Rainbow Vacuum Guide-

This review is of the popular rainbow vacuum cleaner.  This will talk about the pros and cons of the rainbow vacuum cleaner.  It will also talk about how to avoid buying a bag rainbow vacuum cleaner.  It will talk about all the different tools and parts you can buy for them from tools to shampooer to powered upholstry tools.

Hi my name is Dustin Chaffin and I am the General Manager for Great-Vacs.  We started selling vacuums on ebay in 1998 and since then we have sold over 9000 high end vacuums on ebay alone.  Being ebays largest high end vacuum seller we get on average 100 emails a day.  Most of which are asking what is the best kind of vacuum and asking for general vacuum knowledge.  So I am excited to write this guide because we get emails all the time about rainbow vacuum cleaners.

Only read this review if you want to learn some serious information about rainbows, after reading this you will know just about everything there is to know about rainbows (good and bad).  OK first of all lets discuss pros and cons of rainbows and why they are so popular.

Pros-

1. They last a really long time.  My grandfather has a 1942 rainbow that he has that still works perfect.  It is not uncommon to see 30+ year old rainbows still working great.

2. They don’t loose suction as they fill up with dirt (take that James Dyson).  They use water to filter with so as you pick up more dirt your water just gets dirty.  They don’t use a bag that would loose suction as it is filled up.

3. They have really good suction.  I knew that rainbows had great suction because of all the raving reviews by customers but I never new how good.  Years ago when I lived in an apartment, a customer who lived by me wanted to buy a rainbow.  So I agreed to take it home and they could pick it up at my apartment.  When I got home with it I could not remember if anyone at work had tested it.  So I plugged the vacuum in and set it on a high traffic spot on my carpet and turned it on.  Then I left the room for a minute and came back.  When I came back I was SHOCKED (no not by electricity) their was a half and inch of sand in the water bowl AND THE POWERHEAD HAD NOT EVEN MOVED.  Wow these things have some serious power and are powerful cleaners.

4. They seem to work really good with hardwood floors if you don’t have a lot of carpet.

5. They use water to filter with so you never have to buy bags.

6. You can use them to pick up wet spills and water.  Last August I was able to buy nearly a semi truck load of rainbow vacuums.  I was actually really surprised this had never happened to me before where I had gotten so many. I figured it would take me about 6 months to sell them all.  Three days later Hurricane Katrina hit and we had already started rebuilding them.  Suddenly all the rainbow vacuums flew off my shelves and the orders were pouring in.  My poor coworkers I had working 70 hours a week just working on those rainbows to try and keep up with demand.  We had to put people on waiting lists.   In a little over a month all the rainbows were gone.  So in that situation people were only buying rainbow vacuums no other vacuums demand grew.  Why?  Because they can pick up water and were a great vacuum to clean up the water and dirt left behind after the hurricane.  They work great with a rainbow carpet shampooer as well. A note here: always use your non electrical tool hose when picking up water.

7. Parts are very easy to find.  They also make after market parts for just about every model.  So you can choose from genuine parts to aftermarket parts.  Recently a bunch of other water filtration vacuums have come out and they seem to work good but parts are really hard to find.

8. They have a track history.  They have been around for nearly 100 years.  You know what to expect from a rainbow.  With some of these other copycat vacuums you don’t know what to expect and they have no track history.

Cons-

1. They use water to filter with (you notice that’s a pro as well).  It’s a little more hassle to fill up and dump out every time you vacuum.  VERY IMPORTANT when using  a rainbow vacuum and after you are done with it and dump out the water DO NOT LEAVE THE WATER BOWL ON.   If you check out my Consumer Alert in my auctions this explains more.  What happens is if you don’t do this is there is a little bit of moisture in the water bowl still and the bearings on the vacuum are still hot.  Will guess where the moisture is attracted to?  That’s right and the bearings rust out and the motor seizes and you think you have a bad motor (and really its just a 3 dollar bearing that needs replaced).  Then your local shop is going to charge you around 200 dollars to fix it.  So to avoid all of that when you are done vacuuming simply store your water bowl on top of the vacuum.

