CCATP_2024_04_13
Alison Sheridan and Bart Bouchard share their admiration for Dyson products on Chit Chat Across the Pond, highlighting the features of the V15 Detect Submarine model and encouraging audience engagement.
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Long Summary
Alison Sheridan hosts episode 791 of Chit Chat Across the Pond with guest Bart Bouchard, featuring a light version of the show focused on their mutual love for Dyson products. The conversation delves into their experiences with Dyson vacuum cleaners, discussing how the design and engineering aspects of Dyson products appeal to them. They share anecdotes about purchasing Dyson vacuum cleaners, replacing parts, and the user-friendliness of Dyson's website for ordering spares. Bart talks about the evolution of Dyson vacuum cleaners and the features of the Dyson V15 Detect Submarine model, including a laser slim fluffy cleaner head for hardwood floors and an attachment for wet mopping floors. They highlight the benefits of the new Dyson model, such as its improved cleaning abilities and user interface simplicity. Alison and Bart share their delight in the efficient performance of the Dyson vacuum cleaners and conclude with an invitation for listener contributions and support for the ad-free show.
Brief Summary
Alison Sheridan and guest Bart Bouchard explore their shared passion for Dyson products on episode 791 of Chit Chat Across the Pond. They discuss the appeal of Dyson vacuum cleaners, sharing personal experiences with maintenance and upgrades. Bart details the advancements in Dyson technology, specifically highlighting features of the Dyson V15 Detect Submarine model. Both express their satisfaction with Dyson's performance and ease of use, inviting audience engagement and support for their ad-free podcast.
Tags
Alison Sheridan
Bart Bouchard
Dyson products
Chit Chat Across the Pond
vacuum cleaners
maintenance
upgrades
technology advancements
Dyson V15 Detect Submarine
satisfaction
Transcript
[0:06]
Introduction
[0:00]
Music.
[0:07]
Well, it's that time of the week again. It's time for Chit Chat Across the Pond.
This is episode number 791 for April 13th, 2024.
And I'm your host, Alison Sheridan. This week, our guest is Bart Bouchard,
but this is a light version of Chit Chat Across the Pond. Right, Bart?
Yeah, I thought I'd blow the dust off the light feed.
Well, and someone was out enjoying themselves with an eclipse and wasn't in
the mood for doing homework instead. I don't know why.
[0:32]
Trigger's Hoover
[0:33]
That's for sure and you've picked a topic that is a huge passion of
mine as well so i think this is going to be fun and what's
really weird is i didn't know we were fellow travelers in
the way of dyson which is a very british company so i didn't i didn't realize
they were a big thing over there oh huge i'm on my uh fifth or sixth device
from them so wow yeah definitely yeah so So despite being 40 something, what is it, 2024,
44 years old, I have only in my entire life purchased one vacuum cleaner until
a few weeks ago. Now I have purchased two vacuum cleaners.
And the first one was a Dyson V10, it turns out.
I thought it was a V8, but it turns out it was a V10 because the V8 looked very
different in the pictures.
But anyway, I've had it for so many years and I don't know, you guys probably
don't know the TV show Only Fools and Horses. It's a BBC show.
It was fantastic comedy.
But there was a character who quipped at his retirement that he'd had the same
broom his entire career working for the council.
It's like, I've only had 10 new heads and 10 new brushes, but I've had the same broom all this time.
And so the character's name was Trigger. And so everyone talks about Trigger's broom.
So when I say it to colleagues in work, oh, yeah, my vacuum cleaner is Trigger's
Hoover. They all laugh because they know exactly what I mean.
I kept that thing, you know, I replaced the battery when it started to have a little battery life.
I bust a few heads because they would get stuck under something and I would
yank them out. And that was not a good idea.
[2:01]
You know, you would break things as one does. But you just go to the Dyson website,
you go to spares and you type in your model and you go, oh, yeah,
I'll have one of those, please.
[2:09]
And it would work. Actually, let me let me make a much better suggestion for the audience.
