Like most so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’, I’m always more interested in what’s been swept under the carpet, than what’s on the carpet, but this changed when I simply had to pay some attention to the carpet itself.
Not known for being particularly house-proud, I was recently shamed into doing something about the state of my carpets. I’d switched from Parcelforce to DPD for sending parcels, and was intrigued to discover that DPD take a photo of the parcel on collection, as well as at the time of delivery – something not all couriers do.
Tracking my first DPD parcel on their website, I noticed a wide angle photo of my parcel had appeared on the tracking page, which both the sender and recipient can see. This photo included a lot of the carpet by the front door.
At a quick glance, I could see the photo showed the carpet was looking in a bit of a state, so imagine my surprise and mortification when I clicked on the thumbnail to reveal a large, high resolution picture showing the grubby, threadbare state of the carpet in all its glory.
As well as showing the shocking state of the carpet by the front door, the photo also included me, from the knees down, shoeless, in my tatty jeans, at the edge of the picture.
My excuse about the poor state of the carpet in the front room is that when we moved here some years ago, I suggested we urgently needed a new carpet, but SWMBO said ‘no’, and the situation never changed after that.
Clocking the awful state of the carpet, and not wanting any more parcel recipients to see it, I immediately resolved to do something about it.
On seeing the cost of a large new carpet, my thoughts turned to questions like how much longer I might be living here, or even how much longer I might be living. And how many people actually see the carpet these days anyway? Was it really worth buying a new carpet which I may only get a few years use out of, when we’d already put up with the old one for x years?
Thoughts inevitably turned to what could be done to improve the look of it, and I got on my hands and knees and began scraping the worst areas of the carpet, and freeing a lot of the dust and dirt that appeared to be caked into the carpet fibres – where there were carpet fibres.
Somewhat encouraged by the minor improvement this activity made, I began thinking about what else I could do to improve the look of it, and very soon the idea of using a carpet washing/cleaning/shampooing machine came to mind.
Have you compared the price of a new carpet with the cost of one of these devices?
I soon found a cheapish VAX machine that looked OK, and ordered it on the basis that I could just about tolerate losing £80 if it turned out to be useless.
A couple of days later the machine arrived, while in the meantime I’d been researching carpet cleaners in a little more depth, looking at reviews and suchlike, and decided it was worth spending a little more money on one, so the cheap VAX went straight back to Amazon, unopened.
I plumped for a machine at twice the price, which comes with a hand-held ‘SpinScrub’ tool suitable for cleaning stair carpets and odd corners, and a diddy little hand-held ‘Upholstery Wash Tool’.
There is a squeegee which can be attached to the nozzle when cleaning hard floors, and a ‘Pre-treatment Wand’ which enables you to spray the carpet with cleaning solution, which you then leave to do its work for 15 minutes or so, before using the cleaner.
I ordered one from John Lewis, who unexpectedly offered the best online deal. It duly arrived a couple of days later.
The VAX Platinum PowerMax Carpet Cleaner
No doubt almost everybody has already got a carpet washing machine, which makes me about last to the party, but there you go.
First impression? Bigger and sturdier than expected, and being new to such devices, I had to briefly familiarise myself with it.
There are two tanks mounted above each other – the top one has separate compartments for cleaning fluid and warm water, while the lower tank is for the dirty water sucked up after the cleaning solution has been dispensed.
The front of the cleaner sports various brushes and nozzles, and to be honest, the operating principles of these machines are pretty simple.
You fill one tank with clean water, and a smaller one with cleaning fluid, although not all carpet cleaners have separate tanks for water and cleaning fluid.
Squeeze a trigger to release mixed cleaning fluid onto the carpet as you push the machine forward, and release the trigger on the backwards stroke as a nozzle across the front of the machine sucks up the cleaning fluid, which now contains dust and dirt, and accompanying bubbles.
Rotating ‘SpinScrub’ brushes, and a spinning ‘Brushbar’ agitate the carpet, and help loosen the dirt, and also raise the pile to make it easier to get to the ground-in dirt beneath.
As this particular model boasts extra hand tools, there is a port on the front of the machine used for attaching a hose which connects to either of the two detachable heads.
It’s quite a noisy machine, so I chose to wear ear-defenders while using it. The neighbours will certainly hear you using it, so what’s to stop you showing off about cleaning your carpets if they ask you what the noise was all about?
Pretty easy to use, and I certainly got the hang of it quite quickly. Just squeeze the detergent trigger to release cleaning fluid on the forward stroke, and release the trigger to suck up dirty liquid on the return stroke.
To rinse the carpet, flip the switch on the top tank from Wash to Rinse, and the machine releases clean water, as no cleaning solution is mixed with the water with the switch in this position.
