On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 08:40:40 +0100, Tony Williams
wrote:

How do they work.... do they just blow steam, or is
there also a suction action to removed the dissolved
dirt? Is one worth having?

You can get either steam generation only or combined with a suction
action.

Take a look at www.polti.com for information. They make steam only,
(Vaporetto) and with suction (Vaporetto Lecoaspira). In effect, the
suction option provides a wet/dry cleaner as well.

We have a Vaporetto 3000, and that gets used pretty much daily in
various ways. There are a whole range of accessories that come with
it, ranging from a simple steam jet to various kinds of brush and
accessories that will take various kinds of cloth.

Depending on the application, the general technique is to steam
something and wipe with a cloth rather than to convey huge amounts of
steam and then water. In that sense, I am not sure how useful the
suction function would be, since that would probably require much more
wetting of the surfaces.

We find that it does a good and fast job on kitchen surfaces including
worktops, tiles and cupboards. It's also very effective for
bathrooms, especially the chinaware and tiles and the shower screen.
Cleaning windows is another good application.

We also bought the professional iron to go with ours. The quality of
ordinary steam irons seems to have dropped markedly over the last few
years but this one is a pleasure to use (if ironing ever is a
pleasure). The power for the sole plate is fed from the main
machine and is a neat solution. Having the steam coming from a
separate generator means that the iron does not cool producing it.
The volume of steam produced also means less pressing down and the
whole procedure is much faster.

Finally, if you take a churn of milk it will make great capuccino for
the entire road. Just kidding on that one :-)

This is one of the more expensive machines, and I can't vouch for the
more entry level models which may not have the capacity and therefor
take longer to use.....






..andy

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