the horror that lurks beneath

[rmd]

the last time the cats horked on the entryway carpet, i flipped a bit and decided i could not continue to live here without cleaning my carpets. so i bought a hoover upright consumer-grade carpet cleaner (it claims to be a steamvac but it doesn't do any heating). i found a place that would ship it for cheaper than sears would let me pick it up, so i ordered it. it arrived yesterday and i assembled it but didn't have enough deal to actually give it a test run.

that was this evening. i vacuumed the entryway in my apartment, then put very hot water and detergent in the "clean" fluid tank and started running it around on the carpet. then i turned it off and viewed the results.

the run is still too damp to be sure whether it's visibly cleaner or not. i suspect it will be (although it is various shades of crappy brown, so there's not a lot you can do there.)

the "used" tank, however, is now full of concentrated evil.

i'm definitely impressed.

Comments

[rmd.livejournal.com]

yeah, previously i've just been using resolve or other spot-cleaners on cat events.

i have a paddle fan in the room (because the previous owners put paddle fans in *every room*, including the bathroom), and i turned it onto high. i also ran the cleaner over the rug a bunch of times in "suck" mode (rather than "spew liquid" mode), and it was pretty much dry to the touch within a few hours or so, which is when i tested it.

it hasn't quite changed color, but it's looking a lot less crufty. but it feels much better to the bare foot.

i expect an industrial grade cleaner would do a better job, but this is still pretty impressive. i'm thinking of doing that patch again after arisia to see if it's still full of lurking horror (the cleaner instructions suggest not doing more than 4 "spew liquid" passes over a given set of carpet and waiting till it fully dries to do again, which seems a sensible way to avoid flooding the subfloor). i'm also thinking 2D-furniture-tetris thoughts for how to clear the maximum amount of carpet in a given room with the minimum of furniture shuffling.

the consumer grade models have gotten pretty cheap. here's the pricescan entry for the one i got (http://pricescan.com/home/items/item721079.asp), which comes with attatchments to do upholstery and carpeted stairs.

[andybeals.livejournal.com]

I bought something similar at Targét after the first night I spent at my new place because my bitch had a diarrhea attack the previous night. I told her that she wasn't supposed to use up my security deposit on the first night and drove to the store half an hour before it opened. Works great!