Henry vs Hetty vs Harry vs James — Which Bags Fit Which Numatic Vacuum?

You own a Numatic vacuum. Maybe it's a Henry, maybe it's a Hetty, maybe it's the lesser-spotted Harry or James. You go looking for replacement bags and immediately hit a wall of part numbers, model codes and listings that all promise to "fit" something. Do you need a different bag for each member of the family, or are they interchangeable? It's a fair question — and the answer is simpler than the packaging makes it look.

Meet the family: Henry, Hetty, Harry, James

Numatic is the British manufacturer in Chard, Somerset that has been building these round-bodied tub vacuums since the 1980s. The famous faces are mostly the same machine in different liveries:

• Henry — the original red one with the smiley face. The default workhorse in millions of UK homes.
• Hetty — Henry's pink counterpart. Mechanically near-identical, just a different colour and a couple of cosmetic tweaks.
• Harry — the green pet-and-allergy variant, often sold with extra filtration and a pet-hair toolkit.
• James — the compact one with the on-board tool storage caddy. Slightly different body shape, same internals.

Because they share a chassis and a dust chamber, they share a bag. That's the whole point of the family: Numatic engineered one consumable to serve the lot, which is exactly why you don't need to memorise which colour vacuum you own before you can buy a refill.

The one bag that fits them all: NVM-1CH

The bag every standard Henry-family machine is built around carries the part code NVM-1CH (you'll sometimes see it written as 604015, or marketed as the "HepaFlo" type). It's a full 9-litre disposable with a self-sealing collar that drops onto the inlet spigot inside the tub.

If a bag is genuinely an NVM-1CH-type 9L bag, it will fit Henry, Hetty, Harry and James without any adapter, trimming or fiddling. The collar is the same, the capacity is the same, the seal is the same. This is true whether the bag is genuine Numatic or a properly-made compatible.

A quick model-code reference

The friendly names hide a set of model codes printed on the underside of the machine. If you want to be certain before you buy, check yours against this list — all of these take the standard 9L NVM-1CH bag:

• Henry: HVR160, HVR200, HVR200-11, HVR240
• Hetty: HET160, HET200
• Harry: HHR200
• James: JVP180, JVH187
• Also in the family: Henry Xtra (HVX200), Henry Allergy (HVA160), Henry Plus (HVR250), and the larger HVR300 / HVR370 commercial bodies

If your code starts with HVR, HET, HHR, HVX, HVA or JV, you're almost certainly in NVM-1CH territory.

The exceptions worth knowing about

Two members of the wider Numatic range are not part of this club, and it's worth flagging so you don't order the wrong thing:

• Charles (CVC370) — the wet-and-dry model. It uses a different, larger bag (NVM-2BH) because it has a different tub and has to cope with liquid as well as dust.
• George (GVE370) — the three-in-one wet/dry/carpet-wash machine. Same story: it takes the NVM-2BH-type bag, not the standard Henry bag.

So the rule of thumb is straightforward: if it's a dry-only Henry-style vacuum, it takes the 9L NVM-1CH bag. If it's a wet-and-dry tub, check the manual before you buy.

One more thing to check: the size catch

Here's the part the model-number question quietly skips over. Knowing your machine takes an NVM-1CH bag tells you the bag will fit — it doesn't tell you the bag is the right size. Numatic's own bag is a full 9 litres, but most "compatible" bags on the market are made to around 6 litres to save on material. They still fit Henry, Hetty, Harry and James perfectly. They just hold roughly a third less dust, so you change them far more often.

That's why "which bag fits my vacuum?" is really two questions. The first — compatibility — is easy: the whole standard family shares one bag. The second — capacity — is where the cheaper compatibles quietly let you down. A bag can be the correct type and still be undersized.

NuClean makes the full 9-litre version: the same NVM-1CH type the machine was designed for, with multi-layer microfibre filtration and a leak-proof seal, sized like the genuine article rather than shrunk to cut costs. It fits every machine listed above — and unlike the 6L compromise, it actually gives you the run-time the vacuum was built to deliver.

Written by the NuClean team. We're an independent UK brand; NuClean bags are a compatible replacement, not manufactured by Numatic. The Numatic and Henry names and part numbers are used for reference only.