Owning a steam carpet cleaner reduces some of the stress associated with carpet cleaning. You can steam clean carpets at your leisure, one room (or half) at a time if needed, and a home carpet cleaner is manageable for one person to handle and lift to another level in the home. Being able to steam carpets as often as needed is also the way to keep your carpet free of stains, tackling the problem before they have time to set in.
At one time, a rental steam cleaner was considered more efficient for cleaning carpets, but today's home steam cleaners have good features such as water heaters, enhanced spot cleaning and rotating brushes that pull the dirt from deep inside rug fibers. They also do a reasonable job of pulling water and solution back out of the carpet, to effect a quicker drying time. So the little they might lack in performance compared to a commercial steam cleaner, they make up for in terms of convenience and cost cutting. And gone are the days of hoses that needed to be connected to the kitchen faucet to use one; today's carpet steam cleaners are fully self-contained with single or dual water tanks, so they're much easier to use. The cost of renting a carpet steam cleaner is high for just a few hours; you can save in the long term by buying your own machine.
It may be more difficult to justify the expense of a carpet steam cleaner if you have only a small room or two with carpeting. In this case, I'd recommend you skip some of the carpet steamer frills and go with a basic model you can afford. You'll save more than half the cost of a cleaner, and you'll gain the convenience of having one when you need it.
Just a note about vacuums and carpet steam cleaners - there seems to be some confusion about these two machines. They both clean carpets in a sense, but their functions are very different and these two floor care appliances should not be confused with one another. Even retailers tend to confuse consumers by calling steam carpet cleaners, vacuums. And that, they are not, though they do suction water and dirt out of carpets. A home with carpeting actually needs a vacuum and a carpet cleaner. Another carpet cleaning machine is a portable spot cleaner - these also enhance the carpet cleaning tool arsenal.
Home carpet steam cleaners range from $100 to $500 with varied features, some of which are essential for making the task easier and more effective. Commercial quality carpet cleaners such as Rug Doctor, are more expensive. They're also bulkier and heavier to handle. There are basically only two main brands of home carpet steam cleaners, Hoover and Bissell. Hoover leads in consumer satisfaction when it comes to carpet steam cleaners, but only by a neck. Bissell on the other hand, tends to have a good array of satisfied customers when it comes to their portable carpet spot cleaners. Both manufacturers have a good range of carpet cleaning machines including vacuums and carpet cleaner, with features and prices that do vary.
When it comes to carpet cleaners, consumer reviews tend to be very mixed and that doesn't help when you're trying to decide on a certain model. There's lots of reasons for these rating differences. It often depends on what cleaning results you expect to get from steaming carpets. You can't always return a 20-year old rug in a home with four kids and three dogs, to its original pristine condition. And not everybody vacuums first before steam cleaning - a must, nor do they all attack stains as they happen.
If you steam clean a carpet regularly as needed and not delay till stains set in, you'll see improved cleaning results - another reason to have your own machine. And a small carpet spot cleaner is the ideal cleaning tool for removing the occasional carpet stains, without having to do the entire rug. A carpet cleaner usually takes a little more room than an upright vacuum, to store.
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