Hoover SteamVac Carpet Cleaner with Clean Surge, F5914-900
by Hoover
|
List Price: Our Price: $139.83 You Save: $40.16 (22%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Category: Home See more product details |
|---|
Tools and Hardware Reviews of Hoover SteamVac Carpet Cleaner with Clean Surge, F5914-900
Customer Review: Great cleaner
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this steamvac based on research on the internet and reading the reviews on Amazon. This was my first purchase of a carpet cleaner. Actually, I don't think any one from my family has ever purchased a carpet cleaner.
I've always rented carpet cleaners. Like most people I got tired of the costly rental. The return trip to the store after a hard day of work cleaning carpet is not fun either.
My folks hired professionals to clean their carpet last year. They charged $150 for about 800 square feet of cleaning. They didn't do a great job either. I figured this machine would pay for itself with one use.
I took the machine to my parents house and we took about 3.5 hours to clean the carpet and another hour to clean the floor tile. I was very careful to clean well since the carpet was so dirty. We pre-cleaned heavy traffic areas with Zep Heavy Traffic Carpet Cleaner (spot cleaner) using a hand brush. We also used the Zep Professional Carpet shampoo. Both can be purchased at Home Depot. The spot cleaner cost about $4 for a small can. The shampoo cost $13 for a large 128 oz bottle. You can easily clean a 3000 sq ft house with a single 128 oz shampoo.
The machine, spot cleaner, and HOT BOILING water did their job. The carpet was clean. The hallway between the bedrooms and both took the longest because of the heavy traffic. I used a lot of the spot cleaner and the result was excellent. There is no need to purchase more expensive chemicals.
We used Pinesoil to clean the tile. Use only half of the measuring cup that comes with the steamvac.
The plastic container that holds the cleaning solution and water contains a cap that doubles as a measuring cup for the shampoo. It contains two lines. I used the top (highest) line for carpet cleaning. I used the lower line for floor cleaning.
I also used the inluded attachment to clean my car's interior. It did a great job. It's a little messy but the results are good. I parked it in the hot sun to let it dry with the windows a third down.
Give yourself some time to familiarize the product. It's a breeze after that. Clean up is very easy. To clean the attachment hose I let it suck pot full of clean water. To clean the steamvac, I poured a gallon of clean tap water on the clean floor and let the steamvac suck it up. You can clean the house that injects the shampoo by filling the shampoo container with water and running the machine back and forth in a small, clean area.
In summary, this is a great product. It will pay for itself after two house cleanings.
Customer Review: Great product but delivery was complicated
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great steam vac, and it was pretty straightforward to assemble though I agree that the innumerable plastic parts can be a hairbreadth away of being damaged if not handled carefully. The problem was in getting the steam vac to me in the promised two day delivery. It somehow was dropped in the patio of a person whose unit number was not mine, and was left there without further validation of the error. The deliverer apparently was puzzled by the delivery slip that was printed out in such away that it clipped the last digit of my unit number and that number did not even exist in the complex, so he decided to drop it at the nearest apartment that had one of the two digits in common. To make a long story short, the
person whose patio had the steam vac sitting there all day, said that she knew of no steam vac arriving on her patio, and ostensibly took it, we think as a freebee.
The deliverer had made numerous promises to me by phone that he would have my steam vac in the course of the day, because he went back to the wrong patio location, knocked on the resident's door and got the same denial about the steam vac ever arriving. Meanwhile I went back and forth on the phone with the mover (NOT UPS) trying to get things straight on the whereabouts of the steam vac as I had appointments to keep, and the mover had long telephone waits, and different personnel answering who did not keep track of any of my calls made before until far too late when the supervisor got into the picture. The steam vac had to be resent, and it was definitely delayed and causing too much inconvenience. After many calls to Amazon I was given a credit on the purchase of 50% but that was following many Amazon reps haggling about a way to bring the matter to resolution. They didn't keep track of the whole soap opera along the way. So now two people in this complex have steam vacs. I wonder if the other owner will write a review about her gift or maybe she put it up on Ebay. One lesson to be learned is when Amazon has a stored address, as it had with me because of all my purchases are automatically charged on my card, and I just tap the delivery address that's in their system they should make sure the delivery slip captures the whole address and does not clip off any numbers when their shipping vendor processes the shipment and they should have some kind of procedure in place whereby the delivery person who might not find the unit number in a particular complex will call the shipper who should call Amazon to straighten everything out BEFORE the complications occur. Otherwise, I am still happy with the Hoover steam vac because it was worth waiting for.
Customer Review: Great product for the price!
Summary: 5 Stars
We decided on buying a carpet cleaner after we hired a carpet cleaning service and they didn't show. I researched several cleaners out there and tried some other ones that I knew some relatives had. This cleaner is hands down the best one I've seen. No other cleaner in the same price range cleans better. Actually, no other cleaner that's twice this price cleans better either.
My mother has a Bissell and it cleans fairly good, but the canister that holds the clean and dirty water is a all-in-one deal which is too small to be productive with. We have frieze (shag) carpet in our home and it seemed to use a lot of water on a small area.
Fast forward to the present. The Hoover took about 10 minutes to put together. It has two separate tanks for the clean water and dirty water. I believe the clean tanks holds nearly a gallon. I hear some people saying that the empty/fill cycle is getting off, but I find that if I fill the clean solution just below the fill mark solves that problem. It takes about two tanks per room which is great.
