Guide to Buying a Suitable Home Use Steam Carpet Cleaner

Regular steam cleaning of your carpet is critical to keeping it deeply clean plus prolonging the life of it. Without steam cleaning, you can’t get to the ground in dirt and foreign matter that regular vacuuming cannot pick up.

You can rent steam cleaners for carpets but you lose the advantage of being able to quickly clean if something serious gets on your carpet. Plus, in the long run you’ll probably save money after so many steam cleanings. But what features should you look for when it comes to carpet steam cleaners?

First of all, you need to understand how home carpet steam cleaners work. Most of them have two tanks. One is filled with very hot tap water and the other is empty for the purpose of trapping the water returned. The hot tap water is also mixed with a carpet cleaning solution especially designed for the carpet cleaners.

The cleaner either has a wand-style applicator and a canister to hold the detergent and return tanks or it looks like an upright vacuum cleaner with brushes and tanks all self-contained. But both work on the same principle of shooting hot detergent solution deep down into the carpet and then extracting it back into the return tank. When the return tank is full, you have to go empty it and clean it out. You will notice just how dirty your carpet was when you empty this return tank because most of the dirt will have been extracted after the carpet was injected with the solution.

Probably the most important feature is the capacity of the tanks. You want the maximum capacity possible without being awkward. If the capacity is too small then you will find yourself frequently having to clean out the return tank and refill the solution tank. If the tanks are too large then the cleaner will be heavy and cumbersome to use. Plus, just transporting the tanks back and forth as you clean and refill will be cumbersome as well if they are too large.

Beware of some of the canister-style steam cleaners as the extraction motors are on top of the canister and sometimes soap suds from the cleaning solution can rise to the top and get into the motor causing a short.

Of course you will want to see what types of additional attachments are available standard with the steam cleaner you are considering buying. One useful attachment for uprights is the hand cleaning attachment. This is a small attachment with brushes so that you can go back and clean by had tough stains and spots that the big brushes just could not get.

And of course, everyone wants a good price. Pick the cleaner that will fit comfortably in your budget but remember that this cleaner will protect your expensive carpet investment. So don’t save on price at the expense of quality.

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