Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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92 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
easy breezy, January 31, 2003
By A Customer
I live in a 1000sqft apt with my esposa & 2 pugs
If you don't know, pugs shed every day of their lives!
I've had one for about 3 weeks now and here are my impressionsSuper easy to put together, all you need is a screwdriver for 2 screws
It's also a breeze to use and it did a great job on my carpets (don't forget to vacuum first though)
Better than the rug dr I'd rent (those things are filthy!) So for 2 bedrooms, living, dining, and sofa it took about 2 gallons which means that I had to empty the dirty water twice and refill the clean water twice
I also used about 32oz of soap which is about [$$] if you buy the name brand Cleaning is also easy, just poor the dirty water in the toilet and rinse it out with water and boom you are set
Like other people have said there is no pour spout so be careful when pouring out the dirty water (you don't want to make a mess)
There are a couple other things to clean up, like the front part that sucks up all the water from the carpet, and some other fitters and the scrub brushes and that whole area
I usually wait till the next day when the unit is dry and just wipe the bottom down and pick of any bunches of lint or dog hair, and clean the front nozzle only when necessary Some word about the attachments
First the accessory tray on the back is a bit cumbersome, bulky, doesn't hold the hose very well, and I've found gets in the way of storing the power cord
So, I didn't attach mine and just have it hanging on a coat hanger in the closet Secondly, the way the hoses attaches to the front of the unit for the sucking and the other to the side for the soap is also not so great
It's not like my vacuum cleaner where there is a tight fit
For the sucking hose you kind of put it in the whole and turn it, but there's nothing to stop it from turning it the other way :(
For the soap hose you just push it in, it doesn't seem very secure because it can easily be pulled out
That being said I had not experienced problems with either falling out though Next the spin scrub hand tool, it sucks!
I tried to use it for some corners and my sofa and it did not do a good job
I think it's because the spinning brushes powered by the air flow and not a separate motor like the main unit
Don't use it at all, but that's just me The other stair/upholstery tool is much better
I was able to give my sofa cushions a good clearing Lastly be careful when done with the attachments because the hose will have some left over dirty water and soap (this is probably the messiest part of the whole thing) Sorry I don't use the bare floor attachment to comment Overall, I love this thing to clean my carpets and the sofa
Cleaning is easy, remember it is NOT nonexistent, you DO have things to clean
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414 of 447 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
So close & yet so far away, January 26, 2003
Having been so frustrated with my Bissell steam vac that I turned into very small pieces, it was clearly time for a new unit. With a labrador retriever in the house, and a dachshund that my wife refuses to house-train, we are in constant need of a steamvac. I consulted a friend, who suggested the Hoover V2.I brought it home yesterday and assembled it. Assembly was easy, although I did note that the attachment tools carriage was incredibly flimsy, and did a very poor job of actually holding the tools. The only use I can see for this piece of CPS is if you're storing your steamvac in the garage for a few months. You can't really use the steamvac with the hose wrapped in place, as it doesn't stay in place for very long and quickly gets in the way. The tanks lift in and out quite easily, and the solution/water tank is far superior to the old Hoover mixing tank. However, it is very "tall", and thus I was unable to fill it from our upstairs bathroom sinks. This was not the case with the previous Hoover and Bissell models that I've owned. I had it up and running pretty quickly, and was impressed right away. The unit did a great job compared with its unfortunate predecessor. On the first empty of the recovery tank, I did notice that there is no convenient spout, so you have to be careful when pouring out the recovered fluid. I also noticed when I first removed the recovery tank that fluid spilled out as the unit rotated. This was irritating (see the aforementioned dachshund comment). Overall, yesterday I was quite pleased with the performance, despite the minor inconveniences. Today, however, I tried to complete the upstairs & stair cleaning with the steamvac, and my opinion of the device and Hoover has reached a low point. As of this morning, the unit was very leaky. Water from the clean tank pours out & down the back of the unit at a ferocious rate. During use, the water spits out behind the unit. It appears that the clean water and the solution are mixed in a piece of foam that sits beneath the solution & water tanks. this foam is retained by a piece of thin (plastic?), which on my steamvac is angled toward the back, exposing the foam at the rear. As this is where the water spits out, I assume that either the foam is oversaturated, or Hoover has just managed to ignore the fact that a leaking steamvac is not an attractive option to the customer. Being in a fairly bad mood, I proceeded to the Hoover website, to look at the troubleshooting section. No surprise - the troubleshooting part of the website is limited to a collection of trite FAQ's regarding the steamvac, clearly written by someone in marketing from the point of view of "what kind of things might we put on our website to make it look like some customer concerns were being addressed, while really just providing some clever reassurances for people considering purchase." Now in the mood to unleash some choice pejoratives to the good folks at Hoover, I looked about their website for an email address. I did find a section where I could register the steamvac, and provide not only my email address, but all salient facts about my life. However, despite Hoover's apparent interest in contacting me, they did not provide a means to contact them. This implies to me that: a) they're sick of the volume of email complaining about their shoddy product, b) they just don't care, c) their webmaster is as incompetent as their engineers. In any case, had I written this review yesterday, I would have rated the SteamVac V2 as a four or five star. Today, however, it gets a 1, and without some fast talking by the repairman, this particular SteamVac will be heading back to the manufacturer.
