Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Hoover F5914-900 SteamVac with Clean Surge works astonishingly well for a consumer carpet cleaner. There are some limitations and some gotchas; I'll tell you about both. There's a 2-page "Quick Assembly Guide" and a 40-page manual. If you want your assembly guide with pictures and few words you'll like the QAG. If you prefer verbal instructions, turn to pages 4-6 of the manual; I wish I'd started there first. (It takes me longer to figure out "Store Hose" with four illustrations showing a hand in various steps of the process than to understand the eight sentences that accomplish the same instruction.) There's no heater in the "SteamVac", so make your gallon of water VERY hot for best cleaning. And prepare your carpet for cleaning before filling the tank with these two steps: (1) vacuum thoroughly; and (2) pre-treat heavily soiled or grease-stained areas. The vacuum in the SteamVac is designed to suck up water (which it does very well), but will only pick up the tiniest bits of solid crud. Hoover recommends buying their PreCleaner, but you can make your own for a lot less money. Just mix 10 parts sudsy ammonia to 1 part Simple Green in a spray bottle. Hit the stains with your spray, and work in with your fingers or a clean cloth. When cleaning you'll need to go over the carpet quite slowly to clean it well. This is the one area where the Hoover SteamVac is down a peg compared to the pro cleaners. Make two passes (one forward, one back) holding the trigger down; this is what squirts your hot detergent mix into the carpet. Then make two passes without using the trigger to suck up the bulk of the water. I found it really helps to clean your carpets barefoot. Because the "dry" pass greatly cools the carpet while it sucks up the water, it'll be easy to tell with your bare feet if you step on a warm, wet patch that you didn't dry yet. There's also a thumb button -- the "Clean Surge" -- which squirts the hot detergent mix more vigorously than the trigger does. Hold this down while making repeated passes over the really dirty parts of your carpet, then do your dry passes. The machine changes its pitch quite noticeably when the dirty water reservoir fills up, so you don't have to wonder about that; just pop it out, dump the yucky water in the sink, and make sure to clean the carpet fuzz off the fibrous filter. You use 5 ounces of Hoover's detergent to 1 gallon of water, and I found this was barely adequate for a medium-sized room. You get a 16 ounce bottle with the SteamVac. The manual says not to use other carpet detergents, as they sudse up too much. Amazon sells Hoover's gallon size, which is handy if you want to clean your carpets regularly -- it IS the best way to maintain them. There are other carpet cleaners, both from Hoover and its competitors. But THIS is the one you want.