Carpet Cleaners (yet again)

[joy217]

I used my new Hoover MaxExtract 77 tonight. The machine was really easy to put together. The handle attaches to the base with one screw and then the two tanks are put on the machine. The machine came with a squeegee tool for hard floors, powered brush hand tool, and a non-powered brush hand tool (I haven't tried any of those yet). It has had one bottle of carpet detergent and one bottle of hard floor detergent.

The lightly soiled guest bedroom carpet came clean in one pass. I went over the very dirty family room carpet FIVE TIMES and the water was a disgusting dark gray every time. I ran out of the free detergent after the first three times so the second two times were just a water rinse. The most visible of the stains are gone but the high traffic areas still have a "tinge". I think those areas will come clean once I get more detergent and do a few more passes.

Positives: Even with that many passes the carpet isn't as damp as with one pass of my old Bissell. The dirty water tank was much much much easier to clean than the tank-in-tank system of the Bissell.

Negatives: The machine is very "heavy" to push/pull, and I wish the power cord was a few feet longer.

Slight Negative: The removable brushes were not as easy to clean as I thought they would be. Somehow each brush cluster got a blob of carpet fibers/dog hair trapped in the tip. The blobs wouldn't come off easily. I ended up "combing" the bristles with a flea comb to get rid of the blobs. I think I will always use the comb method because it was pretty fast that way. Anyhow, the blobs were not as gross to deal with as the icky hairball emissions that occur with the Bissell and as they were stuck on the bristles they were not re-dirtying the carpet.

Overall first impressions are positive. I can provide updates if you guys want me to once I use it a few more times, try out the tools, and use it on other flooring surfaces.

[GatorRay]

Any more updates on this? I have a Bissel and I agree about the nasty hairballs.  GROSS! But, I am in luck because it just broke WHOOPEE! So I get a new one! Are you still happy with your new one?

[joy217]

I've only had it since Tuesday I haven't bought any more detergent yet so it will probably be a couple weeks before I try it out again. I bought mine from http://www.abcvacuumwarehouse.com/ for $239. I ordered it on a Thursday and got it the next Tuesday. You can find them a little cheaper on Ebay but I decided I'd rather buy from a "real" store in case something happened and it needed to be returned. Plus they had free shipping

[Gracie & Bea's Mom]

I'm a rebel and break all of the rules when it comes to my steam cleaner.
I put a bit of bleach in the clean water tank when cleaning the tile floors. (My girls' bedroom is AKA my dining room, and every once in a while I like to kill off all the germs in the floor.)
Because my carpet is so disgusting--I didn't have the girls then and have oatmeal colored carpet--I sometimes add Clorox color safe bleach to the soap container. It really helps to break up all of the dirt. (Bea gets mad at me and likes to pee in the same area all of the time. It helps to deoderize the carpet and lift out the yellow stain.) I have also been known to put in Nature's Miracle laundry detergent to deoderize the carpet, too.
I love my steam cleaner!