Don't go to the Dyson website to order spares. go to the interwebs and find
them for way, way, way, way, way, way less money.
Dyson's cost an arm and a leg and a kidney, but we keep, I keep buying them, but they do fail.
And we've been able to buy all kinds of cool parts up to and including batteries
for like a battery's 40 bucks.
You can save a $300 vacuum for $40. So definitely buy parts,
buy heads, buy attach wall attachments,
everything, buy a third party because it's way cheaper and they work
just fine cool i guess and because
they've kept their connectors so standard for so long
i guess there's no reason third parties can't cross all the devices too
yeah but they don't make the batteries the
same um and i'll do an anecdote about something that just happened recently
once you get started but uh uh the battery thing is just really user hostile
it really is what they've done that's interesting um so my only experience was
that my my one was so old that when I needed to replace my battery, I had to use a screw.
Now, it was one screw, but I did actually need to have a screw.
And now apparently the later versions of the V10 have a replaceable battery.
So I discovered, so apparently... I have V8, so yeah, it's three screws.
Three? Three whole screws?
[3:33]
Vacuum Mishaps
[3:33]
So I knew for a fact when I, so I finally broke, broke my, my V10.
[3:39]
There are, I guess I could have bought a new motor, but at that stage I was
like, no, that is the vacuum cleaner. Maybe I should upgrade at this point.
But yeah, I basically, I dropped it and smashed the housing and it still worked
for a month, but it became more and more and more unreliable as all of the parts
on the inside became less and less where they were supposed to be.
And eventually, every time I'd move forward, it'd cut out and then pull back and it'd start up again.
So as I was hoovering, I'd be like, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom,
vroom. Yeah, okay, it's time.
But I knew I wanted one that doesn't. Now, did you think at all about, now why?
Because they're really, really expensive.
Yeah, but they fit my philosophy on tech so well, right?
Because I like, why do I like Apple products? You know, I'm not an Apple fan
because I'm an Apple fan.
I'm an Apple fan because they fit with my philosophy, which is I really appreciate
things that are well-designed.
Like some people appreciate a nice painting.
I appreciate nice design. It makes me happy.
[4:45]
And Dysons are of that same school. It always strikes me that when you watch
a documentary about design, you know for a fact Johnny Ive is going to be one
of the people they talk about, right?
That's just a given. They're going to talk about Johnny Ive.
They're going to talk about the iMac. They're going to talk about the iPod.
They're almost certainly going to talk about Braun which is sort of where Johnny
and I have learned everything from and the Bauhaus school in Germany and the
third company that comes up in almost every documentary is Dyson.
[5:08]
Because they think very differently about design. And they don't have a giant
big lot of products, like they have a vacuum cleaner.
They have a fan with no blades, which is magic. Which I did a review of.
So you should have known I was in the Dyson family.
I did a big review of that, that I can run my fan in the summertime when it's
80 degrees in my room before I had air conditioning.
And I could blow air right on
me and you guys couldn't hear it over my microphone because it is magic.
See, for me, it's not so much the design from an aesthetic standpoint as it
is from an engineering standpoint.
It's the engineering behind having a fan list, not the look and feel,
but the engineering behind it.
So for me, the look isn't, it's not skin deep, my love of good design.
It's, you know that feeling when something just works and you go,
someone thought about this.
Someone put a lot of effort into making sure that this thing works as well as
it does. Because it's how well it works is what I love, rather than how it necessarily looks.
So, you know, to me, that's the true nature of design. They're also,
you know, Apple and Dyson are also both by pretty charismatic people, right?
James Dyson is a fairly interesting character.
[6:21]
I don't know if you've ever... He used to do his own advertisement here in Britain.
He would be the one on the television telling you about the latest Dyson vacuum
cleaner. and he would be showing you the engineering and stuff and he would be standing in the lab.
He was very Steve Jobs-ian in the fact that he was the CEO and the head tech
guy and he was a product, like he is a product guy.
So they have that in common as well.
