Steam your way to cleaner floors (Home-tek HT824)

Member Name: Mrtom

Product:	Home-tek HT824
Date:	27/08/08 (122 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: easier and quicker than the old fashioned mop

Disadvantages: more expensive

We have solid and laminate wood floors in our home and would spend an amazing amount of time having to rub marks off it with a cloth\ baby wipe and a couple of times a week with a mop.

We originally had one of those stringy mops where all the little bits of materials splay out but it was a real chore filling the bucket, adding whatever was under the sink, never sure whether it was all that suitable for wooden floors etc. If the mop was left curled up and stuck back in the garage it tended to get pretty smelly pretty quickly.

My wife ordered this steam mop online and it arrived within a few days. It took less than a minute to put it together and you simply placed the mop on top of the microfibre cloth which had little Velcro type pads on it and put water in it.

Steam generates very quickly and after about 20 seconds you are able to start cleaning.

This is easier to use than a water based mop as you don't need to lean so heavily, a particularly heavy stain say a scuff mark from a black shoe may take two or three sweeps over it to completely remove it.

The mop moves easily and it takes very little effort to get the dirt of the floor, you can go pretty much upto the edge of the cupboards but the steam doesn't seem to get into that very last millimetre of the edge.

When you are finished you throw the cloth into the washing machine. The floor will be dried in only a couple of minutes as no water actually touches the floor.

This mop can also be used on carpets if you add the plastic plate and I have seen it demonstrated where this can actually lift hardened chewing gum of the floor.

After the suggestion by Nar I went to find the glide plate to try the mop on carpet but it has disappeared, my wife bins everything that isn't in constant use. We didn't buy this for carpets so unfortunately cannot comment on its ability without still having the glide plate, we have used it without the plate to spotclean what looked like a chewed fruit pastille on my sons bedroom carpet and it did come out. I would imagine though that it would not be as easy to move across a carpeted floor as a wooden floor.

This unit is light and easy to carry and use with one hand and it comes supplied with one microfibre cloth. You can buy an extra three stick on cloths for about £12.99.

There is a bit of a hissing noise as the steam generates but it is nowhere near the noise of a vacuum and wouldn't annoy anyone trying to watch TV, although you walking in front of them with a mop might.



Advantages of a steam mop over a mop and bucket

Quicker
Less manual work
Doesn't need a cleaning agent
Leaves floors sanatised and deoderised
Takes up less room
Leaves floors drier
Works on carpets (with the plate)

It is available at around £49.99.

Summary: quicker, easier, less drying time than a standard mop and bucket

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