Hoover 18V Pets Plus Handivac CH965 Questions & Answers

I have searched online and can't find one to download either

HI Gail, combing through the instruction manual again, it makes no mention at all for such a procedure. Only that you should charge a minimum of 6-8 hours, but ideally 14 hours for optimal use of battery. According to the troubleshooting guide, the battery should run for 8-12mins.

We've had it for a year now, and it does appear to reduce power after a couple of minutes of use. But we haven't tested if it will actually last 8-12mins (I suspect it won't since it sounds like it's slowing down already after a few minutes). From years of experience in the mobile phone industry where most of the early mobile phones ran on Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) batteries, you were expected to run the battery flat completely before doing a full charge from time to time to get optimal performance and avoid the "memory effect".

I think it would be extremely inconvenient to have to do that with this Handivac, and since they don't mention it in the manual, they probably don't expect you to do it. But if my understanding of NiCd batteries is correct, then it would probably help to do it at some point if the running time has reduced.

Hi Tania, if my experience with Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) batteries with old mobile phones serves me right, then it may be helpful to let it run flat completely, and then do a full charge a few times to get the running time back up. These NiCd batteries - whether used in old mobile phones or power tools were notorious for developing what they called a "memory effect" where it would discharge at the point at which you recharged it last.

We've had our Handivac for about a year now and it still seems to run ok but noticeably slows down after a few minutes. Haven't tested how long it can run for but when it gets too short, I intend to try full discharge/recharge cycles like we used to do with mobile phone NiCd batteries to see if it helps.

Sorry, very late reply, I don't think I got an email about a question )-:
Recently moved house, off charge for 4 days, used it a bunch of times, maybe 45min in total and it was still good. Generally though we use it for 10-15min tops and put it back on it's charger.