My carpets are over 10 years old, I've rented this house for 10 1/2 years and they were used when they were put in, so even with commercial type rug scrubbers the last several years my carpets have never looked 100% clean or "new" again like a lot of reviews state after using any type of rug scrubber. I have pets, my Children pretty much grew up in this home my youngest will be 18 on the 5th of May, he was 8 when we moved here. I've had my boyfriends grandsons here a plethora of times over the years , and then just typical in and out walking of all the adults. I have always scrubbed the carpets at least 2 times a year, sometimes more, but never less. But they're showing their age for sure. I bought this rug scrubber in a package deal off the internet it came with a Hoover Wind-tunnel Air(Review on it after I'm done with this one) I got them both together being certified re-manufactured for $129 before taxes. Which for me was right in my budget because I honestly needed both! so it was a perfect deal for me.
Like I said I rent, so my carpets are the typical landlord "tan" which is a pain to keep clean anyway! but I am very pleased with this Rug Scrubber it out performed the Bissell out of the box by a long shot! It did get stains out that the Bissell never got out even when it was brand new and didn't have any problems!
The dog I have now is house trained, but he can be rather lazy he'll be 3 years-old this August. He sleeps with my son, when my son gets up and leaves for school he eventually makes his way into my room, but he's had a really bad habit of stopping into the room before mine (which Is my Pantry/collect all room) and peeing on the floor, then coming into my room getting into bed with me and going back to sleep! Instead of coming in and waking me up (which he does sometimes, just not on his lazy days) I have a small hand held (again Bissell) for spills and things like him peeing on the floor so I don't have to bring out the full size scrubber every time, which I used every single time, however you can't tell I ever used it! To be honest I think it made it worse and was shoving it down further into the carpet instead of extracting it! and you'll see why I say this when I start posting pictures - because all the before pictures - I'd tried using the hand held scrubber to clean the areas as soon as I saw them (which was any where from an hour to an hour and 30 minutes after he peed on the floor) and all the before's look like I just left it there and did nothing to it. So onward with the pictures - this is a bit embarrassing - but hey it's real life! and an honest review, and without real life messes how can I honestly review a rug scrubber? Surely not how the commercials do it - toss down some mess and clean it right then and there, that's not ever going to show how the product actually works getting out real stains, just that it works great for getting up a wet pile of spilled juice or wine that has not even had time to set in to the carpet yet !
Here are all the before pictures of my Pantry/Catch all room carpet before I scrubbed it! (Don't judge! It's real life remember it happens to the best of us!)
Each stain in the above pictures had been cleaned with a Bissell Hand Held spot scrubber when they occurred (just another reason why I really dislike Bissell!)
Now as the old saying goes "Pictures speak a thousand words" - The following are all AFTER pictures after I scrubbed with the Hoover Dual Power Max Carpet Scrubber I did not use any treatment on the stains, I just filled the water tank with hot tap water and the cleanser as directed and scrubbed the floor! Nothing special
WOW was all I was able to say once the carpet was fully dry! Why did I wait until it was fully dry to decide if I was happy with this cleaner? Because with my Bissell when the carpets were still damp they were spotless but no more than they would dry and every stain showed right back up ! like I never even cleaned it. However, Now with the Hoover I can tell it's been clean yes there are still some dark areas but none of that was pet messes that was just from walking in and out of the house, this room is actually where my front door is, at one time for a year or so this room was a living room, it's been a bedroom twice, and it's the way we enter/exit the majority of the time to take the dogs out. and just to go to the front yard in general. We use our side door more than the front for company etc. Since my living room is right next to the side door, it seemed pointless to have people walk in the front door through this room, through the kitchen, down 2 small halls and into the living room lol.
Overall I am very happy with this scrubber even if it is reconditioned(first time I've bought anything reconditioned) Is it perfect? No it's not but it does a great job at scrubbing carpets! Below I will list the pros & cons I personally have with the machine
Pros:
Dual Tanks - This was one feature I had to have on my next scrubber, my Bissell only has 1 tank it has a "Bladder" inside a plastic tank, the clean water went into the bladder the dirty water went to the plastic tank around the bladder, however, when that messed up the 2 waters were mixing together, so I was emptying and refilling a lot more often plus I'm pretty sure it made it use dirty water to clean with instead of using clean water.
Light weight - Another feature I needed, since I have bad shoulders, and a bad back, lugging around a heavy cleaner from one room to another was wearing me out and making me hurt bad, and making it so I couldn't get much cleaning done.
Surge Button - This was a neat feature it has a button on top of the handle that if you come across a spot/stain that needs a bit more solution than it puts out using the normal trigger you can push it and it'll spray out extra solution on the spot/stain to help get it up even better, Keep in mind doing this though means it uses up the clean water - solution mixture quicker than using the normal spray trigger.
Long attachment hose - This is always nice so you don't have to move the machine so much while you're cleaning your furniture, if I recall the hose is 8 ft long, it also comes with 1 attachment for cleaning furniture.
Easy Assembly - This is always a plus!
Cleans well and softens carpets - like I said my carpets are 10 plus years old, I clean them regularly and vacuum every other day but since both of my machines were slowly dying, they were not working as they should, so I'd forgotten what it was like to walk on actual clean carpet, I was able to just look at it and know it's clean, and it looked soft and felt even softer than it looked.
Extracts a lot of the water- when you do use it properly and you don't over saturate your carpet this machine will extract a lot of the water and this means faster drying time, my carpets were fully dry in about 30 minutes vs. using my Bissell which took over 2 hours to fully dry with windows open and fans on, I didn't have any of that going on after I used the Hoover and it still only took 30 minutes to dry fully.
Cons:
Spits out pet hair - I had borrowed a friends hoover in the past, it was a much older model and it always picked up all the wet pet fur and put it in the dirty water tank with the occasional clump sticking under it and I just had to wipe it off however, this one & many others I've used since just don't pick up pet hair it will get stuck under the machine on the base, and it also spits it out as your using it , this for me is just pure annoyance because then I have to go around picking clumps of wet hair up , it's not a huge deal and isn't a factor of if it made me like the machine more or less, just simply annoying for me personally
Not Easy to Clean - They did not think this through very well when they manufactured this machine, in order to clean out any built up gunk (example the pet hair from above) you have to shut the machine down , unplug it, remove the canisters if they have any liquid in them, lay the machine on it's back, (handle down bottom of machine faces you if you are in front of it) , take out about 8 screws, some plastic parts, the 2 rollers, and then you can clean that area to get all the built up gunk off and out of crevices, if you don't clean it, then it will not perform properly as it won't be able to spray out or extract water properly if the nozzle area gets covered in gunk. This is not an all day job by any means, it took me maybe 5 minutes to get it all apart, then I had a couple paper towels laying by me one I used to put all the wet pet fur gunk on that I wiped out with my hand, and the other I used when I was done to wipe any excess off. then I took the 3 plastic pieces and the 2 rollers to the kitchen sink and rinsed them under water being sure to pull off any hair, and fuzzies. If I would of hand dried all those parts and put it back together right then it wouldn't of taken me but maybe 20 minutes tops, but since it was time to start dinner I just let the parts sit on a towel and air dry.
And that is really all the cons I have found so far. I've used the attachment once so far and it was simple to hook up and use, worked very well.
Overall I highly recommend this machine for anyone looking for a new rug scrubber!
