Poles Apart from the Competition

In the first of a series of blogs, our technical manager Andrew gives us an insight as to some of the finer details that make the SpaceVac system the worlds leading high-level cleaning system. 

While our range of high-powered wet and dry vacuums offer fantastic cleaning power to operators, the vacuums themselves would be nothing without the groundbreaking range of poles and accessories that the team here at SpaceVac have been developing and refining for a number of years.

Often when we meet new customers at events and trade shows, we hear variations on a sentence that goes something like “Ah I’ve seen a system like this before” – and while that’s true – they might have seen a system like this, when you begin to closely examine the SpaceVac system with other systems in its class, its clear that the comparison is only really skin deep.

While I will touch on a number of key elements of the SpaceVac system over the coming weeks, I wanted to focus today on our range of poles and the features and details that keep our customers working higher, safer and faster.

Size Matters

The first thing that people often notice when we demonstrate our poles to them is the size. Most vacuum systems available on the market offer poles with a diameter of 38mm. SpaceVac however utilise 50mm poles as part of our cleaning systems and while an extra 12mm doesn’t sound like much, the increased diameter of the poles offers increased airflow through the system at height and crucially; less blockages during operation.

Now, while you might imagine a more heavy-duty tool would perhaps have to compromise on weight, the second surprise we like to show our customers is the weight. Our standard internal and external poles are made of featherlight carbon composite, while our ATEX certified line is made of 100% carbon, and using these materials helps to keep these poles incredibly lightweight – even when stacked up to reach 15 metres high. Further by utilising carbon composite, the poles are incredibly durable and will not deform or snap under the stresses and strains of extended usage.

What a Catch

In addition to the increased airflow and unbelievable build quality of the poles the other thing that marks our poles out among their peers is how they fasten together. Its always been important to us have some mechanism in place for holding these poles together as the health and safety dangers posed by falling equipment is very real for workers onsite.

Over time, we have refined the mechanism for attaching our poles together, from the original twist lock to a metal cuff which would attach the poles together.

Our most recent product development has been to introduce a new push button system of interlocking poles. Fastening the poles together in this way has a number of key benefits.

The first is obviously user comfort; with a simple button being a far simpler operation, however where this new development really comes into its own is when it comes to take the system apart after use.

The problem with a lot of our competitors systems is that by utilising a ‘friction fit’ system (ostensibly pushing the tapered ends of two poles into one another) is that when the poles become wet or dirty or the poles begin to expand, then they get stuck together and will not separate. Only this week we visited a site where a customer was having huge problems like this and had a large pile of broken poles that had either snapped apart completely or had had to be sawn apart with a hacksaw and re-joined together with gaffer tape.

The customer in this instance was so impressed with the alternative available from SpaceVac, that they plan to replace their fleet of high-reach cleaning systems with SpaceVac systems as soon as possible.

Taken in isolation each of these little details might elicit a response of “so what?” but when added together you start to see how the SpaceVac system has evolved over time. The driving force behind the company has always been engineering, with a focus on making our product as good as it possibly can be. By listening to our customers over time, we have developed a ground-breaking cleaning system that is literally poles apart from the competition.

To see the SpaceVac system in action for yourself – please click here to book a free demo now.

Until next time…

Andy