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2935 of 2950 persons found the following review helpful.
Very good machine
By Lissie
If your new machine LEAKS, see note #2 below. I am just amazed at how galore people write that their machine leaked from day one, and they returned it. It will leak if you skip a crucial one-time set-up step.
Paid $170 at Best Buy. This is my introductory carpet cleaner so I have not one thing to compare it to except my own expectations. Even though the name is SteamVac, like all the others in this class of cleaners, there is no Steam to it. That’s just untrue marketing, but all the manufacturers do it, so no peculiar knock on Hoover.
First, let me say I’m penitent to confess that our carpet hadn’t been cleaned in 4 years, and that we live in the country where lots of dirt gets tracked in from outside. So the carpet was finelooking darn dirty. The Hoover F5914-900 did a very nice occupation the basi time I used it – a drasti noticeable divergence in the aspect of the carpet. The water in the dirty water receptacle was black. Did it return the carpet to new condition? No, impossible. Did it take another treatment or two to actually get it clean? Yes, that is the price I recompense for ignoring wet-cleaning the carpet for years. One of this cleaner’s best features is the capacity to arid the carpet rather thoroughly. Since the front of the machine is made of clear plastic, you may see when you’re vacuuming up water. If you want to arid the carpet as much as possible, keep vacuuming until you no longer see water being pulled up. As time has passed, the SteamVac has done an magnificent occupation of preserving my carpets.
My only gripe is that the dirty water container fills up too speedily and ought to be a little bigger. Ideally, the dirty water receptacle “should” be full right as you run out of clean water. Then, you shut down, empty the dirty water, refill the clean water and back to work. But this routine gets out-of-sync with the dirty water receptacle filling up before you run out of clean water. So this may be a little inconvenient, but not a show-stopper.
The machine is well constructed but it IS plastic, with lots of compartments and latches and hose holders, etc, so one will have to plainly be careful or those things will no doubt break off.
A few other notes:
1. If you are not the type to read manuals, do read this one. Assembly and operation are easy if you sit down and read the manual through before starting. It’s not like a vacuum cleaner where you just plug it in and go.
2. My machine leaked badly BUT it was my own fault. There is a one-time only set up routine where you squeeze the trigger and push the Clean-Surge button to lock a rod into place. Push the Clean-Surge button firmly. There may be a piercing SNAP which sounds like you broke something, but you didn’t. Until you get that snap, the Clean-Surge (which releases extra water-cleaner solution) is on all the time, hence the leaking. I didn’t push the button hard sufficient initially, so I had the leak problem.
EDIT December 2007
Apparently a great deal of people are assuming that without a piercing snap, the Clean Surge will not work. All that matters is that your machine doesn’t leak. If your SteamVac doesn’t leak, it is accumulated in the right manner and the Clean Surge will work!!! The only reason I emphasized the “snap” was because so a lot of people were having leak problems, which are effortlessly solved. And it’s possible that Hoover has changed the design after getting so a lot of returns from humans who didn’t read the instructions in the manual. So don’t get hung up on the snap. If your machine does leak after assembly, you know what to do.
3. ANY time it seems like there is no suction, the problem is that something is not seated properly. It is easy to snap the lid onto the dirty water container without lining it up properly, which causes a vacuum leak. If there is a vacuum leak, there is no suction at the bottom of the machine, where it is necessitated to suck up water from the carpet. Plus you’ll see that the brushes aren’t turning, as they’re driven by vacuum. So recheck the dirty water lid. Carefully line up the hinges at the back. The front must snap closed very easily. If you have to strength it a little to snap it closed, it means the back is not aligned in the right manner and you’ll get no suction.
4. If you have velvet or velvetine furniture, do NOT use the powered tool, use the utility tool. The powered tool is too strong for delicate fabric.
5. Like others have suggested, find a cheap substitute to the Hoover brand carpet detergent. One gallon of water doesn’t clean a lot of carpet, and at 5 oz of soap per gallon, you go thru it fast.
6. Always be sure to arid vacuum your carpet with a regular vacuum cleaner primary before using this machine to wash it. Be sure to remove and clean the brushes when you’re done using this machine. Otherwise hair, thread, and balled up carpet fibers will arid on them and amid them. Then the brushes won’t turn. These are not “use and put away” machines like vacuum cleaners, they’re “use, clean, and put away”.
7. Here’s something I do which you *might* want to try. For a very dirty carpet, I fill a cheap plastic 2 gallon watering may (or littler for a littler carpet) with hot water and a tablespoon or 2 of Oxy Clean. I then sprinkle the carpet heavily, being careful not to soak it. Then use the Hoover normally. Of course, this fills up the waste water receptacle long before the soapy water container is empty, but it still saves trips to the sink to load up on clean, soapy water.
8. Others have suggested using boiling water. Not for me, thanks. Too dangerous to handle and unnecessary, unless you’ve spilled or tracked in grease.
After reading innumerable reviews here, I have concluded that the difficultnesses persons have encountered are from failing to the right way set up the machine initially, failing to seat the dirty water lid properly, or failing to clean the machine after use. I commend this Hoover. It won’t carry out miracles, but I think if it is not mistreated it will last a long time and do an splendid occupation of preserving a carpet.
189 of 189 humans found the following review helpful.
Slower than the pro machines, but cleans just as well
By Henry Perkins
The Hoover F5914-900 SteamVac with Clean Surge works astonishingly well for a buyer carpet cleaner. There are a good deal of limitations and a lot of gotchas; I’ll tell you with regards to both.
There’s a 2-page “Quick Assembly Guide” and a 40-page manual. If you want your assemblage 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 respective steps of the procedure 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 to a considerable degree 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 may make your own for a lot less money. Just mix 10 constituents 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 rather tardily to clean it well. This is the one area where the Hoover SteamVac is down a peg equated to the pro cleaners. Make two passes (one forward, one back) keeping 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 actually helps to clean your carpets barefoot. Because the “dry” pass principally 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 arid 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 genuinely dirty parts of your carpet, then do your arid passes. The machine changes it is pitch rather noticeably when the dirty water reservoir fills up, so you don’t have to wonder regarding 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 scarcely 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 steadily — it IS the best way to maintain them.
There are other carpet cleaners, both from Hoover and it is competitors. But THIS is the one you want.
619 of 634 humans found the following review helpful.
Great cleaning
By A
The F5914 in truth cleans carpets well. On my worst carpet area, the cleaner did as well as a mercantile carpet cleaner. I commend the following to make it a successful cleaning:
1) I supplement the hot water with a great deal of boiling water to genuinely get the temperature up. By the time the water hits the spray nozzle, it has in truth cooled off so make it hotter. Bissell uses a heater, but it can’t be that powerful without reducing motor power. Best to supplement.
2) Patience. Go slow and go over actually bad areas. You will HAVE to pretreat and hand wash heavy stains, but so do the pros. Don’t suppose a diamond out of coal. You still have to do the work.
3) Clean often. I have one carpet that I waited way too long and it just won’t come clean. The masters can’t and I can’t. BIG lesson learned there.
Have fun with this. I can’t believe how much dirt there was in my “clean” areas, so it will be great to have this around to clean when I desire to. I saved more than the price of the cleaner this weekend.
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