How to make your carpets look new again (Dyson DC15 Allergy)

Member Name: saraha007

Product:	Dyson DC15 Allergy
Date:	28/01/06 (1611 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Doesn't just clean the surface of your carpet like most hoovers

Disadvantages: Is slightly heavier than some hoovers

I only got the Dyson DC15 Allergy by chance. I originally set out to buy the Dyson DC14 Allergy priced at £278.95. What happened was a couple of weeks ago I was looking on the Argos website and noticed that most of the Dyson hoovers had big discounts and the DC14 Allergy was in the sale for £180. The only trouble was they were completely out of stock. As I wasn’t to sure how long this sale would last and didn’t want to pay full price for a Dyson I looked at the next option up – the Dyson DC15 Allergy which I found was reduced from £339.95 down to £240 and it was in stock. Well seeing as this was cheaper than the other version at full price I decided to go for it.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Well I got the Dyson home and took it out of its box together with its set of instructions and its 2 year guarantee and I have to admit it did look pretty impressive considering it’s just a hoover after all! Its colour is silver and white with yellow on the carry handle, on/off switch and the ball. Now you are probably wondering what association a ball can have with a hoover. Well this is the main difference between the DC14 and DC15 in that it has a ball joint – this enables the hoover to steer smoothly with the turn of a wrist, great for going around tight corners and so you can clean with less effort involved. I got the impression from looking at this hoover though that it would be quite complicated to work out how to use – however looking at it more closely there weren’t lots of buttons to press so I felt reassured that perhaps I could get used to using this quite quickly.

INSTRUCTIONS
So out came the instructions. I couldn’t wait to try it out. I was pleased the instructions were kept very basic with pictures making it very easy to understand. To my surprise also there were only 8 pages of basic instructions and within 10 minutes I was ready to start. For those of you who want to take even less time to work this hoover there is also the ‘Quick Guide’ instructions that come with this which consists of just 6 easy to understand diagrams which would probably take no more than a couple of minutes to work out.

OFF WE GO
So first I undo the lead on the back of the hoover. It has a very convenient clip on it to hold all the leads nice and tightly together so they don’t flap about when the hoover is not in use. I noticed the lead was much longer than that on my previous bog standard hoover which I found to be great as I didn’t have to keep searching for another socket every 5 minutes. I then place my foot on the back of the hoover to release the catch enabling the handle to drop down to the level I feel best at hovering from and then switch the on button on and off I go. This hoover is slightly louder than I had expected but it sounds incredibly powerful and as soon as I started hoovering the carpet I could see the difference straight away. You could see it wasn’t just reaching the surface of the carpet to remove dust but it was really getting deep down and giving the carpet a through clean. I found the ball joint to the hoover a bit complicated to get used to at first but once I’d got the hang of it I could see its advantages as it really did become very easy to manoeuvre. The other thing I found good with this hoover was that it hasn’t got a rubber edging around the bottom of the hoover which is what has always stopped me in the past of being able to hoover right up as close to the skirting boards as I could, but now that was possible which meant less time fiddling about with the crevice attachment to clean round the edges of the carpet.

STAIRS
The great thing with this hoover is it has an amazing telescopic reach system with a quick release wand which expands so you can leave the main part of the hoover at the bottom of the stairs and the wands attachment (the hose) will stretch right to the top of the stairs. The hoover comes with 3 attachments – the stair tool, brush tool and crevice tool. I found the stair tool very easy to use and it was so much easier this way than to have to try and drag the hoover up the stairs as I was trying to clean them at the same time. I then replaced the wand tool and attachment to the hoover and carried the hoover up the stairs by its yellow handle. In my opinion this hoover is a bit heavier to hold in comparison to my other hoover.

EMPTYING THE HOOVER BIN
Well I have to say, I live in a small 3 bedroom semi-detached house and there isn’t all that much carpet to clean and yet already I have a full clear bin on the hoover (this hoover doesn’t use hoover bags – another plus point). Well this just goes to show just how effective this hoover is. My other hoover obviously wasn’t cleaning the carpets anywhere near as well and it was quite a shock to discover the amount that had probably been collecting in the carpets over the years.

So what was it like to empty the contents from the clear bin – well it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. There is a small release catch on the back of the hoover which releases the bin from the hoover. Then you just press the button on the bin and the bottom of the bin drops down enabling you to empty it directly into the dustbin, although I would advice putting it in a bag first and then putting the bag in the dustbin other wise every time you open the dustbin you will get a load of dust flying about everywhere.

OVERALL IMPRESSION
This hoover has so many plus points over my standard hoover that I feel it is really worth spending the extra money on. Looking at the carpets afterwards they look new from where it has given them a really nice finish. It’s certainly proved it is very effective from the amount of dust it picked up. The only negative for me was just the fact it is slightly heavier to lift, but it has so many positive points that they outweigh the negative. It took me less time to hoover than it normally would, its very user friendly and I don’t have to buy any more hoover bags ever again.

In the DC15 range there is also the cheaper all floors hoover and the slightly more expensive animal hoover. I would certainly advice waiting for a sale also before you go out and buy one of these as they are expensive and many sales offer up to £100 off so keep your eyes open for a good bargain.

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

Summary: There are so many positive points about this hoover its well worth paying the extra.

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