Bissell 1770 Upright Steam Cleaner
- Design: Upright
- Technology: Steam
- Tank / Bag Capacity: 0.5 Gallon
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369
The marketing department didn't like "Cheapdribbler".
Pros
Cheap, lightweight. Hard floor squeegee available. Durable and easy to repair.
Cons
No heat, small fluid reservoirs, no motorized brush.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
The Bissell Quicksteamer is neither a steamer nor quick, but it's good to have on hand for spill cleanup, and delivers respectable performance given its price.
"Cheapdribbler" would be a more accurate name for this vacuum, but "Quicksteamer" sells.
I recently had mine apart to clear a clog, and discovered that there is neither a pump nor a heating element for the clean shampoo solution. The gravity-fed shampoo hose runs right past the motor, in principle providing a bit of heating, but it runs too cool for this to be noticeable. (That's not a fault, but rather a sign of efficiency!) The model 1770 Quicksteamer is not a steamer at all.
Is it quick? To clean up a spill, yes. To clean a ten foot by ten foot patch of carpet, the largest the Quicksteamer can handle without a refill? Yes. But to do a whole house, a more upmarket shampooer with a capacity greater than the Quicksteamer's meager half-gallon, or better still, a machine that can be connected to a faucet, is both faster and far more thorough. Room-temperature water also takes longer to evaporate, meaning that the roughly 1/3 of the shampoo the Quicksteamer dribbles on the carpet but doesn't recover makes it damp for four hours or more.
The Quicksteamer's advantage is that simplicity is cheap. There isn't much to it, which means both less expense and less to break or repair. It's little more than a mediocre vacuum motor, a brush, two fluid reservoirs, a gravity fed shampoo dribbler, a fluid release valve and linkage, and a lot of hollow, ornamental plastic. Assembly "out of the box" takes all of five minutes, and use is self-explanatory. Oversized plastic wheels make it easy to push, eliminating the need for power drive, and aren't as flimsy as they look. Absence of a rotating brush--perhaps the standard vacuum feature most missed on this unit--means that, aside from the "On/Off" switch, the handle release, and the trigger linkage, there's but one moving part.
Results tend toward the mediocre, but nobody should really expect a deep cleaning from a $70 Bissell shampooer. It does get the carpet cleaner than vacuuming alone, as is evinced by by the state of the recovered (dirty) shampoo when following a thorough vacuuming with a pass of the Quicksteamer. Moreover, it's handy to have around in case something smelly soaks into the carpet. When a pickle jar falls and breaks, making a hot Arizona apartment smell like a dive bar within a couple of hours no matter how much baking soda is laid down, what else is a broke grad student to do? Spending $25 to rent a Rug Doctor to take care of a single albeit smelly problem seems wasteful; the Quicksteamer, on the other hand, will probably run for a long time.
Quite a bit of utility can be added to the Quicksteamer by purchase from the manufacturer of a $5 hard-floor attachment, essentially a squeegee and soft sponge to replace the nylon brush. The upright vacuum-style pivoting handle makes it impossible to scrub with the Quicksteamer as one would with a mop, and the unit is far too clumsy to work into corners, but a weekly pass with the Quicksteamer considerable lengthens the interval between mopping.
Like most manufacturers of similar products, Bissell insists for (1-year) warranty purposes that only their brand of shampoo or hard-floor cleaner be used. This, of course, is mostly nonsense, and no harm comes to the unit if other brands of shampoo are used.
On the other hand, I received an acute reminder that Pinalen (the local Pine-Sol knockoff) causes dirt to collect at the bottom of the mopping bucket (one of its selling points) because it is a flocculant; using it in place of Bissell's hard-floor cleaner caused my Quicksteamer's intake nozzle to clog with bits of sand and grit stuck together. It also polymerizes over time, causing the clog that had me taking the unit apart in the first place. I suspect that Lestoil and Murphy's Oil Soap would cause similar problems. Simple Green, on the other hand, is an effective substitute.
