Steam cleaners are somewhat misnamed. Even though some of the heat the water themselves, it’s not really steam. The machine sprays a fine mist of cleaning solution or clean water into the carpet and the vacuum sucks it up into a recovery tank for disposal. The dirt embedded in the carpet comes up with the cleaning solution.

You can use just plain water but many soils need more than that to get out of your carpets. The solutions sold for carpet shampoo machines do work but they’re pretty pricey if you use the machine a lot or are doing a large amount of cleaning. I use Simple Green in my machine at a very low concentration and then rinse with clean water. Simple Green is non-toxic and biodegradable and smells nice. The label on the bottle or the web site gives you the ratio to mix the cleaner and water to for various cleaning jobs.

These machines usually have an upholstery attachment and do work well for cleaning couches, chairs, car interiors and the like.

The biggest thing you have to be careful with is not to leave the carpet too wet because the carpet will mold or mildew. Carpet cleaning is a time consuming job to do it right requiring a lot of passes with the machine to get as much of the solution out as possible. Turning fans on the area for a day or two also helps.

I have critters and kids and a husband who are all good mess makers so I’d be lost without my machine when trying to clean my carpets. Now as we remove the carpets and go back to hard wood floors, I’ll still use it for the area rugs planned for rooms like the living room seating area and the hall steps.

Carpets hold a lot of dirt, allergens and just plain nasty stuff regardless of how often you vacuum and how expensive your vacuum is. Steam cleaners do not replace a vacuum but give you way to clean your carpets on a deeper level.

And I also use mine for some other jobs that normally wouldn’t be associated with a carpet machine. Because of that long hose for upholstery cleaning, I use my machine to suck up the water in the bottom of the freezer when defrosting it. I also use it to suck up the water and wax stripper when I’m stripping down, buffing and rewaxing the kitchen floor that has commerical vinyl tile. I have also used it to clean up water messes from a broken pipe under a bathroom vanity and to suck the water out of the toilet tank to replace the ball cock (flusher valve).

If carpet cleaning is the only thing you’d use it for you can rent units but after you rent about 3-4 times, you could have purchased a decent machine. It just depends on what you want to do. They do take up storage space but it’s nice to have handy when a mess happens so you can get it while it’s fresh.

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