Vapor / Steamer vs Hot Water Extraction for carpet/upholstry?

[2Learn]

Hi Everyone,

Do you recommend steamer/vapor or traditional hot water extraction for interior cleaning? It seems to be a growing "way"...

Whether home or pro detailer, for the sake of "speed" and "cleaning power", which is the best? What have you heard and seen?

Thank you,
2Learn

[Accumulator]

Re: Vapor / Steamer vs Hot Water Extraction for carpet/upholstry?

IMO it depends what you're doing; I use both- sometimes together but more often separately for different types of jobs.

Short version: the extractor is great when spraying hot cleaning solution into carpet and then sucking dirty tuff out of the carpet is the primary objective. The steamer is great when you want to emulsify something to break its bond with whatever it's contaminating and for blasting [stuff] out of hard-to-access spots.

Sometimes I use the two machines together- I'll use the extractor to spray hot solution into a floormat, then the steamer to help loosen some of the dirt, especially certain types of greasy stains, then the extractor to **** the wet mess out of the carpet, and then the steamer again to fluff the carpet back up if it looks too matted.

The steamer does generally leave things much drier than the extractor and sometimes that's really convenient. But after you steam a surface, you usually still need some way of getting the steamed-loose stuff cleaned up off/out of that surface.

[Jeepster04]

Re: Vapor / Steamer vs Hot Water Extraction for carpet/upholstry?

After doing something like this, why not run over it with a shop vac or something to remove the remaining water?