I know that when someone starts getting quite excited about cleanliness around the house, you need to start asking if they are getting out enough. Well, I’m not and due to regular trails of mud from the bikes along with the little Chazzles dribbling and treading food (etc.) into the carpet, we have stated to investigate carpet cleaners that are also vacuum cleaners too. I haven’t got that far into the search for this, but already I’m starting to get a bit baffled with all sorts of things so I wondered if there was anyone on here who has recently bought a said cleaner and what therir recommendations would be.

Basically as our existing vacuum cleaner is on its last legs, we thought it would make sense to get a combined cleaner and vacuum. We’ve got a lot of stairs (over four floors) so that’s quite a big factor.

Any comments welcomed!

Ta

Why not just get rid of the carpet?

I don’t have any. Makes cleaning much easier and I can work on my bike in the house when it’s cold.

recent survey in which seemed to conclude that hiring a steam cleaner (most diy places do it) was best option with most combined and most sort of (cos they aren’t) low price carpet cleaners not much good

also as above try to reduce damage – long carpet runners help – little ones are bad though mrs antigee took off her fell shoes on saturday forgetting that her socks where soaked thru with peat

should get out more but nursing a sick little one today

Or, just accept the fact that kids make a mess of carpets and live with mucky carpets for a few years?

got one of the better vax ones a while back – made a big enough difference to the the rugs that we didn’t have to get rid of them and the kids have happily been spillign cocoa pops etc over them since. A good wet clean every 6 months or so seems to do the trick.

Right, well we just got a cheap carpet cleaner (£80) but not a combined vacuum, and we’ll see how well that works tonight. The carpet’s not really stained, just a bit dusty and dirty. I am not sure it’ll be as good as a professional steam cleaner but they are £25/day and this was only £80 and it works on upholstery too. It squirts soapy water in and sucks it out, which has to be better than nothing at all.

We have tiles in the downstairs hallway and kitchen (which was a brilliant move) so we practically never go upstairs with shoes on but the problem seems to be that the tiles get mucky with mud/dust etc which then gets carried upstairs on your socks.

My Mrs would have had wood floors throughout the entire house, but I had no idea how to get wood floors on the stairs and landings, and it’s too late now because we have wood in the other floors and there’d be a join between the landing and rooms…

Aren’t your stairs and landings made of wood?

I’ve borrowed an upright Vax recently & it’s made a difference for sure, even pulling crap out of a part of the carpet we don’t use that much, which had been done with a good vacuum cleaner twice!

Takes some effort though, and you will find that if you pre-treat or do an area twice, you’ll get a much better result.

IMO it would be good if you can put some sort of scotchguard stuff back on it, coz I’m wondering if us cleaning our hallway carpet has stripped that off it as i’d swear it’s gotten noticeably dirtier quite soon afterwards…

Aren’t your stairs and landings made of wood?

The stairs are made of cheap pine, which I hate, and the landing is made of chipboard, which isn’t really what I had in mind when I said wood floors.

Cheers for the responses. Going back to floorboards not an option. I think the Vax seems to be a likely contender or something similar. I’m thinking that the cost to hire one or to get a contractor in a couple of times would pay for a new one. Granted, it might not be as good at a professional service, but we’ve all got to think about money in these times!!

C

I have insulated laminate flooring, its horrible stuff. Cold, easily scratched, impossible to hoover (needs mopping, possibly due to poor hoover design – vents go forward and blow dust around), noisy as hell, a panic if you drop something hard etc etc etc.

Accept mildly mucky carpets, take shoes off at the door and clean with steam cleaner every few years.