On Thu, 15 Nov 2012 16:28:15 +0000, Rob Miller wrote:

"R D S" wrote in message
...
Is there any benefit to getting people in to clean the carpets rather
than renting a machine and DIY?

In either case is there likely to be much improvement over our Bissell?

It depends which Bissell you have, the top of the range have a water
heater and rotating brushes.

Ours had a water heater and rotating brushes; it was still a quite
spectacularly ineffective piece of junk in comparison to any of the
rental machines that I've used.

Bissells (French for Dung, I believe) seem to have a quite impressive
lack of suction, the tank's woefully small, the little whizzy thing
that's supposed to indicate when it's doing something rapidly jams and
does nothing. They're messy things because the seal between the
removeable tank and the chassis likes to leak, as does the plug-it-in-
upside-down bottle of cleaning fluid. Ours would regularly ingest the
gasket from around the flap-valve for the hand-held tools.

The final straw was when part of the front (which is just relatively-thin
plastic) cracked, leading to a major loss of what little suction it
originally had. If you want something to make your carpets completely
sodden then they're great, but a bucket of soapy water is far cheaper.

Ours has sat in the basement for the last four years. I'd drag it
outside, pour petrol on it, and set fire to it, but it's frankly more
trouble than it's worth. I don't think there are really even any useful
parts that I can scavenge from it for use on other projects, except for
perhaps for that big glowing red light that indicates that it's heating
the water by a fraction of a degree - that's got to be useful for
something, right?

Thankfully most of our house (the Bissell was bought for a previous home)
is hardwood flooring, and the three bedrooms that have carpets instead
don't get the traffic to need wet cleaning.

Oh, just had a thought. I need to put some panelling in the basement at
some point - I think I'll just wall the bloody thing in for future
generations to discover and ponder over...

cheers

Jules