Keeping your house clean and tidy is not easy. The range of tasks are endless and include mopping, using a duster, scrubbing and carpet beating to name but a few.

Most home cleaners use a mobile vacuum cleaner to vacuum their residence. They walk around the house, being followed by a shrieking machine that, as well as making a huge amount of noise, attacks their furniture and recycles dust mites and other allergens into the air.

Then there is another type of person who cleans their home in a different way. Admittedly, these folk are in the minority, but they walk calmly around their rooms, with a light weight hose pipe, sucking up any dirt with a powerful suction that comes from a base unit located away from the living area, hence very little noise. This means that other family members can read, watch T.V. or even chat while the vacuuming is going on.

These people use a central vacuum system to clean their home. A central vacuum system is quieter and much more powerful than a regular vacuum cleaner. Perhaps more importantly, central vacuum systems remove dust and other allergens from the rooms and do not allow them to re-circulate back into the living area.

Regular vacuum cleaners were a powerful invention in their day. But the time has come for them to move over and make way for the newest and best home cleaning device – the central vacuum system.

One of the small disadvantages of a central vac system is the fact that as your inlet is static, the hose length has to be sufficient to allow you to reach all parts of the area to be vacuumed, before moving on to the next inlet hose.  This can lead to a vacuum hose which can be long and cumbersome.

The people at Hide-A-Hose came up with the excellent idea of hiding the vacuum hose inside the inlet hose, so that rather than carrying around a hose to different inlets, you have hoses at each inlet that you simply pull out and use.  When you have finished this area of the home, the suction of the system retracts the hose back into the wall of the home and you move on to the next area to be cleaned.

This product has taken the central vacuum system market by storm since its launch in 2003 and seem set to become more the accepted norm in C.V. systems in the future

There are a huge amount of accessories that are obtainable with central vac systems. The list is almost endless and you might wonder how the manufacturers come up with the ideas. Accessories include special pet brushes so that you can easily remove dog and cat hair, small 'crevice brushes' for such places as those difficult window blinds, cushioning hose socks to protect your furniture and telescopic wand attachments so you can reach without over extending yourself.

Different companies vary the range of accessories that they offer to their customers. Some have additional kits for cars and garages, tools for cleaning upholstery and special turbo cleaners for stairs. You can also obtain racks that can be fitted in your garage and that will hold all of your accessories.

So no matter which central vacuum system you do decide on, if it an established brand, there will be plenty of useful and interesting accessories available to you, so enjoy.

When people purchase a central vacuum system, they are purchasing an appliance that will be of tremendous assistance to them in the coming years.

However, it pays to place the vacuum inlets wisely throughout your house, so that there will be proper coverage when you are vacuuming. It is much more cost effective to consider this now, before you order your system, as it may have a bearing on how much you will end up paying or the system.  

Depending on the size of your home, you should have an average of 2 inlets on each floor.  It is obviously very important that the hose will be able to reach each and every corner of the area it is supposed to clean.  It would be highly frustrating to pay for a system that cannot clean the whole home.  Proper placement of the inlets will minimise the amount of inlets you will need and also the length of piping you will use.

When you have made a decision as to where you think the inlets should be placed, run a test with a piece of rope to see will it reach all parts of the space to be cleaned, from the floor to the ceiling.

I do not suffer from hay fever, instead cat an dog hair drives my sinuses crazy. My brother on the other hand is a regular hay fever sufferer and every summer his life is a misery. He and I are not alone – surprisingly, many people suffer from some sort of allergy or another and any measure that can be taken within the home to relieve symptoms of allergies is seen as a welcome relief by allergy sufferers.

Because of their suction power central vac systems obviously will remove more dirt and dust from your rooms than a traditional vacuum cleaner. Added to this the fact that the base unit of a C.V.S. is normally located in a storage area, be it a garage or basement, then the dust that is taken up by the vacuum is removed completely from the living area. This is a huge benefit as regular vacuums, due to their position in the room, (following you around), usually re-circulate a certain amount of the dust they take up, which can even aggravate hay fever symptoms.

If you want to find out a bit more about allergens and central vacuum systems, pay a visit to http:// thecentralvacuum.com. There is a full forum there about all aspects of central vac systems.

There are several additional measures you should take if you are an allergy sufferer and have decided to install a central vacuum system.

One measure would be to purchase a C.V.S. that has a removable bag that collects the dust at the base unit.  You can purchase bagless central vac systems, but similarly to the bagless manual cleaners, they do require emptying and this can lead to quite a lot of dust being circulated while this process is taking place.

The other action you should consider is venting the system to the outside.  As you can imagine, a system that vents to the outside will automatically have less dust in the interior atmosphere than one that does not have a vent to the outside.  

Sometimes it will not be possible to vent to the exterior of the residence, and I that is the case, then it is even more important that you install a filtered or bagged system.