Gearhead Mom

Monday, August 31, 2009

Oreck Halo

Posted by Missy W. @ 7:56 AM

Bear with me; this is a long post. Most of the products we review here at GHM are things my crew and I use on a daily basis with our kids. From time to time a company asks us to review a product. When this happens, we always make sure it is noted in the review that the product has been sent to us. I think we are much tougher critics on gear we’ve been asked to review, we feel like we owe it to our readers. So without further adieu, I give you the Oreck Halo.

A few months ago, I got a request to review the Oreck Halo vacuum. A device sent directly to me that will wage massive war on the copious amount of dust mites in my home, therefore giving my asthmatic-allergic-to-dust-mite-kid a break? Awesome! Sign me up. And so one incredibly heavy vacuum arrived on my doorstep.

What does a Halo have that my regular ol’ Kenmore doesn’t? “Incredible suction vacuums dirt and debris, while the patented Oreck Halo light chamber kills many microscopic germs, bacteria, viruses, mold, dust mite eggs, and flea eggs using UV-C light.” This sucker kills things like Anthrax, people. ANTHRAX. Bet you weren’t worrying about that festering in your living room, now were you?

So how does this vacuum eradicate Anthrax? According to the guide, the product “emits germicidal ultraviolet light.” Ok, cool. My house will be cleaned just like the hospital floors. But then it also reminds us that “exposure to or touching the ultraviolet light during operation may result in burns to skin or vision damage.” That’s nice. Let’s try not to get blinded by the new vacuum, hon. That being said, the light won’t even turn on unless the vacuum is in the standard operating position to even turn on, so if you even as much as lift the vacuum a bit off the floor, the light turns off. That made me feel better. The light also doesn’t work when you use the attachments. Good since you don’t want to accidentally burn your retina as you vacuum the sofa, but bad since it means my stairs are still infested with all those nasty little dust mites of doom.

What else does this machine destroy? Oh you know, your garden variety Bacteriophage - E. Coli, Infectious Hepatitis, Influenza, Poliovirus, E. Coli, Myobacterium tuberculosis, Salmonella enteritidis (that’s a relief, I’m a terribly lazy kitchen floor cleaner), and Penicillium expansum (MOLD!). Wow. How on earth have I been living all this time amongst such filth? And survived! The User’s Guide tells you how long to vacuum in order to kill all these offensive offenders (less than a second in most cases. Turns out mold is a little hardier than Salmonella). On the Halo site, there are these little Before and After videos, where the unsuspecting housewives and husbands have tested their floors, been given a Halo, used it for thirty days and then retested. The third-party lab in Arizona does a stand-up job in putting the fear of the Germ God into all of us by showing just how much E.Coli was hanging out on their kitchen floors before the Halo came to save them all from themselves. I was given a nifty little swab kit to do my very own before and afters for the lab when I received the vacuum. I was not told to wait 30 days in between the before and after. I did the before and after tests, sealed up the swabs and sent them off to Arizona in their little cooler. I awaited results and never received them. When I queried the agency who requested my review, I was told that while they shared in my disappointment, we would not be able to get results from the independent lab as hoped, and that I would need to complete my review without the benefit of those results. Later in the review process I offered to wait thirty days in between the before and after but alas, no go. I was disappointed (and curious) but committed to reviewing the product to my fullest, even without the lab results.

So. Let’s break it down:

-As far as my non-scientific eyes can see, this vacuum works incredibly well.
First of all, I am a lazy house cleaner. I like to play with my kids, I loathe cleaning my house. It’s clean-ish, but it’s by no means spotless. Quite spotty, come to think of it. I have tried to assuage my nowhere-near-Martha-kind-of-clean guilt by championing the “My kids eat dirt! It’s good for their immune systems!” call to arms. That would work really well for me except that my four year old is allergic to a hefty list of both environmental and food items. As far as I know, she is not allergic to Anthrax, but it’s good to know we’ve covered our bases there. Dust mites, however, are high up on that list, and coupled with asthma, it’s a yucky combination. We have definitely met the dust mites head on. We have all the mattress and pillow covers a house can have, no down pillows or comforters, almost all slip covers on the furniture, washable curtains, very few throw pillows, etc. It’d be great if I were a modernist with a penchant for leather sofas. We keep all of her toys in plastic boxes from the Container Store and only allow her to sleep with one lovie. We have hardwood floors and only a few area rugs. My girl, the poor mite (non-dust variety), doesn’t even have a rug in her room. We do have wall-to-wall carpet in the playroom - it’s a converted attic, done before we got here and I wasn’t about to rip that out and put in wood floors. And guess where she sneezes the most? That’s right, the playroom. It’s up a steep flight of stairs and like I said, I’m lazy. I don’t vacuum up there as much as I should, whereas I vacuum the living room/dining room daily. But when she does start to sneeze, I vacuum and dust and it lasts me a few days, maybe a week and then I have to do it all again. But since I’ve had the Halo for review, her sneezing has really calmed down up there. I vacuumed it a couple of times per week for the first month. After that, I hate to admit it, but I went almost three weeks without vacuuming (I was doing an experiment!) before she started to sneeze again.* I busted out the Halo and didn’t dust (science, people!) and the sneezing episodes subsided. Rad. I didn’t even have to dust the play kitchen! But it should be rad for SIX HUNDRED CLAMS. Like I said, I don’t have the uber-cool benefit of the petrie dish to show you how many dust mite eggs I’ve killed and/or sucked up, but all I can say is that it’s made a difference. She is so much more comfortable on the floor in our home and that right there is almost worth the $599.95 price tag. Can you tell I’m having a hard time swallowing the price of this thing. It’s more than the swing set I want to buy for my kids! Salmonella-sucking bad asses have their price, I suppose.

