Repairs

The vaccuum cleaner suddenly sucked.  By which I mean it failed to.  It's not like I overuse the poor thing.  :)

But I vacuumed the bedroom carpet and was still stepping on "bits"  (Ayla likes to eat in the bedroom).  So I checked the bag.  Empty.  I disconnected the hose and checked it.  Empty.  It's a cannister vacuum so I checked and I disconnected the tube from the head and hose.  Empty.

"SIGH*  I know what that means.  The Power Nozzle (that part on the floor) was clogged.  So... I took it of the push-tube and examined it.  There were 6 bolts holding it together.  I coudn't see what the heads of the bolts were but guessed at phillips-head and was right.  

Took a while to loosen them.  The 2 halves of the power nozzle still didn't want to separate.  Well, usually anything that is put together can be unput together, so I examined it for a while.  I could see the different halves of it (different colors made it sort of obvious) but I couldn't get them to separate.

I finally realized that 2 bolts I thought were loose weren't.  I went at them harder (they didn't want to release at first).  But succeeded.  And it still required some prying and pulling.    It gave a liitle, so I knew it wasn't locked in place with catch-pins (those evil things that are designed to connect together once and never to be unattached except with special tools).

I got the final 2 bolts ("machine screws" technically as they don't have nuts on the other end and are more like untapered screws).  And finally the 2 halves of the power nozzle can apart.

It was packed full of cat hair.  I shouldn't have been surprised, I suppose, but isn't that what a vacuum cleaner with a powered brush is SUPPOSED to remove successfully?

Talk about a mess!  The entire thing was packed with cat hair (and around here, that is what "dust bunnies" ARE.  It's not like *I* shed much.  :)

The brush roller looked like a cat hair brush used too often.  And when I removed that, I discovered the entire 10" of tube leading to the hose was packed.  The cat hair wasn't even GETTING into the sucky tube, nevermind the collection bag.  

I was amazed at how much cat fur I pulled out of the power nozzle.  I think there was a "Marley-volume of fur".  But with pulling some out with needle-nose pliers and pushing at the back end with the handle of a screwdriver, I got it all cleaned.  There were some deep corners with fur and the pliers got those too.

But to be sure, I took the power nozzle out on the deck and banged it on the rails.  Bits of dried food and grit came out!  Quite a lot.  So I took it back in to reassemble the power nozzle.  

The brushbar didn't want to stay in place.  So I thought of what the part HAD to look like and went back out the deck to find it.  I did, and was exactly what I thought it would look like.  Fit back perfectly.

I screwed all the machine bolts back in but was missing one.  Damn, more searching.  Finally found it on the lawn below where I banged the grit out on the rail.  Whew!

Then I re-vaccuumed the bedroom carpet.  Worked perfectly.  So I tied a label to the hose "Not Working?  Clean power nozzle".  I don't have the world's best memory, so reminders help.  10 years from now, when I've forgotten about this, that will give me a clue!

Cleaning Leads To More Cleaning

All I wanted to do was clean the bathroom.  I did the usual from up to down and then it came time to mop the floor.

The sqeezie sponge disintegrated!  The local stores did not stock a replacement.  So, I wiped the floor with small towel from a bucket.  And then wiped it again with clean water.  The mats were drying after being soaked in the laundry tub with a bit of laundry detergent.  After they were rinsed several times the next day outside (garden hose and I left them out to be rained on), I waited for them to dry.

They wouldn't.  Cold humidity is really useless for drying.  It took 5 days for them to get half dry and then I just dragged them into the basement and waited.  And waited.  So they eventually dried and I was ready to put them back in place.

But there was dry grit on the floor, so I decided to vacuum the floor with my stick vacuum.  After a pass, there was more dirt on the floor then before.  Oh damn.  So I dragged the larger cannister vacuum out.  That was useless!  No pickup at all.

So I checked the both for being filled.  The stick bagless container was empty.  The cannister bag was empty.  That meant problems.

I'm not the world's best fix-it guy.  But I can try some things by logic.  It took 15 minutes to figure out how to take the cannister suction head apart.  I got the screws all loose easily, but nothing wanted to come aprt.  Which made no sense.  What were the screws for?

It occurred to me to turn the suction head over.  Then the top came right off.  You wouldn't belief what I found inside!  The entire suction head was packed with cat hair.  There was almost an entire cat in there.  And to be fair given the length, a fair amount of my own hair.

I started by just picking stuff out from the brushes.  Then I realized it was far more involved.  I got some pliers to pull more out. But if I had it to do over again, I would have brought it to the garage and used the air compressor and blow it all out faster.

On the other hand, I know more about the insides of the suction head, so maybe it was worth it.  In any case, when I put it back together, it worked like NEW!  Dang the sucker (literally) worked great.  So I did the rest of the house.

That's how things go sometimes.  You try to do a small thing and it turns into a big thing and you are glad you did it.  I did the whole kitchen like that last week.  Started with cleaning the M/W and the entire kitchen was clean 3 hours later.

And I did get the bathroom mats set back in place...