back pack vacs

[richard]

anyone use one on cgd? what one do you use and how does it compare to a quality comm. upright?
Soil removal? Is it faster than an upright?

 

[Larry B]

We use backpacks everyday. We have Pulman Holt, Tenant, orick & castex and they are fast but they will never remove as much soil as uprights.


They work very good at removing what you can see on top but that is it! They dont work worth a crap on commercial mats.

You can purchase power attachments for some backpacks that have another vac motor in the floor housing but again waste of time when you can just use an upright.

 

[Bob Foster]

they suck at sucking

 

[Lonny]

I love em for commercial- low loop carpet. For the residential, or commercial carpet runners- they do not cut it in my opinion. This is from 6+ years in the janitorial biz. They are much faster than an upright, for hard floors they are also great with the proper head- horsehair/synthetic fiber so they don't scratch the floors on vct/ other waxed or wood flooring. I can vac around 10k sq ft of commercial per hour-properly with a good backpack.

 

[steve frasier]

I have more proteam backpacks then I can count, they all have turbo brushes and hard floor vacuum heads, rarely use the easy glide head

I don't own an upright anymore

sometimes it not always about what you remove but what you don't put back, if you have a good vacuuming schedule then backpack are not an issue, they do take a little getting use to

I have several commercial accounts that will tell you they have less issues since backpack vacuuming are being used in thier facilities, not sure how you can even do a through detailed job in an efficient manner with an upright in a commercial setting

have sold quite a few to customers, once they get use to th evacuum they don't go back to uprights

proteam now sells an electric head version but it is rather expensive

 

[Lonny]

That is an excellent point. The other is how often the carpets are being vacd and how aggressive the beater bar is on them. Some carpets warranties are void if a beater bar is used due to pile and fiber loss. The backpack doesn't do damage to the carpets nearly as much as does the upright.