Changed little over decades, as most sound technology is (Numatic Henry)

Member Name: Gerhard Schreurs

Product:	Numatic Henry
Date:	16/01/08 (667 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Efficiency, parts availability, simplicity, large filtration system as it should be

Disadvantages: Polypropylene tub a bit thin, box worthless (too flimsy for shipping protection))

Numatic doesn't pay me, nor am I on their personnel list or otherwise related, yet I wrote several reviews on their products because they are honest and decent solutions, contrary to some compact design stuff claiming to be better. I'm in facility management and know what cleaning contractors need and want, in order to deliver efficient results. The tools they work with should perform in a common household equally well. If the cleanliness of a project lacks in any way, the contract is ended. And if a brand of machines lets a trade down, it is abandoned. It's as simple as that.

Numatic's history is told on their own website, suffice it to say that they started in 1969 with the professional market in mind. They took a good look at Kerstar; that brand already catered the boiler maintenance and garage and industrial cleaning trade from 1959 on. Numatic found opportunity in the same niches and started off assembling products from existing readymade parts. Their first products were the NV1 and -2 (NV for Numatic Vac), their first series built machine was the all metal NV250. The number was to designate the drum (canister) size, later the larger 350-version was added.

In the 70s a change in user behaviour was noticed. Cleaning contractors were subject to smaller profit margins due to stiff competition, yet wages grew, so something had to give on the machines and consumables side. Vac makers searched for ways to cut costs. Plastics became ever more durable and wear resistant and colourfast, and the moulding of plastic parts became cheaper. Metal parts made of rolled, stamped, deep drawn, rust protected and enameled steel took far more time and separate processes to make and thus became much more expensive. Welded attachments and drilled holes required even more actions in metal, but were incorporated during moulding in one go with plastics. So machines gained more and more plastic parts and vacs could coincidently be made out of plastics almost entirely.

Apart from machine manufacturing cost and sales price, there was also the issue of spare part logistics. It was costly to maintain a huge spares inventory and associated warehouse personnel. Everyone handing in a vac for repairs, noticed that fact through an evermore heftier parts and labour bill. Machines were written off after a certain time of use, rather than getting repaired. Maintenance was also considered to be a pain in the neck. Cleaning staff came, cleaned the project, stored away the tools and left, all within a strict time and budget regime. The cleaners themselves didn't bother about machine maintenance, broken vacs were replaced or repaired by the foremen or by some inhouse handyman. Therefore a need existed for simple cheap machines with longest possible lifespans, requiring no maintenance up to the point where they were worn and written off. Vac manufacturers either delivered under those conditions or were left alone in favour of competitors who would oblige. Numatic obliged and in the latter 70s the simple and all plastic NV200 was their answer. Numatic used rigorous standardisation, as many models as possible were to share the same components. Therefore motors, wheels, castors, drums, switches, cables, cloth filters, hoses, rods and nozzles were identical on many machine types.

It was a success story. The NV200 gained ground quickly, it had the simplicity and usefulleness of a Landrover. The components that were used were of inexpensive yet sturdy quality and all details that were missing had the advantage that they couldn't break either. As looks go, these vacs were no match for a gleaming Nilfisk canister, but they were a lot cheaper yet shared the same large filter size and motor reliability (in spite of the Numatic motors being much smaller and simpler). Up to this day derivatives of the NV200 are used by most cleaning contractors and roll across millions of square yards of school and office and hospital and shop floor on a daily basis. This goes for the company I work for, too, and for my private household as well.

The 200-model drum was the smallest plastic drum, with two underslung castors at the front and two hind wheels mounted somewhat recessed, resulting in a modest footprint. This layout was considered ideal for small offices and cramped shops, with tightly packed furniture or display stands and thus many opportunities for a vac to get snagged behind. The NV200 was little more than a circular polyproylene tub on wheels, with a plastic flange as a lid. In the middle on top of this lid, the motor stood on a rubber ring. A black bulbous ABS hood was screwed onto the lid, securing the motor between the rubber ring underneath and one on top. A simple switch was added and on top of the hood was a fixed carrying handle. A bit of foam strip glued inside the hood served as sound dampener. There was no cable reel as yet , nor a two speed hi/lo switch. The NV200 was also sold under other brand names, such as Blue Vac.

