We have vacuum!

Ha! I have succesfully fixed the issue with my hoover (actually a Dyson-style Vax).

I let it get over-full a while ago and since I took it apart and fixed that it hasn't been working very well. It would suck and then start making this pop-pop sound, and not really pick anything up.

I was having another look at it yesterday and realised the pop-pop was actually a hidden (it's underneath the handle) safety valve triggering, which sent me delving through it looking for a hidden blockage. Turned out the hose and the cylinder might be clean, but the floor-head was completely choked between brush and hose with a piece of cardboard (one of those tear-off strips from Amazon packaging), with a completely gross build-up of felt around it. Cue an hour poking things into its various apertures to try and howk it out. Yeuch!

Mission accomplished, I promptly ran it into a bag of rubbish and triggered the safety cut-out as it wrapped itself eight times around the brush *headdesk*

That had reset by this morning (there is a reset button, but I've never gotten that to work, easier just to unplug it and leave it), so I finally managed to hoover the house, which desperately needed it, particularly as there were little black bits of disintegrated faux leather from my office chair that had gotten literally everywhere.