[6:42]
Philosophy of Tech
[6:43]
But again, I prefer to spend a fair amount of money infrequently and have something
that I, like, I buy laptops that I use for six, seven years.
You can only do that with an Apple laptop.
[6:59]
You know, see, I, I actually put Dyson more in the camp of Ember.
I love them so much and they fail really quickly. I have bought, like I said, five or six.
That's because they have failed. And that's, you know, in the time you've had
one, I've had five or six. They, parts disappear.
I had a part disappear from my, from my vacuum cleaner.
I do not understand how that happened. It was a big, one of the big standup ones.
And one day I wasn't working right. And I looked and I'm like,
isn't there supposed to be a part here? and a friend of mine has the same vacuum.
So we did probably the first FaceTime between two vacuums where I had her point
at the same part and said, do you have something there? And she goes, yeah, I do.
I don't know. I mean, it was a big piece of plastic.
And I ordered a new part from Dyson and they didn't actually charge me as much
as you would think. It was like $19 and then the vacuum worked again.
I don't know. And that same vacuum eventually like this greasy black stuff started
oozing out of the bottom and got all over everything.
And that failed. I've had the little ones like the V10 die on me I don't know.
[8:01]
I don't have good luck with them, but I keep buying them because I love them. Interesting.
So the other thing we should say is that what Dyson built their company around
was the big idea James Dyson had, which was, I want a vacuum cleaner that has
the same suction from the moment you start to the moment you finish and that has no consumables.
There should be nothing that you have to throw away. way and so yeah the dirt
collects in a hopper and his corporate overlords before he went off on his own
were like you can't make it see-through people shouldn't know about dirt it's a dirty.
[8:37]
That's the best part absolutely and he basically went i don't care what your
focus group says i don't care what you think we're making it see-through and
when they asked people afterwards it was like no it's the best thing ever i
love the fact that i can see it my mom's old vacuum when I was a kid growing
up. I think we've emptied it like twice a year.
I vacuum this. I mean, I can knit a cat out of what I get out of my carpet from a week, you know?
Maybe even just the downstairs would be one cat and the upstairs would be the other cat. Two cats.
Yeah. I mean, it's really satisfying. You feel like there was a reason to do
it, you know? Yeah. You feel gratified that you did good work.
[9:15]
Yeah. And then on the other end, you have the filter, which is just rinsable.
Twice a year or or so. I get a little light that says, you know,
little icon means the filter needs to be rinsed. You run it under the tap.
The instructions actually say to leave it in the sun, but that is optional.
You can just leave it out and it will still dry. And then 24 hours later,
your vacuum is good to go again.
And so I've owned it. You know, none of mine have ever told me to clean out the filter.
I have done that, but I've never had one that had a light on it.
I'm going to break in with my story about the battery because it really matters here.
So I found a Dyson V8 on the side of the road outside of a construction site, but it had all the parts.
It had the charger, it had the wall mount, it had the stick and the head and everything.
And so I thought, you know, I wonder if it just needs a new battery. And so I have a V8.
So I painstakingly took the three screws out, removed the battery over the other
one, and it wouldn't go in.
Between the V8, I think mine is like an allergenic, and this was V8 something
else. they switched the little probe that goes into it. They did a mirror reflection of it.
So it's the exact same battery with just a slightly different piece of plastic
inside for how it lines up. And that was the user hostile part.
But for 40 bucks, I ordered this, Steve ordered this battery.
It came with the three screws. It came with a screwdriver.
It came with two brand new filters.
[10:39]
So this one that had been through the construction site, I just threw the filters
away and put in these clean new ones and it works like a champ.
Right. Yeah. Because, you know, the first time I noticed there was a light about
the filter was when we moved house and there was cement dust everywhere.
And cement dust is just the evilest thing ever. So I bet you that vacuum cleaner
from the construction site. Oh, it needed some help.
Yeah. I had to wash the inside of the hopper. Like, I mean, it was disgusting.
It was really bad. But I thought Lindsay needed another vacuum.
And I called her up and I said, how many Dyson vacuums do you have?
