A few weeks ago I got very excited when Michelle Redmond of Minx PR (they did the PR for the food awards for us a few years ago) sent me some details about a new cordless vaccum cleaner that she was promoting called AirRAM.

It looks very cool (as you can see), is very light, battery operated (no cord to trip over) and uses, apparently, only one twentieth of the electricity needed to run a ‘normal’ vacuum cleaner of the same size, and….  It sucks the dust straight up into the dust receptacle which is within a couple of centimetres of the floor – so no dust whooshing around inside the vacuum and escaping into the air (and your lungs). And, even better, ’AirRAM technology collects and compresses the dirt dust and fluff into tidy, dust-free bales stored only 5cms from where it is collected….. The dust-free bales are then simply dropped into the bin with no messy dust cloud.’

Yes! Perfect for dust and dustmite sufferers, I thought – and asked for one to experiment with.

But sadly, although it  delivers on absolutely every other claim (light, flexible, adaptable, low energy, efficient) those dust-free bales did not materialise – merely a handful of dusty fluff which puffed out the normal cloud of dust when removed from the container….

I did contact AirRam and got the following back:
Thank you for your email. The AirRam will only compact the dust into tight bales if there is a lot of it. If it is just fine dust and crumbs, it will be loose in the dust tray. Hope this answers your question.
But sadly that does not seem to be the case as we went on using it until it was so full that it was no longer able to pick up anything at all, but, still no ‘bales’ – just a larger  handful of dusty fluff….

However, if you do not suffer with asthma or dustmite allergy, and you are looking for a new vacuum cleaner, can I thoroughly recommend the AirRAM – more details here. It does an excellent job of cleaning, with a lot less effort than my old and much loved upright Sebo – although, I have to admit, with a rather more annoying high pitched whine…. Jolly good value for £229 from their site.

And, while on the subject of gadgets which are of absolutely no use at all to allergy sufferers…. Have you heard of sugru?

It is a sort of silicone rubber that sticks to absolutely everything (yes, I mean everything – metal, ceramics, glass, wood, motor-cycle leathers and motorbikes, plastics, fabrics) and which sort of moulds itself to what it is sticking to….. So that you can use it to stick things together – or to mould round the toe post of your between-the-toes sandals to make them comfier!! And it is waterproof and dishwasher proof.

In allergy terms it does not smell (for those with chemical sensitivities) but it does contain Methyltris(methylethyketoxime)silane and Gamma-Aminopropyl Triethoxysilane, both of which, they warn, could cause reactions, although only when the sugru  is still ‘uncured’; once set it should be fine.

So far we have used it, very successfully, to mend bits of car, a garden sculpture on which no other glue was working – and one of the Webmaster’s many Grammy’s on which I had dropped  a shelf thereby snapping off its horn!