If you have more money to spend (meaning twice to three times the price of the Quicksteamer), purchase a unit with a detachable nozzle for getting into corners, a rotating brush, and a water heater. If not, don't write off the Quicksteamer. While it's anything but impressive per se, as an effort to produce a reasonably functional shampooer for the budget market, it's a success.
I recently had mine apart to clear a clog, and discovered that there is neither a pump nor a heating element for the clean shampoo solution. The gravity-fed shampoo hose runs right past the motor, in principle providing a bit of heating, but it runs too cool for this to be noticeable. (That's not a fault, but rather a sign of efficiency!) The model 1770 Quicksteamer is not a steamer at all.
Is it quick? To clean up a spill, yes. To clean a ten foot by ten foot patch of carpet, the largest the Quicksteamer can handle without a refill? Yes. But to do a whole house, a more upmarket shampooer with a capacity greater than the Quicksteamer's meager half-gallon, or better still, a machine that can be connected to a faucet, is both faster and far more thorough. Room-temperature water also takes longer to evaporate, meaning that the roughly 1/3 of the shampoo the Quicksteamer dribbles on the carpet but doesn't recover makes it damp for four hours or more.
The Quicksteamer's advantage is that simplicity is cheap. There isn't much to it, which means both less expense and less to break or repair. It's little more than a mediocre vacuum motor, a brush, two fluid reservoirs, a gravity fed shampoo dribbler, a fluid release valve and linkage, and a lot of hollow, ornamental plastic. Assembly "out of the box" takes all of five minutes, and use is self-explanatory. Oversized plastic wheels make it easy to push, eliminating the need for power drive, and aren't as flimsy as they look. Absence of a rotating brush--perhaps the standard vacuum feature most missed on this unit--means that, aside from the "On/Off" switch, the handle release, and the trigger linkage, there's but one moving part.
Results tend toward the mediocre, but nobody should really expect a deep cleaning from a $70 Bissell shampooer. It does get the carpet cleaner than vacuuming alone, as is evinced by by the state of the recovered (dirty) shampoo when following a thorough vacuuming with a pass of the Quicksteamer. Moreover, it's handy to have around in case something smelly soaks into the carpet. When a pickle jar falls and breaks, making a hot Arizona apartment smell like a dive bar within a couple of hours no matter how much baking soda is laid down, what else is a broke grad student to do? Spending $25 to rent a Rug Doctor to take care of a single albeit smelly problem seems wasteful; the Quicksteamer, on the other hand, will probably run for a long time.
Quite a bit of utility can be added to the Quicksteamer by purchase from the manufacturer of a $5 hard-floor attachment, essentially a squeegee and soft sponge to replace the nylon brush. The upright vacuum-style pivoting handle makes it impossible to scrub with the Quicksteamer as one would with a mop, and the unit is far too clumsy to work into corners, but a weekly pass with the Quicksteamer considerable lengthens the interval between mopping.
Like most manufacturers of similar products, Bissell insists for (1-year) warranty purposes that only their brand of shampoo or hard-floor cleaner be used. This, of course, is mostly nonsense, and no harm comes to the unit if other brands of shampoo are used.
On the other hand, I received an acute reminder that Pinalen (the local Pine-Sol knockoff) causes dirt to collect at the bottom of the mopping bucket (one of its selling points) because it is a flocculant; using it in place of Bissell's hard-floor cleaner caused my Quicksteamer's intake nozzle to clog with bits of sand and grit stuck together. It also polymerizes over time, causing the clog that had me taking the unit apart in the first place. I suspect that Lestoil and Murphy's Oil Soap would cause similar problems. Simple Green, on the other hand, is an effective substitute.
If you have more money to spend (meaning twice to three times the price of the Quicksteamer), purchase a unit with a detachable nozzle for getting into corners, a rotating brush, and a water heater. If not, don't write off the Quicksteamer. While it's anything but impressive per se, as an effort to produce a reasonably functional shampooer for the budget market, it's a success.
