How I used one vacuum to fix another vacuum…

Today was The Day of Chores, so I started out cleaning the bathroom.  Our upstairs bathroom is an unenviable task to clean.  It gets used frequently, and I am often too lazy to get the job done in a consistent manner.  The drain had clogged, so I poured my Drano Foaming Pipe Snake down there while I worked and I am happy to report that it performed its task admirably.  After about an hour and a half, our bathroom is as clean as I was going to make it.

I took a break for lunch, and then headed down to clean the rabbits.  This is another one of those tasks that I don’t do often enough, and since our rabbits have switched to an all hay diet they tend to just fling Timothy hay all over my basement.  I set to work with my Dyson DC17 Animal, which proved itself unworthy to deal with that amount of hay.  At first it was doing fine, but before long the wheel assembly ground the hay into small hay flakes which quickly clogged the hose assembly.  Dyson does a pretty good job of making certain portions of the vacuum easy to disassemble, so I took it apart and got as much of the hay out as I could.

This caused the thing to start up and sound as if it was working, but I suspect I settled enough of the hay into the inner tubing to cause a bigger clog that it couldn’t deal with.  The hose assembly usually makes a sucking sound when it is in the upright position to indicate that it is ready and eager to suck up your filth.  Now, mine sat there like it was off and completely unwilling to suck up my filth.  The brush assembly was operating, however it was not actually pulling any debris into the canister.

I was certain at this point that I was going to have to send the thing out for repairs.  Dejectedly, I headed to the garage to get my shop vac, which is more than suited to this type of mess.  It did the job in fairly short order, however trying to clean an area that big with just a hose is a pretty tedious task.  Seeing how easily the shop vac did its work, I decided that I might be able to fix my Dyson by using the shop vac to suck out the hay clog.

I headed upstairs, removed the Dyson canister, and was happy to find that the shop vac’s hose fit right into the rubber gasket that led to the canister.  I engaged the shop vac and heard a rather disgusting sound of hay and rabbit poop exit the Dyson into the waiting maw of the shop vac.  Figuring this was about as good as I was going to get, I plugged in the Dyson and was happy to find that the upright hose assembly was working again!

That, friends, is the tale of how I fixed one vacuum with another vacuum.