Did you know…that baking soda can be dangerous for your vacuum cleaner?

Baking soda is one of nature's great deodorizers. Effective and inexpensive, baking soda can be used in so many different ways from cooking to cleaning, and is often used to absorb unpleasant odors.

Thus, baking soda and other powder-based carpet fresheners are very popular products on today's market. When sprinkled on carpet and vacuumed up, these products work by absorbing bad smells, and often have added perfumes so as to leave behind a fresh fragrance on the rug and in the room. That's great - except for two big problems...

1. The particles of baking soda are so small, that a portion of the product remains in the carpet fiber and/or sifts beneath the rug and padding to the floor below (never to be recovered!) Don’t believe me? If you use baking soda and one day rip up your carpeting, you’ll see a surprising amount of its residue left behind!

2. Again, due to the small particle size of baking soda or freshener product, these can clog the pores of your vacuum’s bag or HEPA filter. This can drastically reduce suction resulting in poor cleaning performance and cause clogs to form. Even worse, this dust can escape the filtration system in which your vacuum’s motor can “breathe” these particles and eventually short out.

This is not to just bash baking soda or Carpet Fresh; large quantities of any fine dust such as fireplace soot or sheetrock/construction dust is highly dangerous for almost any vacuum!