Naptime DIY: How to repair a vacuum cleaner hose

We needed a simple vacuum cleaner, nothing elaborate.  Granted a more expensive vacuum cleaner would be nice, but until I experience it firsthand it’s an expense that can’t be justified.  What to do when you average vacuum cleaner needed a small repair?

Determine what the problem is

The headline states the obvious I know.  Is the rotating brush not rotating?  If that’s the case then you simply need a new drive belt.   Change or clean out your filters regularly and that’ll go a long towards making the vacuum cleaner last longer.

A more obvious problem

In our case the hose ripped and became detached from the wand.  We initially fixed it with duct tape.  Duct tape can fix everything we thought, and it did, for a while.  The fix lasted about 3 months and we’ve gone through this routine twice now.

Coincidentally we had some duct work in the attic that needed to be affixed to theca unit.  It wasn’t a major leak, but was enough to where the seal was not complete.  At our local home improvement store I asked what tape would be good for this, thinking that they would recommend duct tape.

It was here that a new member of the tape family entered my life, foil tape.

The home improvement person said that foil tape was much better suited toward this purpose.    I thanked them, bought the tape and headed home.

Four months later the duct tape fix on my vacuum cleaner started to separate again.    I’ll try the foil tape solution since the home improvement person said it would be more effective regarding the AC.  The vacuum cleaner has air going through it, just like the AC, I thought.

Sure enough, using foil tape is much more effective at fixing the separation in our vacuum cleaner hose.  The suction is stronger and our newly fixed vacuum cleaner means we can put off purchasing another one for at least a year.

Have you used foil tape to fix anything else around the house?