Event with a vacuum

This morning I was vacuuming when the canister vacuum stopped working. I had turned it off with the switch conveniently located on the handle. I adjusted an attachment and then turned the switch back on. Nothing happened. The vacuum didn’t work. I looked for what I might have switched off by accident, but couldn’t find anything. So I put the pieces back together the way they were before when it was working and still nothing. The vacuum is fairly new, maybe a year old or so. Naturally I checked the plug first and that was still plugged in.

So I got out the manual. It’s a pretty good little manual and my eyes lighted quickly on something like “the vacuum will stop running if it is overheated.” There is a thermal protector. Yeah, the back end of the little canister felt pretty warm. In that event one should check the filter to see if something blocked it. So I read where the filter is and saw that I must remove the bag to get at the filter. To remove the bag I have to open the canister. Well, I’ve only opened it up once when I did the first and only bag change. I read how to open it and struggled to remove the hose from the canister, because that has to be done before one can get to the latch to open the lid. I was happy when I finally got that done. Of course it is easy once you know how the latch holding the hose works.

I felt around and found the latch to open the lid. And I saw mounds of dirt packed into the canister on top of a bag. Any idea what joy there is in cleaning that out?! Lots of joy. No wonder the outside indicator was still green showing that the bag was not yet full. There was nothing inside the bag, because no doubt I had misunderstood what “rotate the bag mount down” meant in the instructions for putting in a new bag. A little humiliation can be good now and then. Getting that mess out of there and cleaning the filter had the vacuum humming again. I’m so grateful for that thermal protector Kenmore put in there.