Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
It does a great job |
| Disadvantages: |
needs frequent emptying / filling but not really a bad point |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
I had been looking for a carpet cleaner for quite a while. I had tried a couple of freinds 3 in 1's and a polti steam cleaner but to be honest they didn't really do that great a job, just barely passable. I did hire a professional carpet cleaner from a hire center and this was OK but again nothing outstanding.
The only good clean the carpets have had in the last 10 years is via a specialist my wife hired to clean the down stairs carpets. It cost about £50 for 2 rooms and a hallway.
So I looked on ebay for a carpet cleaner and nearly bought a bissell deep cleaner but after reading a few reviews it looked like they were a bit fragile and didn't last very long. I reasoned that if I would be spending the best part of £200 or more I would wan't it to at least be cost effective !!
So I decided that the one to get was the
Hoover, and at £169 delivered it was by far cheaper.
I had it delivered to my work (as I am rarely at home when the couriers call) and that evening put it together, it was not very difficult at all and within 5 minutes it was ready.
Using it is easy, just pop out the top clean water tank, use the lid to measure out the correct amount of soloution, fill to the line with hot tap water and your off.
I was surprised how
quick the machine used the soloution up, it took 2 tanks to cover a 14' X 13' room but the machine recovered I would guess @95% of the liquid into the dirty tank which again was very easy to take off and empty.
Someone at Hoover has obviously spent a lot of time on the design and developement of this machine and it shows!
The dirty water looked like black gravy and I thought the carpets looked reasonably clean prior to attacking them. Where I had moved the sofa, the carpet looked very clean against the walked on areas, but after 2 goes (on seperate days as you have to leave the carpets to dry between cleaning) there was remarkably very little difference when dry.
The comments on availability (or lack of availability) of the cleaning detergent are spot on, you just can't seem to buy it anywhere else than from Hoover parts dept so ring them on 01204 556111 and ask for part no, 09174251 which is 6 x 500ml bottles of detergent at £27.50 delivered, which should do you 18 or so tank fulls when diluted, more than enough for an average sized house. I did try to use 1001 3 in 1 carpet
cleaner but I would say save your money and buy the propper Hoover stuff as it does a measureably better job for a little over the same
price per litre.
Edit:
Responding myself to Nar, you are right that there is a massive difference in what retailers will let you pay for this item, I got mine from BE Direct for £199 http://www.be-direct.co.uk/productDetails.asp?referer=pricerunner&id=13385&affiliate=pricerunner (link via pricerunner) and it turned up in 6 days.
The attachments are a stair and upholstery cleaner which is a trigger operated sprayer unit which fits onto the end of the flexi-pipe, it has a row of brushes under the extraction lip which help to agitate the material be it carpet of upholsery, it also has a hard surface attachment but that to date is unused as the only hard surface in my house is the lino in the kitchen and that gets tackled with the mop !!
To Aerosmith-fan, it would be so much more convenient to have a store somewhere local which sells the detergent but alas it is not to be, so I will have to pick up the phone a week or so prior to wanting to do the carpets to get some ordered but I guess that it is not such a bind really.
The brushes are extremely easy to remove, turn the cleaner over on it's back so the brushes are facing up, then just grap some of the bristles and ease the
brush head assembly out about 1/4" and you will see 4 tabs, (2 on each side), pinch these lightly towards each other and the whole flat brush unit pulls cleanly out. you can then wash away till your happy that it is clean (about 1 minute under the tap), then simply align up the brush unit drive cam with the hole in the housing and snap it back in again...as easy as that, in fact quicker than writing it lol
To Tekin21 see..... I am now using paragraphs lol
This product has not yet been reviewed. 