She's got a huge house upstairs, downstairs.
And she said, I have two, no, three Dysons. I was like, oh, man.
Because her mother-in-law got a new one and gave her her older one. So they also have two.
So now I have a $300 Dyson vacuum I got to figure out what to do with.
But I'm not going to give it away.
[11:29]
Mine will fail eventually. Well, that's true. Keep a spare. Yeah.
So anyway, I already have two. So I have an upstairs and downstairs one.
Yeah, I know. I feel underrepresented now. I need more Dysons, clearly. Yes, you do.
[11:45]
Although with COVID, I bought myself their air purifier.
So they have an air purifier designed for one person. And you sit in a bubble
of filtered air and it works like it's magic.
You move your head and you're out of the bubble and say, oh,
this is icky air. And then you move your head and you're in the bubble and say, oh, this is good air.
Because I was terrified of going back into the office, but my little personal
space of cleanliness just hangs over my desk and it's still there because I
[12:13]
Dyson Air Purifier
[12:09]
got so used to having high quality air that's not full of carpet gunk.
Yeah, it's like, I don't care about the pandemic being over. This is just nicer.
So my Dyson still sits on my desk and work and the better half has serious respiratory issues.
So we have the really big air freshener, the one that's like two foot tall.
Again, it's a fanless fan and air purifier and humidifier.
Is that the Dyson? Yeah and it pivots and stuff so it's designed to be freestanding
in the middle of the room so it's like six,
not six foot, it's like four foot tall to my chest kind of height and it does
the whole pivoty thing and everything and it tells you what particles it filtered
out so you know how much better the air is and it ramps up.
That's only because he couldn't put a clear hopper in there for you to see the
credits got out of the air, right?
[12:59]
Exactly. Well, it's actually kind of nice to know what gunk is in the Irish air.
So, you know, how much of it is pollen, how much of it is house dirt.
And actually a big difference of moving house, we have no carpets in our new house.
And his Dyson has so much less work to do because we don't have carpets or we
have very, very, very few carpets, I should say.
So anyway, I bought my Dyson years ago. We lived in a rented house.
It was carpets everywhere and we had a cat.
So when I bought that Dyson, I bought the model for pets because,
you know, you can buy just the vacuum cleaner or they give you like these bundles
where you have like all the bits and bobs. So they had one labeled pet.
I was like, that sounds like a good idea. So I went with the pet one.
And it turns out I didn't use any of the attachments.
But, you know, basically they have a brush head, which is a spinny thing with
brushes on it that's designed for any floor.
And it works on carpets. It works on hardwood floors. It just works everywhere.
And so that was basically all I ended up using. And the yoke for getting in the corners.
That was it. Basically, I used those two things for the whole time I had the
vacuum cleaner. But now we've moved house.
Did you buy another V10? Well, no. No. So I decided if I'm going to buy my second
ever vacuum cleaner in my entire life, I'm going to buy the best thing Dyson has now.
[14:10]
And I sort of I expected to find one that sucks more.
Right. I thought it will suck more with a longer battery life and it might have
some smart bits. That was my expectation.
And those three things are true. It is a little bit smarter.
It does suck more and it does have a longer battery life. life.
But, but, but, but, but. So my needs have changed.
No more cats, because it turns out that when you have respiratory issues,
a pet is a terrible idea, no matter how charming and adorable they are,
no matter how much I miss them, no more pets.
And when we bought our own house, we got to choose what was on the floor.
And because we have so many respiratory issues, the only place we have carpet
is in, I don't know if this is a word Americans use, we have the stairs and
the landing. You ever hear of a landing? Yeah.
Okay. So the stairs and the landing are carpet. And only because my brother,
who's in the building industry, convinced me that it was a terrible,
terrible idea to have stairs with anything but carpet.
Because you will kill yourself. You will slip and fall and you will die.
[15:05]
So I very reluctantly said, fine, there will be carpet on the landing and the stairs.
But there is tile floors in the bits that get, you know, like the kitchen and the downstairs hall.