I haven't had the leaking problem that has plagued some of the other buyers of this product, but I think if you follow the directions that solves that problem. I haven't used the hand tools yet, but I plan to soon so I'll edit this post.
We originally wanted to clean the carpet due to pet stains so I purchased the Hoover pet solution, but it cleans about the same as the advanced cleaning sample Hoover supplies with the cleaner. I wanted to see how good the Hoover would clean the set in pet stains without the recommended pretreatment and it actually got out 90% of the spot. I feel that with pretreatment it would have totally came out, but I plan to just run over the same spot again later to finish it off(why get down and scrub if you don't have to?).
I am completely satisfied with this purchase. If you are wasting your money on professional services you could be saving so much with this cleaner and doing the job yourself. It's no more difficult than vacuuming and it does a fantastic job on pet stains and heavy traffic areas.
* Update - March 10, 2009 *
Some people were saying they had a tough time getting hair out of the scrubbing brushes. I tried using one of those pet brushed with the short metal teeth on the scrubbing brushes and it didn't take but a few minutes to get most of the hair out.
Other than keeping the brushes clean after each use this cleaner has been amazing. I've cleaned my whole home and I've let several people borrow it which all gave rave reviews.
Customer Review: I Was a Skeptic - Not Now!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have never written a review before, but could NOT stop myself this time. I have been a skeptic of home carpet cleaners for years, convinced in my own mind that they could never be as effective at cleaning and extracting as the truck mounted steam units we used to schedule to come clean carpets. Each trip was over $100 for just a couple of rooms, and with six - eight hours for drying, it was an ordeal. The last few times I had the company come, I found areas of saturation in some places, areas that were virtually dry in others when they were gone. It seemed they were in and out of my house in twenty minutes, just having basically "swiped" my carpets quickly and left. I began to wonder if I would ever enjoy clean carpets again.
Then I visited my brother at his out of town home, having planned the trip well in advance. He is a hoarder, basically, with kids and dogs to boot, so I was used to his carpets looking more like dirt than carpets. Imagine my surprise when I arrived and the house was cleaned up and his carpet looked fantastic! I asked him how he did it, and he pointed to his Hoover spin scrub carpet cleaner. I decided it was time to take the plunge. I researched over and over the available models and chose the F5914-900. I picked it up at Walmart and brought it home.
True to the word, in 15 minutes and with a screwdriver, I had it assembled. I cleaned my carpets according to the directions, and waited for the ultimate test. The ultimate test, in my mind, would be this: Once the carpets were dry, I would vacuum with my Kenmore Intelli-clean vacuum. This vacuum has sensors that cause lights to flash (red for really dirty, yellow when it gets better, etc.) when you are vacuuming and picking up dirt and debris. When all dirt and debris is gone, the lights go green and the motor slows, telling you to move on to another area to clean. I had vacuumed after Stanley Steemer many times and had never acheived the green lights. I waited only a couple of hours for the carpets to dry from the Hoover cleaning, then ran my Kenmore over the floors. To my utter astonishment, I got green lights immediately and for the entire time I vacuumed over the Hoover-cleaned area. I called my husband to come and witness, and even he was impressed.
I am sorry I waited so long and tolerated dirty carpets to my wit's end when I could have been cleaning them all along. I am no longer a skeptic, and thrilled that I can clean my carpets any time I want, and know that they are truly clean. Thanks for a great product, Hoover!
Customer Review: F5914 comparison to the Agility
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently had both the F5914 and the F6205 (Agility) to try in my home. The Agility is fully assembled out of the box with a folding handle. The F5914 takes a few minutes to assemble. I pre-vacuumed a section of carpet that gets a lot of traffic and used the Agility first. The solution and dirty water tanks are a bit awkward to open, fill and empty. The foot pedals are curved and your foot tends to slide off rather than activating either the power or handle-lowering function. It's fairly easy to maneuver and seemed to do a good job. The carpet was left quite wet, however and I made sure the tanks were seated and sealed properly as was the door for the tool hose. When I was finished I stopped the unit on a tile floor and it proceeded to leak a good amount of water underneath. I emptied and rinsed the tanks and then cleaned the rotating brushes which pop off easily. The design of the housing around the brushes is such that it collected a lot of debris that needed to be wiped out. The top of the nozzle is removable making it easy to wipe out that area as well. When I was all done, there was still a small amount of water leaking at the bottom.
I then used the F5914 over the same area, carefully using the solution trigger and going over each area several times without solution as I did with the Agility. You can actually see the brownish water getting sucked into the tank, whereas on the Agilty the design of the nozzle doesn't allow as clear a view of the dirty water coming up. The result was a dirty water tank that was dirtier than the Agility's and the carpet was much drier as well. I stopped on the tile again and there was no leak underneath, just a couple of drips from the wet brushes. The solution and dirty water tanks are easier to work with on the F5914, and the area around the brushes doesn't have the same tendency to collect debris so clean up is quicker (the brushes pop off of this unit as well). The nozzle does not come off without having to remove 4 screws (which the instructions advise against), but it's easy to clean out the debris in the nozzle by simply placing a small amount of water on an old cookie sheet with a rim, turn off the brushes then turn on the vacuum and dip the nozzle in the water. This will clean out anything in the nozzle in a couple of seconds. Just do this before you empty the dirty water tank. The tools are much more secure on the F5914 than on the Agility, although you have the option of removing them as a unit off the Agility but cannot do so on the F5914.
In the end for me, the F5914 won out over the Agility.