quick steamer

I've been using one of these for a couple months now and i have to say for the price it's about perfect for a small job. there's no heat besides from the water, and the lack of a powered brush is kind of bad. but it's a cheap unit price wise, and extremely easy to use. in a matter of like 5 minutes, or basically the same time to set up a vacuum cleaner you can be cleaning small areas. i have tried using this on full rooms with heavy traffic areas, but have found it to be inadequate.

with the recent addition of a puppy to the household this is *perfect* tho. i will be purchasing a full sized unit for full rooms and deep cleaning, but this will do an adequate job for light tasks easily. the tank could be bigger and easier to clean, but i must refer back to the price.

ah, besides the no powered brushes, the only other downside is a little internal screen where the suction is. it's a small opening with about 4 little bars across it, and it catches larger things that go into the unit pretty regularly. basically every time you dump the tank it is good to check this and clean as necessary.

*edited*

features:

there's very few really, not much beyond what you'd expect in a machine of this type and price range. 3 or 4 rows of fixed but removable brushes underneath. a small extraction tank located in the base which constitutes the bulk of it's size. pickup nozzle is an integral part of the tank which aids in cleaning it after use.

this tank is removed by 2 latches, one on each side. it has a very basic " sponge " type filter for the outlet, it is removed by pushing on a part of the filter housing. this could possibly be breakable under manhandling, but it would only affect the filter. it's kind of an awkward tank and can only be cleaned by vigorous rinsing really, partitions would make it difficult to even use a brush.

on an annoyance level but common i think, the handle has to be released and laid down for removal of this tank.

there is a smallish (1/2 gallon) tank that slides onto the handle for solution and clean water. this has a large side opening with a measuring cup built in. i managed to screw this on crooked a couple times, leading to leakage. there is also a removable feed valve which can be used to open the tank. filling is kind of messy in general, but that's probably just me.

operation:

there is an on/off button located in the body of the handle. this works better for shorter people i'm sure. the actual handle only has the trigger on/off for the solution. you release the handle by a foot button similar to a vacuum cleaners.

my approach to using this is usually just to hold the trigger on and go back and forth over the spot a few times to saturate. then i go over the spot a few extra times for " drying strokes ".

you can easily tell when you have reached the maximum water extraction by observing what enters the nozzle. when you stop seeing water, you're done. the motor also changes tone slightly when it's not actually " sucking " water in.

dry times have varied for me from a few hours to overnight.

one final note, i have experimented with all sorts of things in the solution tank. bissell solution works well. most other things i tried " sudsed " too much and would prematurely " fill " the extraction tank and require extra emptyings. if this is the case it tended to " spit " a few suds out of the filter as it overfilled.