[Seymour Sunshine]

My vacuum hoses get a musty smell in them that gets blown through the entire house. It's not that strong, but it's certainly noticeable and unpleasant.

Anyone else get this problem and how do you clean the hoses out?

[davep]

Soak a rag in something that smells nice and suck it through your hose

[Jim_77]

Why would this be a problem??!

[Seymour Sunshine]

Why would this be a problem??!

Ahhh! I understand your question. I suppose having a TM all the air just gets blown into the atmosphere. But running a porty the air gets distributed around the house ... and when it smells bad, that's a problem.

[Mike Halliday]

suck up a bucket of bleach  solution at the end of the day and leave it over night

[markpowell]

Just suck half bucket of water and a little deoderisor through at the end of each day, normally some solution left in your fresh tank
Mark

[Simon Gerrard]

Does it matter Some of you guys have got too much time on your hands.

Simon

[Colin Day]

Pop a Polo mint in the end of it.....

[Kinver_Clean]

Leave the machine outside.
Saves the noise and hot fetid air in the house and if you spill a bit it doesn't matter.

[Fintan_Coll]

Leave it outside, exactly. I very seldom take a machine inside unless absolutely necessary. Take the hoses and cables in through the door or even a convenient window. The vac motors will run cooler if the machine is outside. I made a''tent like'' structure out of a plastic tarpoulin when it rains.

[Jim_77]

Well there you have your answer

To be honest your waste tank probably stinks as well!  Good practice should be to completely empty waste tank and wash it out at the end of each day, run some frsh air through to dry the hoses, tank and motors and then store machine with waste tank lid off.  I always used to spray some squirts of sanitiser up the vac hose so it ran all the way through and into the tank (I still do his with the TM, works just as well)

It's generally accepted that you should at no point have a portable running inside a building, expelling its exhaust into the indoor air (I'd say that really only applies to domestics, on commercials it really isn't important or practical in most cases)

Most portables have a port on the ehxaust so you can attach a length of vac hose to exhaust the air outside.  Apart from looking after indoor air quality, it makes it a hell of a lot quieter too.

I always found with a porty that 50ft of hose would get me to every furthest corner of most average houses, or at very least I'd have the machine at the bottom of the stairs with an extra length of hose as an exhaust.

[Seymour Sunshine]

The answer is to wash out the inside of the hoses.

I've made a length of garden hose pipe with a sideways spray on the end. I blocked off the open end of the hose pipe with an old pen top. Then I stabbed small slits in the side for the water to spray out of.

I'd left the hose soaking  in a bucket of water over night. When I shoved the hose through it, it got loads of grit and fuzz out of the crevices in the hose. It is now perfectly clean and smells fine.

I think it probably needs doing every night to keep the hose fresh.

I'm not sure about Jim's post.

The vacuum tank doesn't stink, and there's no reason that it should. I keep everything clean that I can clean. The problem was that I had no way of washing the inside of the hose. Now I've got one, the problem is solved.

My machine vents directly into the atmosphere and there is no option for an exhaust hose.

[John Kelly]

Good vac hose should have a smooth bore on the inside. This enhances airflow and obviously has less grooves for grit etc to get stuck in.

[Seymour Sunshine]

Good vac hose should have a smooth bore on the inside. This enhances airflow and obviously has less grooves for grit etc to get stuck in.

I've just done a Google images search for vacuum hose and cannot find any vacuum cleaner hose with a smooth bore. Can you advise me where to look?

In any case, I have to work with what I have. And what I have is regular vacuum hose with a spiral groove running all the way down which gets full of crap and smells bad.

Anyway, I've found a way of washing it. I.e I've solved the problem that I had.

[L.Doubtfire - The Blade Runner]

Well I`ve read everything now.I`ve got to reply to this.
In and with all the problems I`ve had over the years in
Carpet and furniture cleaning,I wish that my vaccum
Hoses smelling was the only problem that I have had.
Gee Whizz,I sometimes wonder where I went wrong.
 

Lewis  Doubtfire

[John Kelly]

Most good quality vac hose is smooth bore. The ones that aren't are the metal spiraled ones which also tend to shrink in length when under load.

[Steve Barnett (Carpet Care Plus)]

John are you still selling the prowler, only there's no mention of it on your site ?

[Seymour Sunshine]

Well I`ve read everything now.I`ve got to reply to this.
In and with all the problems I`ve had over the years in
Carpet and furniture cleaning,I wish that my vaccum
Hoses smelling was the only problem that I have had.
Gee Whizz,I sometimes wonder where I went wrong.
 

Lewis  Doubtfire

Oh, for Goodness sakes! Who said it's the only problem? Or even that it's one that I think is major and keeps me awake at night?

It's simply something that I'd noticed and was looking for a solution to.

In the end I found my own solution, that of washing it out with a hose pipe adapted to spray sideways.

* It may be that some porties have exhaust hose ports, but mine doesn't, so that isn't a solution.

* It may be that high-quality hose is smooth bored, but mine isn't, so that isn't a solution.

* It may be that 50 foot of hose will solve my problem and leave the machine outside, but I don't have 50 foot of hose and I don't want to work with a door wide open, so that isn't a solution.

I've got a small machine - a CTD902 - (that I keep spotlessly clean and sweet) and I did have 16 foot of smelly hose. Now I've got the same length of clear and non-smelly hose by making a sideways spraying hose and washing it out.

Problem solved.