After a month away in France recently, both car and caravan needed a damned good clean inside and out. The problem was that our Dyson DC14 had become distinctly asthmatic and its performance really sucked . (See what I did there?)

So, being a dutiful owner, I followed Mr D's instructions and carefully washed out the two 'lifetime' filters on top of the cyclones, dried them overnight on a radiator and had another go. I might as well not have wasted my time. Something was clearly wrong.

We've been having a lot of building work done on the house recently that has generated a huge amount of fine dust that has got everywhere and as there were no blockages in the pipes and the cyclones themselves weren't blocked, the answer must be that 'lifetime' in this case related neither to the cleaner nor its owner. So I bought two new 'pattern' ones from an on-line Dyson specialist together with a new 'lifetime', maintenance-free, post-motor Hepa filter for a total of £8 delivered.

What a transformation! You can now feel the cleaner trying to lift the carpets off the floor and the suction with the implements is enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Not a bad fix for eight pounds so I thought I'd pass it on.

carpet! there's posh...