I've heard that hide a hose does add to the cost compared to other central vac systems (and i would imagine that hide a house systems could be very, very expensive, but i'm not sure why you'd want to hide your house in the first place ;-) ).

Seriously though, it sounds like your builder talked to two vendors who don't sell Hide a hose and, naturally, they recommended not getting it since they sell another system.

I'm building right now and I plan to get hide a hose based on the recs here. My only question is "Does the outside of the hose get dirty since it gets sucked back into the tubes?"

My first thought was the same----these two dealers may not make HAH! I have never heard of HAH and also want to research it. I did have a Beam, and loved the power head, but really just as valuable was the flat brush for cleaning (thoroughly!) the hardwoods.

LOL, I noticed my hide a HOUSE type after it went to the group, I couldn't figure out how to edit it. I'd like to blame it on my heavy pain medication (had surgery) but I'd probably have typed it that way anyways! LOL

I wondered if their hesitance was due to inexperience with the product. I hate that, I specifically said I wanted it and instead of pricing it with and without and saying, just FYI, the retailers didn't recommend it etc... they just don't include it. Uggggg

Hiding a house is much more interesting IMHO.

i'm not as CV savvy as others here but my house is plumbed and all our options are installed. you should do a search on the forums about HAH; there's LOTS written about it. from what i understand, the hose gets cleaned out by the suction of the unit once it's retracted back into the wall.

another point mentioned before: how clean would a regular hose be? it gets dragged around the floor and then stored in a closet.

i think there are just too many builders out there who have no experience with the product. i know for us it's been an up hill battle. our GC doesn't even have an email address. talk about stuck in a time warp! i haven't used our CV yet but there's no way i would live without it or the HAH.

I've had my HAH for 6 months. My builder had never used it and I decided to do the install myself. It wasn't bad. The rough in is about twice the labor of a normal system - well maybe not twice but close. You need less outlets but they are about 3x the work per outlet to install.

The roughins are cheap ($40 an outlet is what I remember). The piping is cheap - Probably $100 total for an average (custom built) house.

The hoses and valves are expensive - about $350 per outlet.

The hose is perfectly clean - sometimes on retracting, dirt gets brushed off and you get some debris near the outlet that you suck up.

I have a vacuum powered head for carpets. It seems to work fine. I haven't done the test (I plan to) where I vaccuum with the HAH and then revac with a standard vacuum to see if anything significant is picked up. Most of our house, expecially the dirty part, is hardwoods.

Hope that helps. BTW - the one sub I talked to (actually a friend out of town) had installed plenty of HAH's.

I do think this is an item that gets overcharged (which is why I DIYed). This is really pretty unskilled labor and took me maybe 10 hours to do (4000 sq foot on 2 levels). Another few hours to hook up the motor. I'm sure people pay $1000 (or more) for what I did.

I had a VacuFlo system in my last house -- pre-HAH. I loved the system and planned to do it again in the new house, WITH HAH. However, the two VF installers who bid on the job both said they'd never done it before, didn't recommend it. One installer even told us that their VF rep said, "Just install one and you'll see what a great product it is." When the bids came in, both were WAY high on the HAH feature.So we did the conventional install.

I'm CONVINCED that the only reason this happened was because the installers hadn't done it before.

I still love my VF system, even without the HAH.

On the advice of the installer, I chose a Vroom instead of the vac pan for kitchen and laundry -- not sure I'd do that again. The vac pan in my old house worked well, and the Vroom is awkward, because it keeps trying to suck the hose back into its unit. Using it feels like wrestling a particularly strong snake.

I'm searching for info on this too, for our new build.

David--are you in Cary? If so, are there not any HAH installers in the Triangle? My hubby is handy, but 10 hrs would be more than he'd want to do. I haven't talked to our contractor about it yet, other than to mention we wanted Central vac roughed-in. Thanks.

I know Broan/Nutone doesn't make a system that is strong enough for the hide-a-hose so could be part of the reason for their response. Beam I don't know anything about.

Are you planning on a lot of carpets in your house? The power brush is stronger than the air propelled one, but the air propelled has been just fine even in my first house where I had carpets. It was an older install when they didn't have the powerbrush.

I definitely prefer the HAH over my old system. It was more of a pain to be moving the hose around and I always ended up having it just laying somewhere instead of putting it away even though I had an almost empty closet where I could stuff it in. To me the higher expense was well worth it of the HAH. In our case it wasn't that much more ~ $500.

I spoke with the people at www.centralvacuumstores.com after reading recommendations to contact them from this forum about the HAH and the rep said that she did not like the HAH. She said that the hose can get dirty and can get a funny smell to it. Anyway, the service and price there has been very good IMHO.

