Steam cleaner. Worth buying?

While buying tiles for our new bathroom, the shop owner said that steam cleaners are the best thing to keep grout clean.

It’s not something I’d ever considered, but online reviews seem to swear by them for cooker hobs too (which is another thing we struggle with).

Any views?

Would this be a good model?
Karcher SC1 from John Lewis

Capacity on the SC1 is very small. We have the SC2 and on one tank can clean hob, large worktop surfaces, taps and 2 sinks and also do the kitchen floor. Tank size is 1l.

Replaces bathrrom sprays, kitchen cleaner sprays and floor cleaning detergent and uses the same space as a mop and bucket.

Buy extra microfibre cloths off ebay.

I just bought one of these
Half price right now – just £20

Got given one….when first used it got all ‘excited’ at things you can clean with (its surprisingly versatile)…but often don’t get it out because its in a box in cupboard…so yes it works well but I bet many get forgotten about in the back of the cupboard….although may have something to do with us having young children and they’re likely to steam their face if I use it when their around!!

we have one and yes would recommend it. Great for cleaning hard floors, also great for cleaning the cooker, the roof in the conservatory and brings up your skirting boards a treat.

We have one, and it currently resides at the back of the cupboard.

Terrible at cleaning grout, and it might just be me, but it just seemed to make things wet, not clean (but that could be a complex derived from perceiving things as clean if they smell clean…i.e. bleach or lemon fresh?!)

Anyway, I don’t rate it, so it doesn’t get used.

They do sort of work on grout, i.e. they heat up and dissolve the dirt. But it’s still there, running down the wall, so you need to follow up with sponges and scourers as you go.

No

We’ve got a steam floor cleaner for the kitchen which I think is a bit crap. We also have a steam ‘generator’ for stripping wallpaper and other cleaning jobs – which is also a bit crap (not for wallpaper though).
For grout cleaning you can’t beat a scrubbing brush and the appropriate cleaning liquid.

hmmm mixed so far…
Thanks all!

Love STW

Needed a new one of these and now I have got a cheap one to pick up from Argos

Thanks JohnDoh

No problem – just collected mine today and put it together – it seems reasonably well made and I like that it can be used as either a floor cleaner and a cooker/grout etc cleaner too.

Alex

Much better on floor tiles than a mop n bucket…. Drys so much quicker.

For that alone, I like them.

John … our X5 gave up the ghost after 4/5 years use … was putting off laying out 80 quid for the same to happen… but at a score I don’t care… that’s the right price for a glorified kettle.

We’re on our 2nd*, & I’m still not convinced.
G/f loves them but other than cleaning the floor well (same as a mop & bucket in my mind), it’s done bugger all to the grout.

*Used distilled water to avoid lime scale blocking them up.

They’re also fantastic for getting stains out of fabric, it just blows them away. Vertical blinds for eg or for fabric sofa covers that you can’t remove.

fabric sofa covers that you can’t remove

ooh – another temptation – if only it could mend the bits the cats have pulled to bits 🙂

I keep wondering about the X10 jobbie you see on TV info-mercial things as I want to get rid of all chemical cleaners.

I do have a wall paper stripper that also has cleaning attachments but the big tank is slow to heat (fill with boiling water to speed it up) and cumbersome but it does work well and I used it along with my wet ‘n dry karcher vat to clean the carpets and they came up well but it was a lot of work. Now have a Vax carpet cleaner but I do kind of regret that as we have to buy and use chemicals for cleaning. It is much easier though and does seem to work better on upholstery than the steamer.

We bought a Vax model in the black friday sales direct from Vax. It came with a grout brush.

Does the job on our ivory grouted kitchen floor. It blows the dirt out so you need to do the grout first and then the rest of the floor with mop head.