And beautiful spruce wooden floors everywhere else in the house.
So my need for carpet is very, very minimal. and my need for hardwood floors
is very, very high. But again, the generic brush head is mostly fine.
It did have a habit of pushing the popcorn around on the hardwood floors instead of sucking it up.
And like you, I have a popcorn thing. It does that with cat litter.
It grabs the cat litter and flings it back. So you have to keep going back over and over again.
That's one of my little complaints.
[15:43]
Yeah, so I have a lot of tiles and I have been taking care of those tiles the
old fashioned way with a mop and elbow grease.
And the hardwood floors, the instructions from the manufacturer were to clean
them with a damp cloth every few weeks.
So I have been literally on my hands and knees with floor wipes.
So anyway, I went to the Dyson website going, I wonder what's new.
They have a new vacuum cleaner, the V15S, wait, something submarine. What's the second?
Not sense. Detect submarine.
[16:18]
Submarine? Its two new tricks are it has a special attachment for hardwood floors
and an attachment to mop floors.
Oh, no way. It's a wet and dry vacuum. So the two things I needed are exactly the two things.
So the detect is the smart bit so
the detect means it now knows how much
of different sizes of dirt it's pulling up
so all of the v15s now
do this detect thing and so at the back of it you now have a little bar chart
and you have big dirt medium dirt and little dirt and the little bars go up
and down depending on what you're pulling up and the default mode so you used
to have three power modes right high medium low and you would basically choose
which one you wanted depending depending on how much battery life you wanted.
Now the default mode is auto, and it ramps the power up and down,
depending on the size of the dirt.
So when you run across big dirt, like, say, at the front door,
where we all walk with our dirty shoes, you hear it go, and then when it doesn't
have much dirt, it ramps itself right back, and so the battery life now lasts
for ages, and I don't have to worry about it, because it just manages it magically.
And I get to look at how many million particles of dirt get picked up,
which is vaguely interesting.
Apparently big dirt is a big thing here.
[17:32]
Anyway um but yeah the so one of
the um i got one in between and
i actually don't remember the model number but it doesn't do any of this fancy
stuff but it's a um uh it does change pitch when it's going on i've got tile
and carpet and when i go back and forth off of them you can tell that it's it's
ramping up and ramping down for the basically for the load not based on what
kind of dirt it's finding though this is based on the surface that it's working
on like oh i need to to really work hard on the carpet.
I do want to make one quick interlude here. No matter what Dyson vacuum you
buy, do not buy the one with the bigger hopper.
So I did. I had a choice of the regular size hopper or a bigger one.
I thought bigger is better, right? You can hold more stuff.
Turns out it's really unwieldy. It's really heavy and it's hard to maneuver
because the chamber is literally twice as long in length, not in diameter.
Same diameter, but twice as long. So now it's just harder and
I in fact I had Steve switch in so that my main vacuum
is going to be the the little one not the big one now yeah and I guess I always
empty it every time I just right to me it's just part of the thing right you
finish up you empty it in the in the in the trash can and then you stick it
on a little mount and then it charges up again for next time so yeah I've never
felt I needed a bigger hopper so that's a really good point because yeah portable good.
[18:55]
Vacuum Price
[18:55]
I would like to point out that, can we tell them the price of the vacuum cleaner
that you're talking about as we keep going?
Do you know, I've actually wiped it from my mind, but the link is in the show notes.
How much did I pay? In US dollars, it's almost a thousand dollars.
Yeah, that sounds about right. About 800 euro or something, was it?
799. Yeah, I don't know. I'm looking at the US store. But it's interesting to
think that people still,
even looking into that, once you've owned a Dyson, And it's sort of like you
said, with the Mac, you look at the price, you go, oh, that's expensive,
but I'm going to use it for a long time. Yeah, divide by number of years and it's fine.
You know, so second vacuum cleaner in entire life. I think I'm doing OK.
[19:35]
But yeah, actually, before we go into the really cool new stuff,
I guess the other thing is, so everything the old one did, this one does.