2. Filtration.  Models previous to the E series just use water to filter with.  Water traps almost all of the dirt except for really really small dust like drywall dust or firewood ash which it does not trap.  They solved this with the E series of Rainbows by installing a HEPA filter to trap that.  Then that cut down on the suction power so they installed a bigger motor on those to overcome that.  Here is an important point.  On the models previous to E series that just use water to filter with they are still really great for a allergy vacuum.  I have had customers who have had the HEPA bagless type of junky vacuum and have bought the rainbow (previous to the E series) and have had way better results with their families allergies.  Just because a vacuum says HEPA filter on it does not mean it is going to filter better.  For more information on this check out my article “Picking the right vacuum”  In fact with all the models of vacuums we sell I would have to say I have had more customer compliments on a vacuum helping their families allergies with the rainbow vacuum.

I am constantly asked what the differences in models are to see that go to our document “Rainbow Model Differences”  It is very helpful and also tells the Cubic feet of airflow with each model.

My thoughts and conclusions about the rainbow vacuum-

I would have to say that with all the vacuums we have seen and sell that I have never seen such customer loyalty with the rainbow vacuum.  I get emails all the time with such statements as “I have had a rainbow for the last 20 years and I want another one that’s all I will vacuum with”  or “My mom and my grandmother all had rainbows and I am tired of buying the plastic junk that keeps breaking I want a rainbow vacuum” or “My best friend borrowed my rainbow vacuum and wont give it back.  Could I buy a rainbow for her so I can get mine back?”.   One thing that I think is very interesting about the rainbow vacuum is the interest in the older models.  Usually when a new vacuum model comes out that it kills the old model of that vacuum and the price drastically drops for the previous model.  Not so with the rainbow vacuum, in fact their almost seems to be more demand for some of the older models than the new current model.  I have never seen another vacuum do this.  In fact for a 35 year old rainbow I can get almost 300 dollars for one on ebay.  Try and find another vacuum that is that old and is selling for that much on ebay.  You wont be able to and that speaks volumes about the vacuum.

Buying your rainbow vacuum from the right place

Rainbow vacuums are not easy to properly rebuilt or repair and should be done by a experienced shop.  Many years ago when I was just starting out in the industry I decided I did not need any proper training to fix rainbows.  So I decided to try and fix it on my own (I was very mechanical how hard could it be).  It took me 2 days and when I plugged it in 2 things happened at the same time.  The first was I noticed it ran backwards (blowing air instead of sucking air) and the second was I saw sparks fly everywhere and then it caught on fire!  Needless to say I went and got properly trained.  Every time I think of that experience it makes me laugh.  The point is you need to buy from a shop that knows how to repair and rebuild them correctly.   We are actually one of the few shops that know how to do it right and because of that we are always so busy with working on rainbows.  In fact we most of our rainbows we get to rebuild are from rainbow shops that don’t know how to do it right and would prefer if we did it.  Every pre E Series rainbow we get in we rebuild the bottom in.  New bearings, seals and other bottom end parts.  We clean the fans and the inside of the vacuum and check and replace the motor brushes.  We also install new brushrolls and belt in the powerhead.  We sell about 400 rainbows on average before we have one back for warranty work.  When we go through them we replace any parts that look like they may go out in the future.  We want these vacuums to last many many years and have our customers love their rainbows.  Now there are a lot of rainbows being sold on ebay that have not been rebuilt or gone through and if you buy one of those you can expect within a few years to have them rebuilt locally (picture of price tag) for 150 to 200 dollars on average.  So in conclusion I would suggest to buy a rainbow vacuum from a experienced service shop, one who properly test, rebuilds and repairs rainbows. 

Some popular ebay searches for rainbow vacuums are Rainbow Vacuum Warranty and Like New Rainbow Vacuum

If you found this review helpful would you please take the time right now to vote for it?  There are a lot of irrelevant reviews out their so the more votes this gets the higher it will go in the vacuum reviews rankings. 

Thank You and Happy Vacuuming,

Dustin Chaffin
Great-Vacs Manager