The consumer market was large and profitable and appealing and Numatic wanted to have a go at it around 1981, though this vac was not exactly a daring design. In the cleaning trade it's all about machine efficiency and longevity and emotions and design are secundary. But consumers let emotions play a part in their decisions, and Numatic preyed on this much the same as Walt Disney did. Disney knew how expressions evoked favourable emotions and exploited it for all it was worth in his comics and feature film animations. Smiley faces with large eyes remind of endearing small pets or cute babies, especially when looking up to their beholder. A few stickers worth 50p did the trick, an otherwise bland appliance meant for an unpopular chore touched a soft spot in many prospective vac buyers. This had nothing to do with vacuum cleaner characteristics or technical principles, but that didn't mather since Numatic knew the product at hand was tried and tested and of sound quality, which it really was. To top this nifty marketing trick off, an endearing name was added, reminding of a loyal servant in the household, preferably something butlerish.
Henry was chosen, which may now well be on its way to become a worldwide vac name like Hoover. All in all, an existing design was successfully tranfered in a different sort of market, without a single major redesign and the risk of waisted engineering costs after a possible marketing flop. This may seem a skinflint approach, but after some use many household buyers discovered that this unimposing appliance was secretly an undiluted contractor's machine with a long life and a decent honest level of efficiency.

There is a rather confusing array of type designations for Numatic products, which took me a while to grasp. First, there were two products lines, the metal and the plastic one. The all metal machines were the NV250 and -350. The plastic ones had drum sizes 200, 370 and 540. The metal motorheads never gained a cable reel, but the plastic ones did. This reel was operated by hand, since already existing spring driven ones were unreliable in heavy use. Those mechanisms either became soiled and sluggish or their springs broke or lost their strength. The Landrover way was to rewind the reel by hand and to avoid complex parts that could break. The reel was mounted above and slightly around the motor in the middle, therefore the fixed handle was made to hinge in order to get out of way of the reel crank. With a reel added, an NV200/370 became an NVR200/370. The metal NV-head merely had a hook on which to hang wound cable loops, but since it was a sturdier and more expensive vac, a soundproofed version (Q for Quiet) was also available. So there never were an NVR250 or NVR350, but there were an NVQ250 and NVQ350 instead. Special enamel colours or details or limited editions were expressed in the number, e.g. NVQ252. The chrome-look Cybervac (either chrome- or nickelplated or stainless steel, I'm not sure right now) is certainly the most memorable and collectible all metal Numatic of them all. There was also the dark blue Eco-Vac, a silenced vac with an active carbon cloth filter and threaded exhaust fitting for the hose. The remaining metal motorheads are now all soundproofed and gained the letter S (for steel) to distinguish them from plastic models. Thus the metal vacs are now called NQS, apart from special versions like hazardous dust units (HZQ for asbestos) or HEPA-filtration units.

Meanwhile, there was a need to distinguish Numatic plastic consumer vacs from plastic commercial ones. The latter kept the N, while consumer vacs were abbreviated according to their pet names. Henry was H, the dry-wet vac Charles was C and the uplholstery cleaning dry-wet vac George with built-in soap spray pump was G. The cheapest version was B for Basil, which lacked a reel and had the fixed handle on top, like the original NV200. The bulbous black ABS motor hood without a reel had lots of wasted empty space around its motor, and the ABS was too expensive a plastics variety for that. The hood was redesigned, with a cylindrical tighter motor enclosure in the middle and some sort of outer perimeter wall with a sort of recessed moat in between. Inside this moat around the motor housing, the wound cable could be put, or some accessoiries, dust cloths or spray cans. The cheapest plastic commercial reelless motorhead (formerly applied in the NV200) was now called Nuvac or NNV with this new head design. The consumer version was bright yellow, it was called James and it replaced the Basil version.

The Henry HVR200 kept its 200-drum with compact footprint and recessed wheels, since households have tightlier packed furniture and narrower pasages in between than offices have. But in the trade some complaints were made about toppling over doorsills. Therefore the commercial NVR200 was later fitted with a 200-drum combined with the skirt and wider footprint of the 370-drum. This drum had larger castors, hind wheels farther apart and a skirt around the front to negotiate obstacles like chair and table legs and open door frames. To denote the difference, the NVR200 with a skirted drum was called NRV200. The skirtless 200-drum remained available for commercial use and was later called 180, so the commercial James version is called NVP180. The James itself is called JVP180, although the skirtless Henry was never called HVR180. Confusing. There is also a lady-Henry (Hetty) in pink, a Henry Hound (for pet hairs) with carbon filter and electric brush nozzle, a Henry Xtra (air driven brush nozzle) and a Henry Plus (with 370-drum).