Hope this helps. You can always call them and they seem happy to help.

mchaney1 - I bought all my HAH from that site. Agreed, great service and price. Funny that reps recommendation. They certainly don't work on commission do they? No funny smell here and my wife is very sensitive to smells.

tracey b - yes (about location) and I don't know. My builder had never seen it but I really didn't bother asking if his LV sub did it. I'd be surprised if they didn't do it. I feel like my builder thought they did he had just never used it or seen it. I knew what the bid would look like and I didn't want to waste their time. I did all my own LV (low voltage - speakers, video distribution, intercom, cable, phone, security and strangely central vacuum). The price/budget based on a similar house was $7000 and that didn't even include central vac - what a racket.

Let's face it. I've never installed a CV system before. I don't know why a sub who does CV couldn't do it. Now if they were a dealer exclusively for a company that didn't make a decently strong motor than I guess that might be a problem.

I'm a physician and I am seriously considering quiting and setting up either a LV shop or landscaping since they are the biggest ripoffs in home building. All the subs do pretty well IMO. Pay an immigrant laborer $12 an hour and charge $50 - not a bad gig. Way to get OT

Mchaney1 Â IÂm quite surprised by your experience with www.centralvacumstores.com too as I have spoken with them on the phone and via e-mail and received quite different information. We are getting close to placing our order with them and will do the install ourselves.

We had great service from Central Vacuum Stores, in fact they could not have been more helpful. We installed our CV and Hide A Hose ourselves and CVS cheerfully answered each and every question we had. I am sure CVS would not be happy to hear what their representative is saying!

For what it's worth, after 3 years our hoses are not dirty and there have been absolutely no 'funny' smells!

jeri - one tip I hadn't seen and didn't do (but everything was ok) - don't use cement on both sides when you join a collar to a pipe. Normally for plumbing you would but the excess could cause a place for the hose to get stuck.

Thanks for the tip David! I greatly appreciate it.

We just bought a home with hide a hose and the suction is poor at best. My moms central vac w/o the hide a hose system has a lot more suction. The suction is so bad that it will not propel the brushes in the attachments to vacum carpets. Beware of the suction power!!! We have had the installer come 2 times to repair, had to cut hole in wall where the hose came detached in the wall. All in all... still using my portable Dyson, this system is not all it is cracked up to be, what a waste.

Thanks, David. You mean the budget for LV stuff was $7000 and so that's what you saved by doing it yourself? I guess I'll be talking hubby into taking some vacation time and helping me do those things. CV I don't know about, but at least the other stuff.

allbrooke, so sorry to hear of your disappointment with Hide A Hose. You have the distinction of being the first owner I have ever heard of to make negative remarks about Hide A Hose. It is obvious though that your poor system is a result of a poor installation, not because HAH is "not all it is cracked up to be", the many happy HAH owners will tell you that HAH is certainly not "a waste". It is such a shame that your system was not installed correctly.

The poor suction is the result of an under powered motor or possibly it is clogged somewhere, or perhaps the outlets are not properly sealed. I also wonder if the lack of suction is due to joints that have not been made correctly. The system should have been carefully checked for leaks before the walls were closed up!
As for the hose becoming detached in the wall, the hose is never attached, it can be removed at any time. Perhaps you mean that some of the pipework became disconnected in which case this screams "poor installation" and suggests that this pipework joint and possibly others were never properly glued in the first place. The pipework is just like any type of plumbing - it must be watertight, in this case to make it airtight or suction will be lost.

Unfortunately there will always be poor contractors who don't have the skills or knowledge or pride in their work to take advantage of a good, commonsense, tried and tested system like Hide A Hose. The sad thing is that it is you, the homeowner that suffers! You could and should have a wonderful system that makes your life easier and your home cleaner, rather than a useless mess of pipes inside your walls and some redundant outlets. You are right, 'what a waste'!!
Your installer needs to correct his poor work, stop blaming Hide A Hose and provide you with the system you paid for when you purchased the house!

I totally agree with sis3. There is really no excuse for this. My first ever CV install with HAH has far more suction than my last non-HAH CV system did (in the last house). No question, the HAH hose needs extra suction. My motor is so powerful that I am accidently sucking up things I shouldn't. The vac pan is actually a bit too loud from the suction. Allbroke - my attachment piece goes so fast as to be loud. When you come off the carpet, you almost have to disconnect the suction or your ears hurt.

tracey b - I'd have to go back and look at the numbers but my recollection is that the last house had a $7000 budget (the house we were copying). I did so much more that it was hard to make comparison. You would probably spend $1000 or so on wire and terminations (and various tools). I might have spent more like $2000 - but I did A/V distribution and HDMI and component cable is a little more expensive.

Examples - original house had speakers with volume controls in 5 rooms. I have keypads that have volume and source selection. Rooms can be shut off and muted. Different rooms can listen to different sources (not possible in original house).

There's another brand I like better that lets you have an electric head and doesn't have the hose in the pipe but in an in-wall cabinet so that you don't have the pipe length requirements.