the use case of robotic vacuums for cats.)
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/p... says
"[Assuming efficiency improvements of 16% to 33%...] Estimated per-unit annual savings for residential vacuums are on the order of 10-19 kWh/year... Considering there are approximately 28 million vacuums sold in the U.S. each year, the national energy savings opportunity would be on the order of 67,000-135,000 MWh per year if 25% of products sold were replaced with energy efficient models"
Contrast that the the document linked in TFA: ... of vacuum cleaners
will be reduced by 19 TWh"
http://ec.europa.eu/smart-regu... says
"[Vaccuum cleaners sold per year in 2005 and 2020: 54 million and 92 million]... [Energy consumed by vacuum cleaners under business-as-usual by 2020: 29.7 TWH/year]... by 2020, the annual electricity consumption
So, 67 TWh annual savings in US vs. 19 TWh annual savings in EU in spite of twice as many vacuum cleaners sold per year in the EU. Is there just more dirt in the US? Or was the Energy Star scoping report just overoptimistic?
All you have to do is to tell people. People are not stupid.
Then how do you explain the fact that after well over a decade of people being "educated" that Triclosan in hand soap is useless and probably dangerous, almost every soap on the market is still laced with it?
I'll explain it: such education simply doesn't work. The average person can not hold enough factoids in their brains to make the correct decisions on all of the things they need to purchase in modern life. Morever, the manufacturers are constantly bombarding those same people with misinformation and half-truths to promote their products. (This soap is Antibacterial!!!)
Without a ban, tax tweaks, or large mandatory warning box on the package that says "This vacuum an ineficient power hog. Do not buy.", then absolutely nothing will happen. (I'll also point out that the difference between increasing the tax on one thing and rebating it on something else is purely academic. They're both effectively raising the share of overall tax burden on one set of goods and reducing it on the complementery set.)
Even if the initial cost goes up you can easily break even long, long before the item expires.
...and they'd do good to emphasize that, and also, avoid exaggerating other claims.
Part of the problem with CFLs ten years ago was that the packaging advertised that you'd save $230/year and that they would last for a decade. Then, some of the early ones would go bad within a few months, leaving people to feel like they were a complete waste of money.
The smart thing would be to have a table on the back of the box, showing "if you use a bulb ___ hours a day" and indicate both how long it takes to pay back the initial investment for the bulb and how much you'll save after that and how long the bulb will last being used that much. I use my bulbs eight hours a day at least, which means using a 25 watt CFL vs. a 100 watt incandescent saves me $2.34/month, and so even when the bulbs were $5 a piece and dying a few months after purchase, they were still saving me money. ...but the box didn't say that, because it was focused on something ridiculous like one hour a day of use, just so that they could claim the things would last 20 years. Maybe in sunny California people only use their bulbs one hour a day, but where I live, the skies are overcast all winter long and so if you don't turn on some lights in your house during the day you're going to end up with a sleep disorder. So people buy the bulbs which claim to last at least 10 years, use them 10 times as much as the people who wrote the info on the box assumed, and when the things die in six months (still earlier than indicated even in terms of lifetime hours, because just like the manufacturer underestimated daily usage, they also overestimated how many hours the bulb would last), they assume the bulbs were a waste of money and don't buy more.
Education only works if you're completely honest with people. Otherwise they detect some of your bullshit and assume everything else you said was bullshit too. Give them an expensive bulb that they're already adverse to buying due to the cost, tell them it'll last 10 years, then have it last not even as long as a cheap incandescent, and they're going to instantly forget any claims you made about it also saving them money on their electric bill. You already lied to them once, so they're not going to continue to trust other claims you make.
I imagine the reason this shit always comes down to passing a new law is because people just aren't that interested in education and choice. When they try education, they're not honestly wanting to educate so that people can choose what's best for them, they're trying to force someone to make the decision they want. So they exaggerate all of the positive features and completely fail to tell people what negative features to expect. It's manipulation, perhaps manipulation that is everyone's own best interest, but manipulation none the less. People don't like being manipulated, and so as soon as they catch on, they resist the "education" and go back to doing what they were doing before. So, having failed to control people with manipulation, they resort to controlling people with laws. It's the logical next step.
If you have that much laundry to do regularly, you could always do it at the coin laundry instead of buying and maintaining a washer and dryer, buying water to run the washer, and buying gas or electric power to heat the water and dryer.
I live in the Canadian prairies. Our block heater is 400W. When it's -40, you need the heat.
Consumers want number(s) to base their decisions upon. The wattage problem could have easily been solved by putting useful measurements of vacuum effectiveness on the packaging, such as guaranteed pressure drop and flow rate over the life of the product.
And the industry could do that all by itself without any regulation.
I have a commercial wet-dry vac, certified for wood dust (from Festool). It requires less than 1kW but is significantly more efficient than my 2.3kW Siemens vacuum due to its better design (e.g., the Siemens has very hot exhaust, the Festool doesn't).
I am glad EU takes care of the vacuum cleaners problem. At least it will do little harm here.
When EU tackled economical problems, they managed to ruin entire countries and lower citizen life expectancy. I am sure dead people wil enjoy having better vacuum cleaners.
I don't believe vacuum cleaners are a major factor in energy usage in any country. I don't care how fastidious the Dutch are, they are probably not vacuuming ten hours a day.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
http://www.g0cwt.co.uk/arc/new...
Patents issued in 2009 - manufacturer interest, nearly zero.
"Consumers want number(s) to base their decisions upon"
They do in the EU - "air watts"