-My carpets look great. They look clean. They feel nice. They look like I’ve just had them steam-cleaned (except for all of the stains on them). Even my friends have commented. I take pride in my teeny, tiny wool area rugs.

-I love the way my carpet smells after I vacuum.
Not like it’s so disgustingly stinky beforehand, but it just smells “clean”. I had my pal Mickey use the vacuum for a few days to see what she thought and she had the same response. It doesn’t smell Comet-clean, but it just smells better. I have no way of explaining the smell. You know how it smells just as it starts to rain? Indescribable, but y’alllll know what I am talking about. Same thing here. I am sure it’s just the massive germ-eradicating motor in there, but all I can say is that I love the way the room smells when I am done. It smells like that vacuum has been doing its job.

-If this vacuum were a shoe, it would have a big toe box.
Obviously it has to be big enough to house the Anthrax-devouring-motor, but it’s big. I definitely cannot slide it into tight corners. But really what this means is that I don’t get to be such a lazy vacuumer. I have to lean over and move the item in question myself. I’m burning more calories as I clean? Along with the big toe box comes a big motor (two actually) with some serious heft. This sucker is heavy. H.E.A.V.Y. 17 pounds heavy. That’s just a few pounds less than my one year old and I complain plenty about hauling his majestic self around. Pushing that vacuum is a workout, but I tell myself that it’s a good resistance routine and push a little harder. The benefit of a seventeen pound vacuum is that it houses two incredibly strong motors: “the first motor drives the powerful roller brush that agitates the carpet, bringing debris and germs up and exposing them to the UV-C light that can kill them. The second motor generates incredible suction; dirt and microbes are quickly trapped inside the HEPA13 filter bag.” It picks up a lot (Polly Pocket shoes and dried spaghetti stuck to the dining room rug included). It’s not like it sucks the stickers from an apple off the floor (I told you I’m lazy), but it gets a lot of dirt up all the same. I rarely have to cover the same ground twice. This is very good news for the lazy vacuumer. The attachments are easy to use and access. I don’t use them very often since I wash the slipcovers, but I have used it on the stairs. Even with the weight, it’s still a pretty easy vacuum to navigate; it’s like the minivan of vacuums. It has five height options for bare floor all the way up to super posh-plush carpet.

-The replacement bags are not cheap ($24.99 + shipping).
They are HEPA filters, but still. After spending $599.95 on a vacuum, don’t you think they should include at least three free ones in the box??** The User’s Guide suggests that the user replace the bag every month, full or not. I’ve used mine for more than two months, at least five days a week, and not replaced it yet. It’s not full, I’m only using the vacuum for the review and didn’t want to spend $30.00 on the bags. That being said, my floors still look fantastic and as I said, the bag is not yet at the “full line”. Sidenote: One of the things I love about my Kenmore is that instead of bags, it has a canister for all the gunk. I love to see it swirling away in there and I can instantly tell when it’s full. However, even though it’s a HEPA vacuum, having a canister sort of defeats the purpose - you pull it out and dump it into the trash, therefore letting all kinds of nasty fly through the air of your once-clean kitchen. So yeah, I guess my penchant for clean floors now outweighs my laziness when it comes to changing out the filter bag.

I could go on and on, but I think I’d better stop. Bottom line: I think this is an above-average vacuum. I’m definitely going to miss it as I send it back to the Oreck mothership this week. But I think this is where the real test will occur. Once the Halo is gone, will my daughter’s sneezy attacks recommence? I’ll keep you posted (I’m sure you agree that my life is as good as any soap opera you watch and you’ll be just itching to read more about my floors).

Snapshot:
The Halo is powerful, well designed and cleans my carpets very well. Hasta la vista, dust mites!
As Jenny’s father likes to say, this item is “not without the stigma of low cost.” Coming in at $599.95, you will now be committed to cleaning your house. Consider it an anti-slob investment. No Anthrax in your house, what a bonus.

*My Oreck contact told me that “The reason the thirty days is important is that the UV-C light disrupts the DNA of the microorganisms’ eggs. Initial vacuuming gets up the adults but their eggs will hatch later, which means that when you run the vacuum over your carpet during that month period, the eggs won’t be able to hatch and therefore there will be an elimination of the germs. So, testing after thirty days would reveal few, and possibly no, germs at all.” Cool.

**I see on the site that when you purchase a Halo right now, you get a year’s supply of bags for free and a five year warranty.

Did I mention that Oreck suggested I donate the vacuum to a childcare center in my area instead of returning it to them? Thank you, Oreck! That is wonderful. The preschool I donated it to was just thrilled!

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