[19:41]
Improved Features
[19:40]
Every reason I love the old one, I love this one.
But it has two things it just does better, just even if you don't get the submarine
version, even just get the plain old V15 detect.
So, they've made the brush head so that it makes a better seal on the floor,
so I don't need to use the little corner tool anymore.
When I run that brush head to the edge of the wall, it picks up all the dirt right to the edge.
Oh! I don't know how! Nice. But, yay! Right? Because I used to remove everything
and then change the head and then do all the edges.
Well, I don't have to do that anymore, so yay, thank you.
The other thing is all of the brush
heads now say tangle-proof or tangle-resistant or something like that.
I am married to someone with long hair. I spent so much time. I would do three things.
I would empty the hopper, pull the hair out of the brush, and then charge it.
It doesn't happen anymore.
[20:35]
I don't know how. You're saving a lot of time. So you're not on your hands and knees mopping.
You're not having to change heads to do the corners and you're not having to
pull the hair out yeah and i don't know how it doesn't catch hair but it doesn't
it all ends up in the hopper now,
and it just ends up in the bin which is fine because that's where i put it anyway
when i was done but i used to have to pull it out and now it just goes straight into the bin so yay,
so and the other thing is the user interface is which was already
very simple is now even simpler there's no more lights and
stuff there's one screen on the back so you know the way the motor obviously spins
around an axis so at the end of the axle is now our circular
screen and it tells you what it needs
to tell you so if it's running low on battery it tells you the battery when
you plug it in it tells you the battery when you're using the mop attachment
it tells you how much water you have left so it kind of tells you what you need
and otherwise it just shows you the bar chart of what size of dirt you're picking
up and it has so my bar chart has has three uh three Three levels of,
it's got eco, middle, and turbo boost or something in the middle.
So mine is eco, auto, turbo.
[21:40]
Okay. So I can't say stay in the middle setting.
I can only say pick for yourself, go softly or go very hard.
And the one small piece of carpet we have in our house is really,
really fluffy carpet because I want to, you know, where do you walk barefoot
between the bedroom and the bathroom?
So that's where I have the fluffiest carpet.
And if the vacuum is set to full power,
it pulls, it bugs itself into the
carpet to the the point where it becomes like a workout
to push it so i put it
to eco for the carpet and then i put it back to auto um but
other than that yeah that's all i ever do and yeah there's
one button and you tap the button to change the mode and if you need to go into
the menu which i did once when i bought the vacuum cleaner it's press and hold
press press and hold press so it's mildly awkward to do the thing you do once
ever but other than that all you're going to do is change the modes and it's just tap, tap, tap.
So it's very, very pleasant. And instead of having to know the little icon for
a please watch my filter, it'll just tell you on the screen what it wants you
to do or not do or what, you know, if it wants your attention,
it'll just tell you what it wants, which is nice.
[22:54]
So that's the normal stuff and all of the V15s will do that.
But then we come to the optional extras that I decided to go with,
with the detect submarine, which sounds like some sort of sonar system from
World War II to me, but anyway.
So in that bundle, you get two magic tricks. So the first magic trick is designed
for hardwood floors and they call it a slim... Hang on, I get the fancy pants
name for it. It has lasers, which is why I love it.
But they call it the Laser Slim Fluffy Cleaner Head.
So I think they went to the right thing. What is the laser for?
[23:31]
The laser is to show you the dirt. It's a green laser that runs ahead of the
vacuum cleaner along the floor.
And honest to goodness, I can't tell when I'm standing up on my hardwood floor
with a grain on it where I have and haven't been.
[23:46]
But that laser, oh, wow, can I tell?
Oh, wow, can I tell where I have and haven't been?
And oh, goodness me, do I know when it's been too long since I last vacuumed.
It is astonishing how much lint and cruft can be hiding on a textured surface like a hardwood floor.
But those wood grains, you don't see the gunk, but the laser just illuminates it.
And it's very pleasing because everywhere you've been, the laser picks up nothing.
You don't even see the laser because it's not glinting off anything.
