Hoover SteamVac Spin Scrub TurboPower Carpet Cleaner with Clean Surge, F5912900

I have used this cleaner twice. The first time was on a slightly dirty bedroom carpet. The carpet is dark brown and dense and only slightly stained with some cat hair balls and spots of fir tree pitch. We pretreated the pitch with some diluted Simple Green and the hair balls with water and cleaning was a cinch. The carpet was clean and dry within 2 hours.The second cleaning was of a playroom carpet that was stained with paint/crayons/pet stains/glue/nail polish and many other unidentified stains that had not been cleaned for over 20 years. I forgot to turn the brushes on the first time over this carpet so I went over it twice. It still looks bad, but I feel that it is technically "clean."Emptying and cleaning out the tanks was not a huge problem at all. I would suggest using a spray attachment from your sink to clean the nooks and crannies of the lid of the dirty water tank. I removed the brushes and cleaned them after the first use, but didn't have the manual with me the second time and couldn't remember how to get them off, so keep the owner's manual handy.I found the scent left by the liquid cleaning fluid pleasant. Mild and neither cloying nor chemical.I give this cleaner 3 stars only because of the extra tools. As other reviewers have mentioned, the tool holders on the back of the cleaner are annoyingly ineffective and the tools fell off repeatedly the second time I used the cleaner. This part of the design needs improvement to get another star from me.

Unfortunately the house I currently live in has mostly carpet. Growing up our house didn't have carpet so I had no experience with carpet cleaners and what's a good brand to buy. My carpet is a very, very light beige color. We have lived in the house for over 3 years and before we got this Hoover about two or three months ago, we might have cleaned the carpet a grand total of 3 times. We used to rent one of those machines from our Winn-Dixie and at $40 a pop, it adds up. Plus, I have two small dogs, one of which we just got this year so he's a puppy and at the time we bought this he wasn't potty-trained yet. His favorite spot to "go" is my carpeted hallway, and even worse my older dog who knows better decided to start going there herself sometimes since she smelled his scent. So I finally convinced my husband that we should buy a carpet cleaner.I spent a long time reading all the reviews on different brands and models here on Amazon before I settled on this one. I'm glad I took the time to research it because in my opinion we made an excellent buy. It pretty much came ready to go right out of the box. Very minor setup needed. Our first adventure was cleaning the living room and hallway, which are the high traffic areas. It had pee and poo stains from the dogs in the hallway, and just general dirt stains from shoes. All the stains came out beautifully! The carpet cleaner has a clean surge button that you use when you go over a particularly soiled area and we utilized that feature. The only stain that did not quite come out all the way was a small red stain that was about a year old from spilling fruit punch. At the time when the spill happened I had tried getting the stain out as best as I could, and it left a light pink stain. After using the carpet cleaner on it, the stain did lighten considerably but the carpet still had a slightly pink tinge to it. However, I don't think anyone would notice unless I pointed it out to them. Luckily since the spill we have rearranged the furniture and our sofa currently covers it anyway!I think the best thing about this model is how well it sucks up the dirty water and leaves your carpet much drier than other ones. From what I have read of other reviews, this seems to be common with all Hoovers. We started with the hallway, and then did the living room (guesstimating 16ft x 14ft room size). When we were almost done with the living room the hallway was practically dry. What we did was every time we cleaned an area, say 2ft x 2ft, we then went over it to suck up the water until you couldn't see the bubbles coming up in the dirty water tank anymore. I love how that area of the carpet cleaner is clear so you can do this. We probably had to empty the dirty water tank about 4 times throughout the whole process. It worked out that usually by the time you had to empty the tank, more cleaning solution had to be added anyway.We haven't used the hand tool attachment yet. I will try to update the review once I do.We have used this carpet cleaner to clean the living room and hallway about 3 times now, and I just love the results every time. I will say that I did not use the bottle of cleaning solution that came with the machine. I read an excellent thread in the carpet cleaning community on cleaning solution suggestions here on Amazon. The thread is titled "Hoover vs. Bissell?". I will try to put a link to it:http://www.amazon.com/tag/carpet%20cleaner/forum/ref=cm_cd_dp_rft_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2HG4F1EHJMUGX&cdThread=Tx2ZNGW0NJ42BGUIf the link doesn't work, once you are on the product page, scroll down almost all the way to the bottom. There is a section called Customer Discussions, and then underneath that there is a smaller heading called "Active discussions in related forums". Currently, "Hoover vs. Bissell?" is the 2nd thread listed under that heading.In the thread there is a poster named Ann W. O'Malley and I give her all the credit for her excellent ideas on cleaning solution recipes. I use Simple Green as suggested by Ann (supposedly it has a very low ph which attracts less dirt; people that used Simple Green instead of regular carpet cleaner solution claimed that they didn't have to clean their carpets as often!!). I tried to follow the directions for heavy cleaning on the back of the Simple Green bottle. What I do is use 38oz of Simple Green per tank. (This is easy because the top of the tank unscrews and it is the measuring cup. It has two lines marked out, 5 oz and 3 oz. So 38oz is 7 times of 5 oz and 1 time of 3 oz.) Then I pour in about 1/3 of a gallon of vinegar. (I buy the gallon bottles at Sam's.) I then fill the tank the rest of the way with the hottest tap water I can get. After the carpet is clean, I do a rinse with a 32 oz bottle of peroxide (Great for getting out protein based stains like dog pee and poo, but WARNING only use if you have white or very light carpet) I fill the rest of the tank with hot tap water again and a splash of fabric softener which makes the carpets feel soft and fluffy and gets rid of the vinegar smell. This complete formula for the cleaning and rinsing I got from Ann O'Malley's suggestions, so I have to give her all the credit! Thank you Ann!!This whole process not only cleans the carpet wonderfully, but seems to really get rid of the scent that the dogs are attracted to, so they don't pee and poo there anymore! Also, on a side note my puppy finally seems to be getting the hang of potty training so he has very few accidents now.Last night my husband spilled blue powerade on the carpet. Giant big blue splotch!! So we whipped out the carpet cleaner and got it right up! While we were at it, we cleaned the hallway too. This was after midnight last night. We woke up this morning at 9 am and I went and felt the hallway carpet. Totally dry!If you need a carpet cleaner, buy this one! You will not be disappointed!!! Thanks to everyone else who reviewed this. It helped me to make an excellent decision, so I wanted to return the favor. :)

