Vacuum Cleaning in Las Vegas

A neglected vacuum redistributes dust

The bin is the part people empty. The filters are the part that does the work, and on most machines there are two of them — a pleated or foam pre-filter behind the bin, and an exhaust filter on the way out. Once those load up, the machine stops holding onto fine particles and starts passing them straight through and back into the room. You're not cleaning at that point, you're stirring.

Desert dust makes this happen faster than it would elsewhere. The fine, silty material that gets tracked in here is exactly the size that clogs a pleated filter, and it arrives continuously — through doors, off shoes, in through windows on a windy spring day. A vacuum that would go six months between filter washes in a wetter climate gets there in two here.

The other half of it is suction. A blocked filter starves the motor of airflow, so the machine gets loud, gets hot, and picks up less — and the usual reading of that is that the vacuum is wearing out. Often it isn't. It's a $0 wash and a night's drying away from working properly, and people replace perfectly good machines over it.

What we actually do

1. Empty the canister and wash it out, rather than knocking it against the inside of a bin and calling it done.
2. Pull every filter the machine has — pre-motor and post-motor — and wash the ones the manufacturer says are washable. The ones that aren't get tapped out and brushed clean.
3. Leave washed filters to dry fully before they go back. A damp filter refitted straight away is how machines start to smell; if yours needs drying time we'll refit at the next visit and note it.
4. Clear the brush roll. Hair and thread wrapped around the bar is the other half of lost suction, and on homes with pets it's usually the bigger half.
5. Check the hose and wand for a blockage by dropping something through them, and clear anything caught at a bend.
6. Wipe the seals and refit everything, then run the machine to confirm it's pulling properly. Logged and photographed like everything else.

How often, and why every visit

Every visit — four times a year. Given the dust load here, that's about right for a household that vacuums weekly. It also means the machine gets looked at by somebody four times a year, which is four more times than most vacuums manage.

If yours is working harder than that — a couple of dogs, a lot of carpet, a household that runs the machine most days — the filters may want washing between our visits. We'll show you which ones come out and how they go back, so you can do it in five minutes rather than waiting for us. We'd rather your machine worked than protect a visit.

Which plans include it

Every plan. There is no tier where this gets skipped. Frequency is every visit, and the parts are in the price — you are never billed separately for them.

• Hands-free lite — $39/mo · included
• Hands-free — $59/mo · included
• Hands-free plus — $67/mo · included

Compare all three plans side by side.