how to choose bags and filters for vacuum cleaner

The right vac­u­um clean­er will not only col­lect all the dust in the house, but also will not release a sin­gle speck out: thanks to the fil­tra­tion sys­tem, up to 99.97% of the col­lect­ed dust remains inside the vac­u­um clean­er. How­ev­er, if the fil­ters and dust col­lec­tors are clogged or worn out, the effi­cien­cy of the appli­ance will be reduced. In this case, you need to replace the fil­ters or bags for the vac­u­um clean­er.

Two types of dust bags

The design of the vac­u­um clean­er is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the sev­en cir­cles of hell for the garbage that enters the device. The first cir­cle, or the first lev­el of fil­tra­tion, is a dust col­lec­tor, a spe­cial con­tain­er in a vac­u­um clean­er, where all the garbage is brought in with air through a hose. Dust col­lec­tors come in the form of plas­tic or glass con­tain­ers, but vac­u­um clean­ers with bags are more pop­u­lar.

The sim­plest and most bud­getary are dis­pos­able bags. Made from paper or syn­thet­ics. Dust col­lec­tors made of sev­er­al lay­ers of thick paper trap even micron-sized par­ti­cles of dust. Dis­pos­able con­sum­ables are changed as they get dirty: when the vac­u­um clean­er bag is full, it is removed and thrown away. Quick and easy, with min­i­mal con­tact with dust par­ti­cles, which is impor­tant for dust aller­gies. As a rule, one bag is enough for a month of use or 3–4 clean­ings. Dis­pos­able bags are sold in sets of 5–10 pieces.

Reusable dust col­lec­tors are fab­ric or syn­thet­ic. Such bags are not thrown away as they are filled, but shak­en out and washed peri­od­i­cal­ly. In this case, con­tact with dust can­not be avoid­ed, besides, the fil­tra­tion fine­ness is low­er than that of paper bags, but reusable dust col­lec­tors are changed less fre­quent­ly — once every 3–6 months.

Coarse and fine cleaning: which filters are installed in vacuum cleaners

In addi­tion to dust col­lec­tors, vac­u­um clean­ers use at least two more lev­els of fil­tra­tion:

• input fil­ters: installed in front of the motor unit of the vac­u­um clean­er;
• final fil­ters: locat­ed in front of the out­let of the unit.

No pasaran: dust will not pass to the engine

The inlet fil­ter for the vac­u­um clean­er is designed to pro­tect the engine and motor block ele­ments from dust par­ti­cles that could get out of the bag or flask and went to “walk” around the vac­u­um clean­er. This is the sec­ond lev­el of air purifi­ca­tion in a vac­u­um clean­er. The motor is pro­tect­ed by car­bon or foam rub­ber fil­ters, devices made of pressed paper or syn­thet­ic fibers. These vac­u­um clean­er fil­ters change as they get dirty.

Out­let fil­ters are need­ed to trap par­ti­cles inside the vac­u­um clean­er and keep the air clean in the room. For this pur­pose, stan­dard devices are used, as well as fine fil­ters that trap up to 99.97% of debris, includ­ing the small­est dust frac­tions.

Types of fine fil­ters:

• elec­tro­sta­t­ic micro­fil­ters: cap­ture dust par­ti­cles larg­er than 0.3 microns. It is rec­om­mend­ed to replace the con­sum­able every 5–6 months or after replac­ing 5 paper bags in the vac­u­um clean­er;
• HEPA fil­ters: high­ly effec­tive air clean­er. The pleat­ed fil­ter is made of sheet fibrous mate­r­i­al and holds par­ti­cles as small as 1 µm. HEPA con­sum­ables are changed as they get dirty;
• S‑filters: devices with the high­est class of clean­ing. Designed for 50 hours of vac­u­um clean­er oper­a­tion. If a fil­ter that can be washed is used, then the ser­vice life is increased to sev­er­al years.

Dozens of dust col­lec­tors and fil­ters are avail­able in the spe­cial­ty store. The choice of a par­tic­u­lar fil­ter depends on the mod­el and type of vac­u­um clean­er. The main thing is to change fil­ters and bags in a time­ly man­ner, and then there will be no prob­lems with clean­ing.