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The Vacuum Doctor Wins Nilfisk-Alto Western Australian Vacuum Cleaner Dealer Of The Year 2008

Feb 15th 2009

It came out of the blue, NILFISK-ALTO blue specifically!!

On the 11th of February 2009, Andrew Olson, W.A State Sales Manager for NILFISK-ALTO dropped by to see The Vacuum Doctor, and had a pleased smile on his face as he presented Andy & Tricia Hawcroft of The Vacuum Doctor with the Nilfisk-Alto 2008 Western Australian Dealer of the year for vacuums!!

To a guy who had never even won a chook raffle, this was big news!! But as Andy will always remind you, he's not a salesman, he's just a service guy who supplies fair dinkum products people want to buy, great products will sell themselves & the Xtreme range of vacuums from Nilfisk-Alto are great products!!

Here's to more success in the future!!
Vacuum Doctor Starts Blogging

Jan 1st 2009

Hello & welcome to the Vacuum Doctors Blog!! Here I hope to make some helpful entries about useful information regarding quality, effective, cleaning.

As you can see, from the home page of our site, there's a YouTube video about our favorite product, the Nilfisk-Alto Xtreme Clean vacuum in blue, or the grey Nilfisk-Advance IVB version. Essentially these are the same products, but with the refinements of a piezo (read, annoying) beeper, and tougher, more extensive tool set on the Grey-line. The choice is up to the purchaser, but we at the Vacuum Doctor have great faith in both of them.

Although the video is very good, & shows exactly what the machine can do, I'll describe what I've actually done with the machine.

I have been servicing a local Perth customer, a division of a large international company for almost 20 years now, and they have had the tried & tested Nilfisk GS 82 for longer than 20 years, being used on their powder coating, paint line, which uses very fine, and getting finer all the time, powdercoating. After each shift end, and the finish of each batch of paint colour, the booth is cleaned down, as well as carrying out general housekeeping of surfaces around the booth area.

The machine was initially sold with a paper dust-bag kit, a 205 litre separator & tow bracket, which together, would probably cost over $4,000 + GST now. Soon after the machine was purchased, the separator became an extra large garbage bin, & lived out it's life collecting dust (pardon the pun!) hidden between the powder coating booth & the wall. This was because it was too cumbersome to use and move around, let alone remove & empty the large and now very heavy, sack of spent powdercoating which had been vacuumed up from the floor & was inside the drum. After the sacks removal from the separator, it then had to be baked in the oven to make it safe for disposal.

As the years passed, at various times it became an OH & S "issue" & we submitted various quotes for different ways to ease the handling of the waste paint, so it could be baked. The easiest way was to use the Nilfisk GS 82 alone, with disposable paper 46 litre dust-bags, which soon burst after being put in the machine, and the operator would then have to carefully & laboriously empty the dust container with a scoop, after the useful suction had died away, as it did, when the dust-bags pores became clogged. Then, every 3 months when I did the routine maintenance on the unit, I would have to fully empty the container, complete with the burst bag remnants, & the vacuum the dust from the main filter. All this was very time consuming.

Now, when the Nilfisk-Alto Xtreme Clean range became available to us, and I discovered one of the units was an "Easy Disposal" (ED) unit, I recommend this customer replace the old Nilfisk GS 82 with this unit. I brought one round to demonstrate the cleaning power & ease of use, & so confident were we of a sale, it was left on site over Christmas, for the customer to use.

In deed, they did buy it, so when I went around to complete the sale, I thought I'd see how the machine performed in the real world. So, as the Nilfisk GS 82 was to be de-commissioned, I sucked the entire 50 litre contents of the dust container clean, of the powder coating,

and then without stopping, vacuumed clean the 20 year plus cotton main filter, so it was as white as snow! This can be seen from the picture.

I then stopped the Nilfisk-Alto Attix 763-21 ED Xtreme Clean, and watched as the powder coating dropped out of the hopper, through the clam gate into the bag. This could then be simply removed from the machine frame, the bag secured at the top with a plastic tie, and baked in an old metal paint container, until it was solid.

My curiosity was still not satisfied, so I then removed the TYPE M PET cartridge filter, to find this as clean as a whistle on the inside, with no visible dust having passed through the rinseable, PET media. Again this can be seen in the photographs.

Now I have these machines in bakeries working with flour, chemical companies used on fine powders, and floor grinding applications which produce extremely fine concrete dust and all work without problems. The task I must stress is necessary, for trouble free operation, is following that little diagram on the side of the machine that shows a hand blocking off the hose, or the intake to the vacuum to enable the vacuum to do the backwards flow of air through each alternate half of the filter, to maximize the cleaning effect.

During a short break during the job, the top part with filter can be removed, the dust from the filter brushed down into the dust container, and then the filter securing band released. This band traps dust in the pleats at this point & it's a good idea to vacuum or gently tap this accumulation free. Then turn it so a different group of pleats are beneath the clamp. As the use of dustbags is un-necessary in this style of machine, making them very economical, may I suggest the filters be replaced every couple of years or so, or more, when used for concrete grinding.

When these machines are used intensively, for concrete grinding, I suggest the filters are vacuumed off each night, then removed from the machine & rinsed down under the tap & then dried in the fresh air. Ideally, have 2 filters & alternate their use.