Central Vacuum

The Central Vacuum system is one of my favorite things in the house. It was installed by The Alarm Consultant, Brewster NY, owned by Paul Burdick. Paul's primary business is security systems, but he does central vacuum systems also.

I priced out all of the components, checked every vacuum website on the internet, and came up with a price of roughly $1500+ for my house. Paul did my system for $1300 installed, absolutely incredible, I don't know how he did it. Paul is a great guy to work with, very nice, reliable, easy to work with, shows up and does the work when he says will. What more could you ask for?

My unit is an AirVac AVR7500, which can handle a house up to 7500 square feet. I only have 3300. Possibly I could expand it to 5000 sq ft, if I finish the basement and space above the garage, but I'll never get to 7500 sq ft. He included 9 vacuum outlets - 3 on the first floor, 3 on the second floor, 1 in the garage, 1 in the basement, 1 in the space above the garage, plus 1 is built into the main unit. Also I got the deluxe tool package with the wand, 30 ft hose, etc.

See my gallery of photos

I love the central vacuum system, because it is really easy to keep the house clean. I always hated dragging that annoying cannister vac around the house and up the stairs, and changing the bag all the time. The central vac 30 foot hose is long and annoying too, but much less so than that whole cannister vacuum.

The suction on the central vac is slightly less than the top of the line Sears Kenmore cannister, but it is not an issue.

I noticed our new house has almost no dust compared to our old house. I attribute that to 2 things: The central vac exhausting outside, compared with the cannister vac exhausting all over the house. And also our forced air heating/cooling system which filter the air nicely. After 1 year in the house, if you wipe your finger across the top molding above any window, there's no dust on your finger. This is great since we have a kid in the house with dust/pollen/peanut butter allergies.