Hello, my family has had Vacuflo since 76 when it was installed in my m&D custom built home. The Vacuflo worked like a champ till it needed to be replaced some 30 plus years later, Pretty good run I'd say! They have super thick carpet and have the plug in power head like you mentioned. The wiring is in the hose when you plug the hose into the wall you line up 2 pins into the wall outlet, when you hook up the hose to power head poll, line up same two pins, is powerful but my Mom was impressed with mine that was installed in 2000 in an existing home purchase I had the turbo head, that thing would walk itself across the floor. If you got it running and let it go with just the head it went across the whole room. My carpet was much thinner then hers but she thought the turbo was better. I believe the head is called turbo cat.

Now I am in another house and got quotes for Vacuflo, they have gone up in price considerably and when I did research Vacuflo was not mentioned that much. Instead I found them promoting other manufactured systems that required bags and were insanely priced. Why Bags? dumb... I will stick with vacuflo because of our long-lasting great history with them.

I did get the hide a hose quoted for this existing house and I believe we decided against it because the space it covers is shorter, I'm not sure what the reason was now, I have to think about that. Vacuflo is controlled by territories. So if you have x company in your area installing Vacuflo that's who you have to deal with. Our new rep won't crawl under house, or in Attic so we are stuck doing that work ourselves for not that much less I add. Some companies have gadgets like cloth covered hoses, and the power supply that is like zip tied down the whole hose to the other end and has to have an actual power outlet to plug into, nonsense.

Just get the basics and you will be happy, look for the Turbo Cat and I think you will love it. In fact you can test it out first just hook it up to anyone's vacuum, just remember that the vacuflo system has superior suction power.

Your house is big, so have storage spots for hoses in multiple locations, like one upstairs and one downstairs. It would be nice to hideahose the hole house, just open the door and pull out the hose, use it and back in the wall it goes. Maybe just your common areas.

Definitely have an outlet in your garage for car clean up. Definitely install the Can in your garage, not the house they are loud. Definitely when they run the exhaust have them pipe through the middle of the exterior wall if you can then outside after the 5ft or so drop what this does is deadens/mufflers the sound so you can vacuum at night without waking up neighbors. It will be like a whisper outside if they do it this way.

hope this helped.

I have the hide a hose system and love it. Huge improvement over the regular inlets. I have 4 hide a hose inlets - 2 up and 2 down in my 5500 sq ft house. It is significantly more expensive than the regular inlets but totally worth it if you plan to be there for several years. My hose locations were sited during rough plumb. My provider basically used a string and ran it from targeted hide a hose locations to see how every area could be accessed. I have very little carpet. I have the air attachment downstairs in one bedroom and keep a vacumn upstairs for the 2 other bedrooms that have carpet. The secondary bedrooms are rarely used so they don’t get much traffic as doors are kept shut when not occupied. Except for cost - I can’t imagine why you would want a regular system if you are puthing hide a hose in other locations.

Kim do you remember what the cost was Per hideahose?

Doing 9 outlets and 2 HAH is crazy. One of the benefits of HAH is less outlets. (just saw Kim said this).

How is your 5,000 sqft set up? The reason I ask is that someone upthread brought up a good point - you don't want to be pulling multiple hoses out each time you vacuum.

We had 4,000 and had 1 outlet per floor (roughtly 2000 per floor) Downstairs got vacuumed much more frequently than upstairs so it wasn't a significant issue. You can get 2500 sqft with one house but it would depend on layout. You will want an outlet right near the kitchen and it helps if that is reasonably central in the house.

Anyone who is concerned enough about vacuuming to post on an internet forum should get HAH if it fits in the budget.

We are putting an HAH in our garage this time. I planned closets around our HAH. I can not say enough good things about it. I self installed our house we built in 2010 and I did it again in 2018.

I have heard good things about the newer battery powered head.

Jean Bo - My quotes were for the entire system including all rough plumb and final install. They did not break out the individual components. Sorry...

I love my Vacuflow it is quiet and has a power head , don’t know why you think otherwise. I like the idea of the hose that hides but to be honest I can see it getting stuck somewhere and need the wall opened to get to it so I will stick to hanging the hose in the utility room. My husband who does 90% of the vacuuming wants to get another hose for the lower level of our house so maybe for Christmas.

The idea that something could get stuck inside the walls with Hide A Hose is a fairly common misperception, Patricia Colwell Consulting. Hide a Hose is simply a hose inside a tube of a similar length. The hose can always be easily pulled out of the tube, from either end if necessary. Also if an object should get stuck in the hose, the hose can be pulled out of the wall to remove the object.

My Hide A Hose is almost 13 years old and nothing has ever got stuck despite it being in almost daily use and sucking up everything from original builder's trash to kids' toys. Hide a Hose is a great, common sense improvement to central vacs. Anyone having access to open walls should give it very serious consideration.

There have been many threads on this site on the subject of Hide A Hose. It is significant that those who actually have HAH have only positive things to say. The only negative remark that I can remember was from someone a while back who had all, or almost all, carpets and was not totally satisfied with the way the system cleaned them. It seems even that issue may have been resolved now by improvements to HAH. We have mostly hard flooring with rugs and HAH works great on those. HAH is top of my list for the new house.

Thanks to everyone for their comments! I'll have to look into the battery powered head David Cary and Patricia. I didn't notice it on the Vacuflo website and my builder hasn't gotten back to me with an answer. Is the air powered nozzle what you consider a power or battery operated nozzle? I have to check the locations of the 9 inlets, it does seem excessive to me. In my current 3,000 sq foot house I have 4. I think I will stick with mostly regular inlets but do a HAH in the garage. The reason being, and correct me if I'm wrong, you can't put a sock on a HAH. I'm worried the bare hose could scratch the beautiful new woodwork in the house. Jean Bo, the estimate for install in my house for vacuum system, hose, standard accessories, 9 inlets,, all pipe material and labor $3,175.00. the option to add 2 HAH inlets $975.00.

HAH does have a sock. If you want HAH your vacuflo needs to be oversized for the house to have enough suction to retract the hose. Make sure what is being quoted is sufficient size for the HAH.

Thanks Kim! The estimate says the unit has a 12,000 sq ft capacity. I was going to question the builder about why so large for a 5,000 sq foot house. This answers my question. Now that I know the HAH has a sock, I'm re thinking it.

With regard to number of outlets, our home is 2 stories and long, over 4000 sq ft. We have 3 outlets but could have managed with just one on each floor if we had not wanted to vacuum our vehicles. It is well worth it to plan carefully, and to consider where furniture may be placed as the hose may need to be a little longer to go around obstacles and to reach ceilings.

Thanks CMara for the quote seems like it’s close to mine and we didn’t have all the stuff you did And just under 4K sf. The multi ports might be the facy they didn’t want you to have a crazy long hose to deal with, I know my guy mentioned that Years ago. Great input on this thread thank you to all.