Post #4566816

2026-08-03 10:23 UTC

@autkin@fosstodon.org @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu Above 1,500W your vacuum gets louder and hotter, but your floors don’t really get any cleaner. In other words: you can’t get your floors cleaner by putting in more power. You need to optimise the actual dust gathering. The public didn’t know that, they thought loud==clean and manufacturers happily sold ever higher wattages. So all power above 1,500W is essentially wasted. Give manufacturers a bit of headroom and you’re at 1,600W.

Replies (2)

@autkin@fosstodon.org 2026-08-03 10:28

@ArtHarg@mastodon.nl @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu thanks, but that's too hand-wavy, hence the question. Is there a research paper making this claim? Alternatively the noise (dB) or transformation efficiency (Pa/W?) level could be legislated, not the power. We see plenty of historical cases when thresholds deemed "enough" were surpassed because some bottlenecks were relieved.

Open ##4566817
@sloanlance@mastodon.social 2026-08-03 12:13

@ArtHarg@mastodon.nl @autkin@fosstodon.org @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu I've wondered for quite a while why vacuum manufacturers give the number of amps or watts their cleaners use as a unit of strength. They could (and probably do) make very inefficient machines that waste a lot of electricity just to get those numbers up. Vacuum cleaners should be rated by their suction power, in Pascals.

Open ##4566820