Hoover SteamVac

A few years ago, we made a decision that we would purchase a steam cleaner. We had two young kids and a cat, so it seemed like a reasonable investment to us. We did our standard Consumer Reports and online research before heading to the store. In the end, we selected the Hoover SteamVac TurboPower 5200. (sounds cool doesn't it!)

When we first bought it, we cleaned the whole house over the course of a weekend. Since that time, we have used it a few times each year. It has worked well for us and saved us money over having to hire someone to come in and clean our carpets. Being able to clean our own carpets has also been more convenient. We don't have to coordinate for someone to be home for the carpet cleaners to come and we have the option to clean one room or many. We also can use it to "spot" clean if a mess is made (although, since it's easiest to measure the solution when you fill the tank, we tend to do the room, not just a spot).

Two weeks ago, when I went down to the basement to get some wrapping paper for the present we were giving to my niece at her birthday party that day and found the basement flooding, our Hoover SteamVac came in very handy and according to the guys from the service company that came to dry out the basement, likely helped us save the carpeting and the walls from damage that would require replacement or repair. You see, shortly after making the call to the plumber, to address the sump pump that wasn't working, we decided that we could use our steam cleaner to extract water from our carpets. It was amazing how quickly the tank on the SteamVac would be filled with water. We started by dumping the tank and then decided using a bucket would allow us to empty the tank multiple times before making a trip to dump the water. We worked at drying our basement one bucket full at a time. We made countless trips up and down the stairs to dump that water in the utility sink in our laundry room. (I'll admit it, we continued to bring it upstairs even after the sump pump was functioning...until we suddenly came to realize that we could just dump it in the now working sump.) After a few hours, we decided that we weren't going to win the battle on our own. We called our insurance company and then a couple of groups that specialize in cleaning up flooded basements. There was a lot of flooding in Ohio and we were told that they weren't sure how long it would take for a team to come to our house. So, we continued to extract water until the service group arrived to take care of the water. We were a little afraid not to, we were pretty certain that no new water was coming in, but we still found that when we weren't working on an area, the carpet would get progressively wetter as the water wicked its way up from the pad.

When the service team arrived, they used their own heavy duty extraction equipment and then, they pulled back the carpeting and placed fans between the carpeting and the pad to dry the carpet and the padding. They also placed a couple of dehumidifiers in the basement. When the left, the sound in the basement was crazy. There were something like 6 fans and 2 dehumidifiers running. When we were upstairs in our bedroom, it was sort of a white noise, but on the main floor it was loud. Within a few days, they were able to remove all of the fans and dehumidifiers returning a few days later to restretch and secure the carpeting.

We learned, after the fact, that all of the effort that we put in not only helped us save the basement from further damage, but we got a bit of sweat equity applied to our deductible for our insurance which saved us money on the claim too!

Happily, our basement is back in order and we lost nothing more than the box for my bread maker and a couple of rugs that we had set out to form a walkway to our deep freeze (for those times when I go to the basement in socks or bare feet).

I know that I am glad that we made that investment a few years ago in the Hoover SteamVac and used it to help us try to dry out our basement. It might not be the intended use, but it worked for me! This post shared at Frugal Friday.

I received no compensation for this post (however, if Hoover wants to give us a new steam cleaner to replace the one that we "abused" by using it try to dry out the basement, I would be fine with that!).