And then you move to the bit you haven't been to. I was like, oh, wow, yeah.
So it's great. And it's also, the slimline bit's important. It's way,
way, way, way lower profile than the brush head.
So it goes under your counters and things. Yeah, so when you're cleaning the
sitting room in particular or the bedroom under the beds and stuff,
it really gets in under there.
Again, no need for the little edge thing because you're getting right in under
it with the laser slimline contraption, which is fantastic.
And instead of being a brush, it's got like a felt roller so it's giving your
floors a nice little little gentler little scrub and it has a little so it's
like a felt roller with little brushes and the little brushes get into the gap
between the hardwood floors and the felt is giving your hardwood floors a little polish.
[25:05]
And okay i think there's a static electricity thing happening because it doesn't push the dirt around.
[25:13]
It actually catches it. And it's the same hardwood floor.
[25:20]
Laser Slim Fluffy Cleaner Head
[25:16]
So if the brush was pushing my popcorn away, why would this be catching it?
And I'm assuming it's because of static electricity, because it seems to magically
just pull everything towards it.
Well, it's sucking, isn't it? Well, sure, but so was the other one.
[25:31]
But the other one was whisking at it. This is not whisking at it,
right? It's not smacking it.
But it's still a spinny thing. I don't know that. You just said it's a mat.
Well, right. So it's a roller, but instead of it being the big sticky-outy brushes, it's a felty roller.
Okay, okay. Well, maybe I think the whiskers just smack it and make it...
Maybe. That's what it seems like to me. I don't know why it's very effective,
but I know that it's very effective.
And the laser is just cool. I just love the laser. So that already is cool.
But the real party piece is no more mopping.
So the submarine head is so well-designed. So you have a water hopper at the
front that's obvious, and you fill that with clean water.
And it has a round, spinny head, like you would expect, which is made of a sort
of a mop-like material, which sits on a heater.
And inside it, there's a little scraper, and that takes the water off the top
of the mop head and into an inside reservoir where the dirty water goes.
So as you're mopping, you have your clean water reservoir gets lower and lower
and lower, and there's an equal-sized reservoir inside the mop head where the
dirty water is collecting.
This is all down on the head, not up on the heel? All on the head.
All 100% on the head. So everything happens in the head.
[26:59]
And as you're going, the heater is heating up the water, so it dries stupendously
quickly behind you. you don't have like puddles of water on the floor.
I mean, it's noticeably wet for a couple of minutes, but it is just two or three
minutes that it's noticeably wet and then it's all dried up.
And you watch your clean water go down and you don't see the dirty water until
you finish when you empty the inside reservoir.
And you admire... And it's equally satisfying to the hopper.
Equally satisfying to the hopper. And then you just rinse it out.
And again, the roller bar comes straight out very, very, very easy.
You literally can't get it wrong it doesn't fit wrong like all the things there
is no wrong and again the icon says put it in the sun but it works in Ireland
too so you just let it dry for a day.
[27:51]
Cleaning Satisfaction
[27:51]
It makes me laugh every time. A little picture of the sun in 24 hours.
It says sun 24H. I was like, well, I wonder how.
Maybe it's 32H for me, but either way, it still works.
And you just leave it out. And so because it's more of a moist clean than a
wet clean, I am perfectly comfortable using it on the hardwood floors once a month.
So, you know, because you do want to give them a sort of a more thorough clean
than you're going to get with the soft, fluffy, whatever head it was called.
So I've been using the wet head on the hardwood floors, and it's absolutely fine.
And because it dries so quickly, you really don't feel like you're endangering
your hardwood floors. It really is.
So I am just so pleased that I don't have to get down on my hands and knees
anymore. I don't have to mop the floor anymore.
And it's just so well thought out.
I just feel like I've had such an upgrade in the 10, 15 years since I bought the last one. It's huge.
But I do want to say there is one thing that they have made a little bit less nice.
So when I bought the last one, I bought an optional charging stand,
which is this thing you plug into the wall and then has a cradle at the top
where you clunk in the main body to charge it up.