I purchased this Hoover SteamVac in 2010 and have used it for a variety of surfaces including carpets, tile floor, linoleum and car upholstery. Overall this unit performed well for about a year, but has gone hill after that. Suction is great and leaves the floors lightly damp, the recirculation of the heat from the motor to the floor helps increase the drying effect. The Hot water and dirty water tanks are separate making clean up and refilling easy. The hose attachment is great with the spin scrub attachment and the regular bristles and suction attachment.I was really impressed with this unit until about a year after ownership. At that time part of the plastic on the unit broke. It had been used in a home and was noncommercial use but apparently this unit can't even live up to one year of use in a regular home. The piece of plastic that broke off is important for holding the unit upright and keeping it in that locked position.The unit came with a 2 year warranty so I got out the documentation to see about warranty service. Hoover requires if you need warranty service that you drive the unit at your expense to a repair center which I didn't care much about as the closest one is about 40 miles one way. After about a week without the unit I received a call from the repair center stating hoover was refusing to honor the warranty, no additional information was being provided. Frankly I found this appalling and attempted to contact the customer care number but they again told me that they only service through 3rd party facilities like the one I just tried to get my unit repaired at. More so, just a month after this ordeal the spinning brushes began going slower and slower until they have stopped spinning altogether. I knew better than to ask Hoover for assistance based on my previous attempt.It's honestly disappointing that Hoover treated a loyal customer in this manner, within warranty and willing to go out of my way to meet their warranty service request and then refusing to fix or even give reason for why they would not fix the issue that is listed as covered under the warranty terms. I'm more disappointed that a previously bought unit similar to this one hat the motor fail out of warranty. It appears it was a BIG mistake purchasing another Hoover; Hoover has gone the way of the dinosaurs with customer service and quality in their products. I would not recommend this or any other Hoover product based on this experience. Both my failed units are useless and now sit untouched.