and we just plug it in and turn it on and soon, our home is not only looking better, smelling better, but appears to be cleaner....

Just what happens to you when the miracle pet and shoe dirt remover of your carpets goes insane? And they do have their moments of insanity...the wheels refuse to move, the bag bursts inside because you forgot to check it, it all of a sudden smells like it will go on fire at any given second...the smoke starts coming out of it and you turn it off, leaving a really ugly smell in your home instead of that freshly vacuumed smell of no dirt.....Has this ever happened to you????

why this happens. And none of them are fun to deal with. Having spent the morning overhauling my vacuum, in case some of you don't know how to do these things and have to rely on someone else to do them for you (such as your husband or a repair man) I thought I would write a piece on taking care of any challenge which could occur, to maybe help someone out there....Why pay a repair man or inconvenience your husband when all you need is a phillips screwdriver and a little patience.....

The first thing we all go for is the bag...this is automatic...but what happens when this doesn't cut it??? The wheels are stuck and won't roll right, the thing smells like it is burning up and the air seems to be coming out instead of going in the bag??? Believe me, I had to deal with all of these challenges this morning and just had so much fun....

I took that cleaner apart from end to end, starting with the bag, which I discovered wasn't full at all. The machine had started to make some noise from another planet, wasn't even picking up the dirt off the floor and after turning it off and checking underneath, the brushes appeared to be way back in the machine where they weren't supposed to be. (now remember my hub on keeping home invaders out as you read this) How could this have happened??? I hadn't vacummed in a while and everything was ok the last time I had used it.....

I turned it over, unscrewed the screws at the bottom of the machine and pulled off the cover from the wheels (there is a tab on either side of the cover you have to push in to remove) and discovered a really big challenge. Hair, pet hair, and whatever else it was was wrapped around the brushes preventing them from "whipping" the dirt off the floor and into the hole to go to the bag. I pulled the roller out and took it off the belt, and spent the next 20 or so minutes with a sharp knife cutting out the hair and stuff around the roller.There was even hair which had become wound around the little place where the belt goes around it....While the roller was out, I stuck my fingers up the area the dirt goes to make sure it was clear as well...... OK I thought as I put it back together, and turned it on again....

After a few seconds, it still wasn't picking up properly and now it was getting ready to burn up...., Turned it off again..Took the bottom back off turned it over and nothing appeared to be wrong, but you never can tell....Always make sure you unplug the darn thing before doing any of this as it is an electrical appliance... So I started to dismantle it piece by piece. Sometimes your hose can be the challenge, so I turned it over again and worked the hose off of the machine by turning and pulling it at the body.....I have a dirt devil and it was being a devil this morning let me tell you!!

After making sure the hose was not clogged, where the bag is put in at the base of it is another filter. This has to be clean as well for proper air flow...I took this out and washed it off and let it dry a bit before I put it back in place. It was minutely dirty, I didn't see this as the problem, but you never can tell. After doing all of this work, I figured, well, it will be alright this time....but NOOOOOOOOO!! The second I had put it back together and turned it on once more, the burning smell was worse....now, I had looked at the belt when I had it apart the first two times. So off it went again, unscrewed the screws, took off the bottom and the belt had snapped in two and was now burning inside the machine.......man, what a day, what a day!!! The belt looked funny so I turned it over and lo and behold, it was not even the right belt for my vacuum.....This was amazing, as I had changed the belt myself a few months back, with a new one of the proper size but this was a size smaller than what was supposed to be in there.....evidently there is a manic vacuum destroyer somewhere because this just wasn't even a belt that went to my machine....and this is not a joke, this actually happened today...

Fortunately, I keep spare parts and belts and all kinds of things so I had the proper one to go on it, and promptly put a new one on and put it back together again and got the rugs to look presentable once more....Unfortunately, I was aware of who did this to my machine and made the proper adjustments in taking care of that matter as well.

There are a multitude of reasons why your vacuum will go down, and I am positive that everyone knows what to do, but this is in the event that someone would not know how to take the thing apart. It just requires a lot of patience in checking all available avenues before you chunk that machine and go get a new one. Just remember where all the screws go and check those extra filters and the stuff wrapped around the roller and the wheels too.

I should have named this hub Adventures in Vacuuming....because it was an adventure today!!!