Bissell 7920 Upright Wet/Dry Vacuum
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- Weight: 22.05 lb.
- Cord Type: Corded
- Design: Upright
- Technology: Wet/Dry
- Tank / Bag Capacity: 1 Gallon
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Fairly usable and reliable machine
Pros
Good suction to bring up spilled liquids quickly.
Cons
Heater is OK but not great. Start with hot water and it will do well.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
If you're a handy kind of person, go for it!
I don't know why a previous reviewer claimed it uses recycled water. Although it's one tank, it has a bladder that separates the clean water from the used. No intermingling going on there. It's perfectly sanitary.
I use the system about once a week, and it's been very good to me. Even cleaned up a nasty cyan stain when my son cracked open an entire inkjet cartridge on the floor. That was impressive. Took about 3 hours and 20 refills to get it all clean, but it saved the carpet.
The system does have two places with filters that get clogged on occasion: one for the vacuum air on the bucket itself. Make danged sure it's always clean or the suction will be much less. Also on the spinning thing showing how much water flow you currently have. And every once in awhile you'll need to take the clear front cover off and clean it out. Two phillips screws will open that up for you.
The unit is made mostly of ABS plastic, which is pretty good stuff altogether. The same plastic that car manufacturers use for their brake light and turn signal assemblies. So it's fairly durable.
If you want to pick up a little more water in a certain area, you can apply a bit of pressure (up to 20 pounds or so) on the front of the unit while you're moving it slowly over an area. Really does a great job in picking up water from down by the pad itself. A good idea when you've got a really tough stain.
On the underside if the two sprayers get fuzz up near them they won't work as well, and it's 6 phillips screws and 20 minutes of time to get in there and clean them out. I have to do that maybe every six months or so to keep it working top-notch. (Note that I use the unit ALOT.) I suppose this voids the warranty, but then I'm such a do-it-yourselfer anyway and hate to wait around on the phone to attempt to get some schmoe to fulfill warranty promises for me anyway.
Back to the underside, and especially if you have pets, every time you change the bucket of water you'll want to clear away whatever buildup of carpet fiber and hair that you can around the brush or eventually as you're cleaning balls of lint and fur will be deposited randomly as you go along. It's definitely not a vacuum. Only a cleaner.
Just tonight after it has probably done around 500 or so buckets of cleaning over the past two years that we've owned it, there started to be a grinding noise. Opening it up, the bearing on the motor assembly closest to the turbine has failed. (This is the turbine which provides the strong vacuum.) A small amount of water does get into that area on occasion, so that's probably why it went out. Note to Bissell: engineering it with a double-sealed bearing instead of just a single sealed one would have been wise. Pretty standard bearing size, so I should be able to replace it easily enough.
Once about 6 months ago a bunch of hot candle wax got accidentally spilled on my carpet, and I did a slightly unorthodox thing: I microwaved about a quart of water in a glass pitcher until it was simmering at around 200 degrees, and then poured it in small amounts right on the hardened wax. Almost instantly as it was re-melting the wax, I ran the suction of the bissell over the mess. It picked it up very well! So if you have even outrageous melted candle wax, with some extra intervention this system can handle it.
Altogether it's a good machine, and I expect to get lots more service from it once I replace the failed bearing.
-Lorin Thwaits
Live in the Phoenix area? You can save money when you dine out at CouponMeister.com!
I use the system about once a week, and it's been very good to me. Even cleaned up a nasty cyan stain when my son cracked open an entire inkjet cartridge on the floor. That was impressive. Took about 3 hours and 20 refills to get it all clean, but it saved the carpet.
The system does have two places with filters that get clogged on occasion: one for the vacuum air on the bucket itself. Make danged sure it's always clean or the suction will be much less. Also on the spinning thing showing how much water flow you currently have. And every once in awhile you'll need to take the clear front cover off and clean it out. Two phillips screws will open that up for you.
The unit is made mostly of ABS plastic, which is pretty good stuff altogether. The same plastic that car manufacturers use for their brake light and turn signal assemblies. So it's fairly durable.
If you want to pick up a little more water in a certain area, you can apply a bit of pressure (up to 20 pounds or so) on the front of the unit while you're moving it slowly over an area. Really does a great job in picking up water from down by the pad itself. A good idea when you've got a really tough stain.
On the underside if the two sprayers get fuzz up near them they won't work as well, and it's 6 phillips screws and 20 minutes of time to get in there and clean them out. I have to do that maybe every six months or so to keep it working top-notch. (Note that I use the unit ALOT.) I suppose this voids the warranty, but then I'm such a do-it-yourselfer anyway and hate to wait around on the phone to attempt to get some schmoe to fulfill warranty promises for me anyway.
Back to the underside, and especially if you have pets, every time you change the bucket of water you'll want to clear away whatever buildup of carpet fiber and hair that you can around the brush or eventually as you're cleaning balls of lint and fur will be deposited randomly as you go along. It's definitely not a vacuum. Only a cleaner.
Just tonight after it has probably done around 500 or so buckets of cleaning over the past two years that we've owned it, there started to be a grinding noise. Opening it up, the bearing on the motor assembly closest to the turbine has failed. (This is the turbine which provides the strong vacuum.) A small amount of water does get into that area on occasion, so that's probably why it went out. Note to Bissell: engineering it with a double-sealed bearing instead of just a single sealed one would have been wise. Pretty standard bearing size, so I should be able to replace it easily enough.
Once about 6 months ago a bunch of hot candle wax got accidentally spilled on my carpet, and I did a slightly unorthodox thing: I microwaved about a quart of water in a glass pitcher until it was simmering at around 200 degrees, and then poured it in small amounts right on the hardened wax. Almost instantly as it was re-melting the wax, I ran the suction of the bissell over the mess. It picked it up very well! So if you have even outrageous melted candle wax, with some extra intervention this system can handle it.
Altogether it's a good machine, and I expect to get lots more service from it once I replace the failed bearing.
-Lorin Thwaits
Live in the Phoenix area? You can save money when you dine out at CouponMeister.com!
