“If you own anything, you’ve got to clean it.” Those are words that Paul Manning, the inventor of SpinAway, lives by. He and his wife Connie, both Louisianans, had been passionately developing, tweaking, and championing SpinAway for over 10 years before they decided to partner with HY-C.
Paul has run his own janitorial service for decades — he knows how to clean. But one day, a heart attack limited his ability to (quite literally) do the dirty work. Paul hated not being able to operate at full capacity; he believes that you should never ask anyone to do something you wouldn’t do, and his condition was causing him to have to do just that. Determined not to sit on the sidelines, Paul — with the help and support of Connie — began developing SpinAway.
But what is SpinAway? How is it different from other cleaning tools? What is it good at — and what isn’t it good at? In this guide, we’ll answer those questions (and more) to prepare you to jump into the world of rotary cleaning. By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how tools like SpinAway work, and you’ll be ready to decide whether or not it’s the right tool for you.
What is SpinAway and How Does it Work?
SpinAway is an extendable rotary cleaning brush. Other extendable cleaning brushes get the job done just fine, but SpinAway comes with a drill bit on the end of its handle to attach to any cordless drill. That’s where the “rotary” component comes in: attach a SpinAway to your drill, extend or collapse it to the length you need, and pull the trigger. The removable brush head will spin as you hold onto the guide grip built into the handle and pull dirt and debris off surfaces (rather than rubbing it in).
SpinAway features no rustable components — the telescopic handle is made from aluminum and fiberglass. Its brush heads wear evenly as they rotate, ensuring consistent contact with surfaces as you use it.
Need to clean the brush head after a heavy-duty job? Just throw it in the washer and let it air-dry or replace it entirely after it wears out. SpinAway can be used in wet or dry conditions. As far as using it with cleaning agents goes, wash & wax, neutralizing agents, Pledge, Windex, and soap all work very well.
Who Is SpinAway a Good Fit For?
One of the toughest things about using SpinAway is putting old cleaning habits out of your head. There’s no need to push or scrub; in fact, the brush works best if you simply rest it on a surface, pull the trigger on your drill, and let the bristles do their work with minimal pressure applied. Anyone from a custodian who cleans professionally all day long to a homeowner just looking to tidy up their house or car can make good use of the versatile brush head.
Paul developed it during his convalescence, and it’s still a powerful, effective cleaning tool for anyone who may be temporarily or permanently disabled. It’s adjustable between about three and five feet in length, and offers at least ten feet of total reach. It’s very light, too — weighing in at just 1.9 pounds, it takes minimal effort to maneuver.
Who Is SpinAway Not a Good Fit For?
SpinAway has some trouble with thick, sticky debris. Mechanics, septic tank cleaners, or any other roles which may encounter grease or coated residues may have better luck with more robust tools.
While SpinAway has many versatile uses, some cleaning tools are tailor-made for specialized jobs (and are hard to replace). Crime scene cleaners, for example, utilize specific, irreplaceable tools in their jobs. SpinAway isn’t a great fit for cleaning the inside of a barbecue pit, a surface that becomes greasy and oily after many uses. It’s also not best for cleaning grass off of a lawnmower — a job better left to a battery or gas-powered blower.
Advantages of SpinAway
We’ve tried out SpinAway on quite a few cleaning tasks. And despite its superb flexibility, there are three applications it serves particularly well: pest control, homes and businesses, and vehicles.
1. Pest Control
SpinAway can clean out bird nests and other animal-related debris, but we’ve found that it works especially well on spider webs. Spiders tend to make their webs in hard-to-reach-places like ceiling corners or soffits and fascias. SpinAway’s extendibility not only allows you to reach up high to these spots, but also to spin webs away to eliminate every last thread.
2. Homes and Businesses
Walls, windows, crowns, baseboards, ledges, edges, cracks, crevices — if you own a home or a business, it has these. And SpinAway can clean them. Use it wet or dry and polish up every square inch of your property. Outdoor furniture, bird baths, and swimming pools are also perfect targets for SpinAway’s rotating brush head.
3. Vehicles
Own a car or truck (or a fleet of cars or trucks)? Use spinaway to buff up your fenders, clean off your windshield, and remove debris from your doors — inside and out. It works well on ATVs and motor homes, too.
If you have more of a nautical bent, SpinAway is great for boats. Whether you need to clean algae off the hull or slime out of the live well, SpinAway can tackle it, wet or dry.
Disadvantages of SpinAway
While SpinAway’s cleaning functions are pretty far reaching, we’ve found that it has a lot of trouble with axle grease on vehicles. We would recommend sticking to a more traditional degreaser-and-rag-style solution in this case.
This isn’t necessarily a cleaning limitation, but something to look out for when using SpinAway: be careful near dangling strings, like those attached to your blinds. Like a vacuum, SpinAway’s spin doesn’t pair well with small components that may get caught in it.
Unlike a vacuum, though, SpinAway doesn’t always need to be used with the drill running. If you want to avoid getting things tangled up in the bristles, just run it without the drill — you can still use it effectively, wet or dry.
Is a SpinAway Right for You?
If you have a trusty extendable cleaning brush that works well for you already, no problem. But if SpinAway has piqued your interest, you can find one on HomeDepot.com or on Amazon. We’ve outlined what we know it can do, but try one out for yourself. Get creative with it. Push it to its limits. We want to know where it succeeds and, more importantly, where it fails, so we can continue to take Paul Manning’s ingenious tool to the next level.
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