You’d think it would be easy to buy a dirt sucker upper wouldn’t you?
It slipped being imprinted on my mind with all that’s been going on at home recently.
Today, I went to look for a vacuum cleaner. A petty thing in the grand scheme of keeping heads above water, but the right ones do cut cleaning time to half of a rubbish one.
Shopping for a hoover should be easy? Right?
Only it’s not, as it turns out I’ve missed the Euro disciplinarians rules and when current stocks run out, none of us can buy anything more powerful than a 1,600 watt machine for the next few years.
The EU rules came into force on the 1st September apparently. And worse than that, from 2017, we’ll only be allowed to buy a 900 watt hoover.
What’ll that hoover up?
Oh right! Sod all.
I seriously doubt it would make manufacturers invest in better technology and low powered machines with animals is going to get tricky to cope with.
There’s not much point in having carpets as we can’t get much of the dirt out of them. We might as well simply lay laminate or wood. It would be much less hassle, but bye bye carpet industry and soft cozy toes when it’s cold outside.
Apparently, restrictions on things like hair dryers could very well come soon too. That means I’ll stand with a gently puffing stream of air for half an hour, instead of a high blast from my 2200 watt hairdryer for five minutes. I know which version uses more energy as I have a travel hairdryer around 900 watts and it DOES take about half an hour to dry my hair with.
I know this is too simplistic a way to view the calculation but it helps me look at the difference.
- 30 minutes at 900 watts = 27,000
- 5- 10 minutes at 2200 watts = 11,000 – 22,000
Which version is the flaming ‘energy’ saver?
But wait…..
Is there a positive to this story? I’m not sure. I know Dyson’s are all under about 1300 or 1400 watts, yet they clean well, but what happens when the rules go down to 900 watts?
I am a carer for 2 people with significant needs and 2 others with less.
Higher powered appliances are the difference between me coping and not coping. I do like to sleep sometimes.
This is one shitty rule in my eyes!!
Rant over!