To make matters more complex yet, there is also the -2 or -22 suffix. This has to do with the motor type and the presence of a hi/lo-switch. In the 60s and 70s, vac motors had two centrifugal fan discs mounted on their axles, or even three, to achieve reasonable vacuum with modest rpm and Watt power. When copper coil wire became more heat resistant and could carry more Amps, and bearings got more heat resistant fat fillings, the rpm and the resulting vacuum could be cranked up quite a lot. The Japanese were forerunners with motors running at electric tool speeds (a router or angle grinder motor runs at approx. 30,000 rpm, whereas vac motors of the day ran at 12,000 max). With such speed, only a single fan disc was necessary (like in a car engine's turbo charger), making the motor more compact and much cheaper to build. When Hitachi and Panasonic vacs reached the European market, they caused quite a stir among Western vac makers and not much good was expected of such devices, but they lasted and lasted beyond expectation. Numatic was amongst the early adopters, and between the 80-s and the latter 90s "single stage" (= single fan) Matsushita/Panasonic motors were used in most Numatic types, attributing to the brand's worldwide reputation in longevity and reliability. Henries up to 1100 Watts also have such single stage motors. Only the special vacs like the HZQ had two stage motors (two fans), as did the by-pass exhaust motor W-models (wet vacs) and the more expensive metals Q-types. When switched on, the sort of motor type used is clearly audible. The single stage motors run much faster and at a higher pitch. For some reason, in the 21st century Numatic abandoned Matsushita and settled on the American vac motor manufacturer Ametek Lamb. Whereas the plastic single stage 1100 Watts Lamb motor (DL11103T) in the James is not a real improvement over the metal Matsushita one, the two stage 1200 Watts Lamb motor (DL21104T) truly is. The latter counts as one of the best motors Numatic has ever chosen.
All modern Numatic vacs with such a motor carry the suffix -2. So the commercial Nuvac-variety of the James with a 2-stage motor is a NVP180-2. Since these were both budget vacs to begin with, they never had a green two speed switch. But the Henry has had one for years, so gor for the one which has the Lamb 2-stage motor, rendering the type name into HVR200-22 and featuring an unmistakeable 1200 Watts (older models have 1000 or 1100). The modern metal vacs with the 2-stage motor and hi/lo switch are designated NQS250-22. The company PB-vac shows current Lamb motor pictures on its spare part web site.

So there you are. The Henry was derived from a contractor's machine and secretly it still is. Apart from the skirt, there is no difference between a HVR200-22 and a contractor's NRV200-22. The Henry would even be a better buy, since the NVR now comes with aluminium epoxy coated rods/tubes/wands (whatever they are called) orginally devised or the budget Nuvac range, whereas the Henry still comes with sturdy stainless steel ones. One could mutter about a Henry toppling from a stair step, but couldn't that already have been appreciated in the shop prior to purchase, when one compares step width with the vac's diameter? Its hose measures more than 7 feet, so you put it on the stair's top and clean the top half and then carry the vac down and do the bottom half of the stairs. The things some people complain about. And yes, it is cumbersome having to remove a paper bag and dusting the cloth filter now and then, but this still remains the best system in heavy use. Or have you seen a serious large scale cleaning contractor's firm sporting a fleet of Dyson's lately? I haven't. And yes, a Henry has a certain amount of weight and bulk, but for a house with two rooms needing cleaning twice weekly, this intrinsically heavier professional design is an unnecessary choice anyway, any compact design will do since the use in small households is light.

For my money, this is a decent solution. For such machine size, the filter size is large, and that's what counts. Look at serious heavy duty filtration systems (central vac systems, wood processing factory sawdust transport, airco-systems, train diesel air intakes, air treatment systems in silicon chip factories, etc.) and they are all huge. They also carry cleanable or replaceable fine-pored filter materials, without exception. Even Dyson cleaners carry those, albeit hidden. Furthermore, the Lamb motor is highly efficient (more than 400 air Watts for 1200 Watts electrical consumption) and the vacuum and displaced air volume are huge. Remember that vacs with ludicrous power intakes of 1600 to 2400 Watts, merely compensate with Watts what they lack in filter size. The moronic suction is needed because their small compact filter systems get clogged in very little time. This sounds like reverse engineering in terms of a setback to the past. You don't want that.

Phew, what a long story it's become. You still there? But I think it was worth it, though.

Gerhard
Netherlands

Summary: Conventional, no nonsense, sound vac technology

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