And it had connectors like the ones at the bottom of the wand,
but they were just all over this thing.
And you just click all of the heads all over this stand. And so you just have this tree of heads.
[29:18]
There is a stand. So I have a new charging stand. It's a different stand.
And the mount is now spring-loaded, so you don't have to be really, really exact.
It's on a little swivel, and it likes to be upright, but it will happily swivel,
so it's way easier to put it in and out, which is cool.
There is one clip where the wand goes.
So you can clip the wand with one default head. All the rest is now your problem.
So we bought a third-party bracket that goes across the top of the standard
mount, and we can add like six more little heads.
I'll have to find you a link to that. Yeah, I'll have to figure out where Steve bought that.
But yeah, it's a little janky because it's not exactly right and it kind of
slopes down a little bit like you'd like it to be stiff and straight and it's
a little bit janky, but it works.
It holds all the stuff off the floor.
[30:09]
You don't have to have it in a box or something like that. Yeah,
and so at the moment, you and I also share a love of the IKEA Kallax series.
Series so one of my square boxes in the kitchen now has a basket in it which is full of Dyson heads,
but I would much prefer maybe we could get those on the wall yeah
exactly I would much prefer to have them on the wall that would be perfect yeah
behind the church stand and then everything is perfect again and
I can get back one of my boxes because I want it for other
things I have many things to store but yeah I on
the whole I just sort of feel like I got years
and years of and I genuinely liked my V10 like
I shouldn't like a vacuum cleaner but honest to goodness I liked
it it and i ever think about when
you were when you were you ever think when you were a kid that
you would you would grow up to like a vacuum cleaner you would
really like care about something like a vacuum cleaner no no i read no you know
because it was a thing that you were forced to do against your will but when
you have your own place you feel very differently about cleaning cleaning is
not a chore cleaning is something that you enjoy the result of you may not enjoy
doing it but you you enjoy shortly after.
Shortly after. You get the benefits, right? Yeah. In the case of the Irish weather.
This thing seems to take care of an awful lot of different problems.
[31:25]
More Than a Vacuum
[31:22]
It's not just a vacuum cleaner, right? It's a lot more than that.
It's a floor cleaner. That's got me thinking. Now I'm jonesing for another license.
[31:34]
If you have more than carpet in the house honest
to goodness it really works it's we have
tile and the tile the the grout in the tile is just it's such a nightmare to
keep clean so it's uh we mop it but you know i have a story about my grout so
when when the guy came to to ask me how i wanted my tiles lady said do you want
white grout or gray grout and i said said,
what color grout would look least grotty over time?
Oh, the gray stuff. You'll never tell it's dirty or not. I said, gray grout.
[32:06]
So when I had, when we remodeled our house and had all kinds of new tile put
in, I told the guy, I said, I want dirt colored grout.
And they laid in the grout and it wasn't. And I made him take it out.
I said, no, you can't give me white grout.
I'm not going to, I told you dirt colored grout. I was, that's a memorable phrase.
I'm sure you you remember me saying that and so uh
yeah i now have dirt colored grout but it still looks worse than
when we got it still not the same aged alice it looks aged like a good pair
of jeans yeah but it's it's not linearly you know it's not uniformly aged that's
the problem yeah that is that is like a couple old people yeah when you spill
coffee on it no matter what it's it's dirt Dirt colored, not coffee colored.
Some things will stain in. Yeah, yeah.
Yep, yep, yep. Coffee's the worst.
And the best, you know, for drinking and for staining.
Yes. But anyway, yeah. So yeah, I wanted to share the fact that I have lasers
and submarines in my vacuum cleaner.
Yep. Yours is cooler than mine. Now I want another one, Bart. This was still fun.
I think this was perfectly appropriate for dusting off the chitchat across the
pond light feed. No pun intended whatsoever.
[33:23]
Right, yeah. Well, until next time, which I think is going to be much more business
as usual, lots and lots of happy computing.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond Light.
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[34:30]
Music.