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46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Slow, but works if used properly., September 1, 2004
My brother is a professional carpet cleaner, and owns his own business. He lives too far away to help me, and told me that the home shampooers were essentially worthless junk. I have helped him on occasion, so I have experience with professional equipment. His equipment and service far exceeds normal "wand" steam cleaners, and represents the best that the industry has. Consequently, I was not expecting much from a home shampooer.
Having said that, this product does work, but not exceptionally well and very slowly. I do not mean this as a negative, as I was surprised it was able to help at all. If you take your time, and do it properly it is an effective cleaning tool. It is far from excellent in quality, and is dreadfully slow if done properly (roughly 5 times longer than professional equipment), but I am very happy with it nonetheless since it noticeably does clean the carpet.
If you do decide to use this product, I strongly recommend at least three passes, per room, which is partially the reason it is so time consuming. This assumes a dirty room of course. The first two passes do with detergent. The third time, just use hot water and no detergent. You absolutely do not want to leave detergent residue on carpets as it attracts dirt and it will resoil very quickly. If you only make one pass, do not use detergent, but only water. The fourth pass I make is the next morning, and again only with water. The carpet can smell pretty foul then, and the fourth pass cleans whatever wicked upped, at least to an extent. It also gets out any additional detergent residue.
If you do make four passes, the quality of the job is not exceptional but certainly adequate. If you make one pass, you will be surprised at how much dirt remains. Just for a test, do it a second time and look at the water. Then remember that if you had not done it that second time, all that would remain in the carpet. The third time the water is still brown, although for me it was much lighter. The fourth time the water is again noticeably clearer, and considering that quite a bit of that wicked up, I think a fourth time the same day may be overkill.
Also remember to move it slowly. It is much better to take twice as long with one stroke than to go twice as fast and take two. It needs time to suck up the fluids, so the quality of the job is very related to how much time you give each stroke.
One last option is to buy better chemicals, rather than use the Hoover detergent. Professional carpet cleaners typically use a pre-spray and often times no detergent at all, the residue issue being the reason for this inclination.
This is an addendum I am writing in May of 2005. My machine died about a month ago, after a long illness. The engine was getting progressively louder and the "rattling" sound it makes when it is shut off got longer. Now the machine has no suction and it is difficult to find a place that does the warranty work. Maybe you will have better luck with yours, particularly since I did use mine quite a bit during the time I had it (probably 30 hours). Overall mine did a pretty good job cleaning but became very loud and unpleasant, and suffered from unreliability.
After this, I bought the Hoover Commercial cleaner, which seems inferior in cleaning capability to this one, but is a more pleasant machine. I was not happy with the cleaning, however, so I finally just bought a real commercial machine (the Hoover Commercial is really a home machine, and not a particularly good one at that) costing roughly 10x as much. The commercial machine is too heavy and requires too much setup time for quick cleanups, so it is nice having one of these little ones for that type of work. In a similar vein, if you need to transport a machine to work on a house that the machine is not in, these smaller machines are well-suited for that. So, even if you get a commercial machine, these smaller machines still have some use, and the reliability problems I ran into would not have occurred nearly so quickly.
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