The nozzle which extracts liquid is transparent, so it’s easy to see when most of the dirty cleaning fluid, bubbles and rinse water has been sucked out of the carpet.
I went over the carpet a few times from different directions, concentrating on the worst areas, and had to refill the water tank, and empty the dirty water tank, several times.
As some of the carpets here were rather grubby, especially the worst one, the dirty waste water in the tank was almost black. This was to be expected considering the amount of dust and dirt that had become deeply embedded in the worst carpet over the years – not to mention spills of tea and coffee, bits of chocolate, and even food, of course.
The carpets were only slightly damp after cleaning, and definitely not wet, meaning the machine did a good job of sucking up cleaning solution and rinse water. The carpets soon dried in the decent late summer temperatures.
I did read somewhere, although not in the instruction manual, that you can use a de-humidifier to speed up the drying process if you want to. As I have one, I did actually use it, although it wasn’t really necessary.
The Hand Tools
The handheld ‘SpinScrub’ tool worked effectively on the stair carpet – on both the treads, and the riser, although holding the tool vertically, and getting the cleaning solution in the right place on the risers was a little tricky.
The ‘Upholstery Wash Tool’ was also very effective. To avoid damaging delicate fabrics, it doesn’t have rotating brushes like the carpet cleaner itself, or the other hand-held tool.
I pre-treated the area to be cleaned by spraying cleaning solution onto it to dampen it, then 10 minutes later ran the tool over the area, and virtually all trace of the particular stain I wanted to remove had vanished.
Day to day spills can be cleared up using the machine or the hose tool, before using them to clean the affected area – according to the manual.
The Cleaning Solution
The own-brand cleaning solution from VAX costs around £22 for 1.5 litres, so isn’t exactly cheap, but considering it didn’t froth up with the softened water we have here, it worked well. They also do an antibacterial version for about £25.
Larger containers of solution work out a lot cheaper per litre, and there are plenty of other cleaning solutions on the market, most of which are cheaper still.
I found I used about 2.5 litres of solution for three small to medium-sized rooms.
Cleaning The Machine
Cleaning the tanks after finishing the job is easy, as they only have to be rinsed, but the brushes and nozzle are a bit more of a faff.
Because a carpet washer is not the sort of machine you use every week (and in my case is something probably only used once in a lifetime), it’s essential to clean it before storing it away and forgetting about it.
The brushes, rollers and nozzle get pretty mucky, with accumulated hair, carpet fibres, and common or garden dirt, and the front end of the machine needs to be dismantled to clean it effectively.
The small, low contrast pictures in the manual were of very little help when trying to work out exactly how to take it apart, and I had to resort to downloading the pdf version of the manual, and enlarging it on screen to see what was what.
YouTube carries a video in their How To category, produced by the manufacturer, in which a smartly dressed young woman demonstrates the dismantling procedure.
As far as I could see, she was cleaning a brand new machine, that didn’t have a speck of dirt in, or on it, and which didn’t need cleaning. This seemed a bit daft to me.
A cross-head screwdriver, a firm grip, and a bit of fiddling to extricate the roller from the drive belt are required.
I removed the worst of the gunge with a gloved hand, soaked the brushes, roller bar and other parts in the sink, cut out strands of hair with scissors, and gave all the parts a good, if gentle brushing, and a couple of rinses.
There are a few tiny corners you simply can’t get to, so although the machine looked almost as good as new after cleaning, the trained eye would spot traces of this and that, here and there.
The Verdict
The manufacturer boasts that this cleaner is Proven To Clean Better Than The Leading Rental.
Is this true? I wasn’t in a position to compare, but all in all, I was pleased with the results the cleaner delivered. The front room carpet looks a lot better than it did before – much cleaner, the pile is raised, and the carpet feels lusher underfoot. Thoroughly refreshed.
Overall a pretty decent, well-designed machine, and the 1200 watt motor seemed to handle the task well – but don’t tell the EU or Starmer that this is 300 watts over the EU’s 2017 maximum allowable wattage for vacuum cleaners and the like.
What the cleaner can’t do is magically transform badly worn, threadbare patches of carpet, nor can it remove every trace of bad stains. Also, you can forget about trodden-in blobs of oil, or even road tar – they are staying.
A final thought – I do wonder if it’s really worth using a carpet cleaning machine like this on your carpets if they are nearly new, and in near pristine condition.
So it’s off to the cupboard for the cleaner now. Who knows when I’ll be using it again?
Oh, and I should finally add, that the VAX Platinum PowerMax Carpet Cleaner is the current Which? Best Buy.
Addendum. The switches, knobs and dials, from top to bottom.
Solution Trigger Button
Solution Boost Button
Wash / Rinse Dial
Quick Clean / Deep Clean Dial
Recline Foot Pedal
On / Off Foot Pedal
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