By Gareth Butterfield
Heavy duty vacuum cleaners have a variety of uses. While they’re perfectly competent at just sucking up dust and dirt from your carpets, they can also be used for more industrial tasks like rubble dust during renovation projects.
And they don’t come much more heavy duty than Karcher’s new WD6 P Premium. The WD stands for Wet and Dry, so this is an even more versatile vacuum than meets the eye.
It can suck up wet sawdust, for example, or detritus on a soggy driveway. It can even suck up water like a pump, and it’s all deposited in a massive 30 litre chamber.
This chamber can be fitted with a bag, for normal, dry household chores, or it can just fall into the container, for the more wet-based chores.
If you’ve sucked up a load of dirty water, you don’t need to tip the 30-litre load up to pour it out, either, because there’s a handy little spout at the base.
As you can imagine, the vacuum unit is pretty large. It’s on wheels, and there’s a retractable handle on the top, but it’s a bulky thing. Easier to move around than you might expect, but it still takes up quite a bit of space. Especially with the handful of tools it comes with attached to it.
Because it’s likely to be used in very dusty areas, it has an incredibly large filter. It looks a lot like a car’s air filter and it’s easy to take out and clean and, cleverly, it can be kept in while using it as a wet vacuum.
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The tools it comes with are limited a little, but the main cleaning head is large and works brilliantly on carpets. The vacuum suction is so powerful it pretty much lifts the carpet away, so you know you’re getting a deep clean. There’s no beater, but it really doesn’t matter.
Anyone who’s done any drilling or any other form of woodwork will appreciate the value of another cool feature on the P version of the WD6 Premium – a built-in power socket.
It lets you plug in a drill, sander, saw, or some other power tool, and you can run it from the vacuum itself.
And then there’s the cool trick of an auto-on mode, which activates the vacuum suction only while the tool is running. Imagine you’re drilling a hole in the wall; you can hold the vacuum spout beneath the drill to catch the debris while the drill is running, and just after it stops, it’ll shut off. Genius.
It’s not just suction either. If you want to blast away some plaster dust, for example, just connect the Karcher’s hose to a separate outlet and you’ve got a blowing mode. Perfect for quickly cleaning up an area without having to get the sweeping brush out.
Because of the way vacuum cleaner power regulations work, and because they’re not applied to wet and dry appliances, there’s an absurd amount of power on offer – which means even on its lowest power setting, the WD6 P Premium is basically one of the most powerful vacuums you’ll use. It’s more powerful than you strictly need for domestic use, but plenty powerful enough for its more commercial applications.
And that makes me wonder who the best customers for the WD6 P Premium might be. Obviously, tradesmen will love it. There are so many use case for it, and it’s more than robust enough to stand a long day of graft.
But keen DIYers, especially those who like to indulge in messy projects, or people who have particularly messy hobbies, would find it very useful.
Its 拢249.99 price puts it competitively close to some of the best Shark vacuums out there, and the likes of Dyson or Miele cost quite a lot more. But while it could cope very well with general domestic chores, it is a bit too bulky, there aren’t really enough tools, and it’s rather noisy. Not to mention it’d be a bit of a waste of all that power and capability.
It’s definitely a well priced tool for the people who need it though. There’s little to dislike about it and a lot to love. Anyone who needs this sort of vacuum in their lives will love its clever design and handy features. I’m not sure I’m practical enough for it, but I do have three cars. And I’m yet to find a vacuum that works as well on dog hair in cars. So it’s a thumbs-up from me.