We have the Dyson Animal because we have carpet and a dog. The vacuum does an amazing job and sucks hard right up until the full mark on the canister. Pop it off and push the button to empty it and your good to go. Love my Dyson

Ok I'll go on a limb here - never having owned a Dyson when I shopped for a new vac I was totally underwhelmed with the thing. I ended up going to Sears and buying their mid range canister vac for a total $270 savings...that included an extended 5 year extended warranty. Well after 3.5 years the Sears vac was on it's last leg and with my warranty - got a brand freaking new vac for free.

Did you know there is a filter under the canister?

Our Dyson Animal has been great for years. I even vacuum the Porsche with it. It gets used all the time; no issues.

Get a Royal Model 4000, it'a made of cast metal, picks up everything and has a headlight! It's heavy but easy to roll and you can get a metal attachment kit for $70 to do wood floors, furniture, stairs, etc... We have a Golden Retriever and the Royal pick up the dog hair with no problems!

Our Dyson has been great for a couple of years, when we bought it we **thought** we had a well cleaned house that was vacuumed every week by our conventional vacuum.

For the first year the Dyson sucked up a canister of crap every time we vacuumed, incuding about 2 cups of what looked like talcum powder but what I fear was actually dead skin and crap that the old vacuum missed.

The thing sucks consistently and more powerfully than any other vacuum I have ever used, but I agree, the plastic build is not very confidence inspiring and if you are not a gentle hand with your stuff it will definitely break. I wish they would build an aluminium/titanium/carbon fibre version that would be tougher, sucked just as well and lasts forever.

D.

Dyson Animal. Awesome vacum. Used it constanly. Very heavy usage. never had a problem with it.

Dyson simply rocks awesome more sucking power than a pornnn starrr.

At first yeah I said what a cheap plastic POS this won't last, as I retired the 40 pound Kirby solid metal unit to the closet........


the Dyson simply sucks more, cleans better, is feather light, steerable on the ball.........simply put it is a pleasure to use.


So to the OP, what did your wife run into, or dropped the thing down a flight of stairs to cause the part to break in the first place?

We burned up our Hoover when we moved into our house because the PO had dogs that shed a lot and it was black dog hair. On recommendations from friends we purchased a Dyson Animal and have had good luck with it for several years. I did have to disassemble it once to remove som elong hair that was wrapped around the beater. Mom would borrow it for the stair attachment and she used it on her living room floor after having just vacuumed and was appaled at what her machine left behind. She has had Kirbys to Hoovers and now had a Dyson.

ha, yes actually there are instructions on the canister on when and how to clean it out..

Same here. Fantastic piece of kit...for a vacuum.

We don't have any stairs.

Since my wife (an Ivy League mechanical engineer who can out-weld 99.9% of the guys on this board) yells at me whenever I force/abuse/snarl at any of our appliances or lawn equipment, I tend to think she was actually being pretty gentle with it.

This is what you want!
 

This is what you want!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1348014710.jpg

My Hoover still sucks...nothing else does....;)

I use a Telus (the sort that looks like a Dalek) with a nilfisk filter as I don't like house mites type dust.

My guess is that you guys just happened to get on of the bad ones that slipped through QA.

Wow, that's hot, BTW. (The missus)

My wife has far more earning potential than I do...

Female
Engineer
Bilingual (Japanese/English)
Award-winning artist (kirigami and acrylic painting)
34DD

Yet she is the one who stays home and takes care of the kids while I go to work. Wait a minute...I guess she is smarter than me, too. :D

Our 5 year-old Dyson just broke, too. Costs more to fix than it's worth. On one hand, I suppose 5 years is a decent amount of time. It's broken down once before, but was reparable. So maybe two break-downs in 5 years. On the other hand, for what a Dyson costs, 5 years isn't much time. We also have one of those hand-held Dysons. Very temperamental. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn't. Drives the kids crazy. Repair shop says Dysons are POS and I'm inclined to agree, now.

Miele is the recommended brand. We can get a refurbished one for $300 (new would be $1200) which comes with a 5 year warranty.

I bought my wife the DC41 animal and she loves it. no complaints at all

My wife recently bought a Dyson canister style vacuum. It's a horribly gratuitous design and not readily identifiable as a vacuum cleaner at all. Looks more like a cheap preschooler's toy spaceship. I'm not brave enough to ask what she paid for it.

So after studying it for several minutes just to figure out how to turn it on, I used it to vacuum the carpet in my home office. It didn't work. Not at all. It wouldn't pick up anything :confused: It sounds like a jet engine and ear protection would probably be a good idea. I figured it must need emptying or there's some weird button that needs to be pushed for carpet use. Nope. The machine is working as intended, it just won't clean carpet. I finally gave up and used my $39 Home Depot/Rigid shop vac - worked perfectly.