phil.p":2ew0wl09 said:
I use bags
1/ for convenience of emptying, and
2/ because my friend spend spent his working life repairing domestic elecricals and he told always to use bags as the vast majority of vacuums he'd either condemned or replaced motors on had been used without bags.
I had hoped it was obvious I was only referring to personal workshop type usage and yes HSE - whole other story, but then the company will have the bags as consumables and a tax deductable.
Phil.p, yes but you are talking domestic vacs, and probably where people haven't exactly taken care of it - we have had the same vac for the last 15 years, a panasonic, requires bags but also has a prefilter for the motor - which I regularly remove, wash and replace so it actually works... The Lidl one, and the model the OP is talking about both have a filter before it gets to the motor, and I have to assume as they come with a 3 year guarentee they have been tested for the motor to withstand a degree of fine particles that might get through the paper filter, which is no different than the type you get for your car.
My pillow case prefilter has meant I can use it without bags for the majority of the stuff I pick up - and the paper filter gets the fine stuff.
It really does work, easy to shake out or wash if it's really grimey, takes a minute or two and saves me more than I can earn in the same timespan even if I were working flat out.
Oh and you're never at risk of the vac suddenly blowing a cloud of dust into the room when a bag tears inside** - I had my fathers karcher wet n dry do that twice in the same bloody day inside the swimming pool room, because he INSISTS on bags for much the same reason - next they come round I'm buying him a Lidl one and doing the pillow case thing. **or when they become disconnected.
@Stanleymonkey - does it have that circular fabric filter 'tween the collection area and the motor?
I just hose that down once in a while ( 1 or 2 times a year?) with a bit of fairy liquid, then it works again catching the fine particles, but that's because I use it attached to a sander when working in peoples houses.