Customers ask, “Will it help if we buy a home steam cleaner for cleaning up accidents?”

A customer gave up on their home steam cleaner and called me. These home carpet cleaners are sold by Bissell, Dirt Devil, Hoover and others.

I bought a Dirt Devil carpet steam cleaner when we moved into our brand new home and started our family. This is before I became a professional carpet cleaner. We ordered a carpet upgrade and filled the home with a spotless blue carpet. I thought this home carpet cleaner would help us keep our carpet clean when our babies would vomit or when our little dog would be too finicky to go to the bathroom in the rain.

My first surprise was finding out the machine did not use steam! It didn’t even heat the water. Why would I expect steam? Maybe because the machine was advertised as a “steam cleaner.” My next discovery was that there was very little removal of the offending material. What was removed often got clogged in the narrow slits of the vacuum. The more I passed over the spot, the more water and carpet cleaning solution I was adding to the carpet, leaving a soggy mess.

I tried using my carpet cleaner to clean a whole room of carpet. It was ineffective in removing spots and left my carpet soggy wet. It took a few days and fans to get the carpet dry – and it was still dirty. Some spots that looked clean initially, returned after a week or two. Spots returned.

I also discovered that if I didn’t clean the machine after each use, it got very ugly and smelly. And if I was going through the trouble of cleaning the machine, I might as well just get on my hands and knees and blot up the spot without the machine. It was less trouble.

Why home carpet cleaners are ineffective

Here’s what the Host Professional Cleaners Association wrote in a recent newsletter:

Consumers as well as professionals many times fail in spot removal by failing to prevent spot wick-back. We have been taught incorrectly to start by spraying spot removers directly onto the carpet spot …thus flushing the spot down the fibers and to, or into, the carpet backing. Then as the carpet dries, wicking naturally occurs. The spot reappears. Deep cleaning has not happened…only redistribution of the spot deeper into the carpet to come back again another day.

Avoid These Mistakes

Call or Text the Pro

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Or DIY. Read: Simple 3 Step Carpet Spot Removal