Hoover PowerDash Pet Compact Carpet Cleaner Machine, Lightweight Shampooer Machine, Pair with a Hoover Carpet Cleaner Solution for a Bright, Refreshed Home

We've got white carpeting in our living/dining area and upstairs in the hallway and master bedroom. The carpet was not new when we bought the house, but had been cleaned, and looked great. We moved in with our three dogs and our two cats, and somehow, we haven't figured out what caused it, the carpet began to get a bit dirty, especially in areas where our biggest dog (Zeus, an 85 pound teddy bear) prefers to sleep.Then, a few months ago, my elderly mother moved in with us, and she has two small dogs who decided to come along for the ride. One of those two dogs (Katie, a Feist dog who looks like a tiny deer more than anything else,) isn't housebroken. Is. Not. Housebroke. Not at all. Not even a little bit. She *was* housebroken at my mom's house, before Mom moved in with us, but Katie is a shelter dog, and we don't know if she was abused or just severely neglected before the shelter got her, but "timid" doesn't even begin to describe this dog. She's not afraid of *us* anymore, and gets along great with the other dogs, but fear is her steadfast companion, and for whatever reason, she has decided that one thing to be afraid of is the very idea of going outside without my mom.The people who owned this house before we did also had a small dog. I don't know how well housebroken that dog was, but, I used to work for a carpet cleaning company, and one thing I learned there is about "wicking." What can happen is, let's say that your dog--or our Katie--pees on the carpet and happens to pee where some other dog once peed on the carpet too. Not only can Katie leave a stain, but, the moisture can actually cause the stain from the *old* pee to get wicked back up to the surface, just the same way that oil is wicked up in a lantern to burn by the .... well, by the wick.So apparently Katie is pretty good at finding old pee stains because very often, where she chooses to pee we not only get her new pee stain, but another stain as well, with brown edges. Nice, right? Our white carpet quickly became white, yellow, brown, and ugh, colors. And yes, in this case, "ugh" is a color.I was desperate. We can't afford new carpet and no one in their right mind would buy new carpet before the final dog was housebroken anyway, but if anyone had come over to visit with the carpet looking like this... okay, I was about to say I would have died of embarrassment but that would be overstating my degree of concern about what other people think by about a million degrees. Still, we're pretty fond of this house (a mid century modern) and its looks, and we wouldn't want the carpet to be the thing people remembered the most about the house, especially not when there's a backyard with 5 dogs pooping in it for them to remember instead. (Flies. We have flies. Even though we scoop, we have flies.)Enter this little machine. For the price, I have to tell ya, I wasn't expecting *too* much. Then again, I was expecting *something* or I wouldn't have bought it.What I got was, in fact, a lot more than I was expecting, I can tell you that.I followed the quick start guide and put it together; all very simple.I filled the water tank with water and a little of the detergent that came with it, plugged the machine in, and fired it up, after first tempering my husband and mother's expectations by letting them know that it was possible that it wouldn't do anything except make the wicking problem even worse, and advising them that for that reason, I was going to test just a small area.Listen... well, no, just read. No wicking problem. New stains are gone. Old stains are gone. Does the carpet look brand new again? Well, no. But it looks as good as it does when we moved in here.The machine spits the water into the carpet, rub-a-dub-dubs it however much you want it to, and then when you're ready, it sucks the water back out again, and applies some heat to help start it on its way to getting dry again. Easy as can be. In fact, I'm afraid to say this because we ARE talking about housework here but it's actually kind of.... well.... fun. I don't SAY that about housework. But the thing is that it's not housework I hate. In fact, I *love* housework when it's not overly strenuous, doesn't make me sweat, and I can look at what I've just done and really tell that I DID something, and this machine covers all those points. And for the price? Well.All I can say is that it's one of the best purchases I've ever made, and if you could see my buying-history, and thank god you can't, you'd realize what a huge statement that is for me to say. There may be some carpet cleaning jobs it wouldn't be recommended for, but not any carpet cleaning jobs that *I* would ever do. That's a fact.I love this thing. I love it so much I'm going to name it. I just haven't chosen the perfect name yet. I'm thinking "Slosh," though. Even though it doesn't. Slosh, that is.Oh yeah, emptying out the dirty water so that you can put in some nice clean water and clean more carpet is easy as can be, also.And be sure and vacuum first if you have pets. I didn't because I was in such a hurry to try this bad mofo out, and I was rewarded by having the machine spit out a couple of (quite clean!) hairballs while I was doing my test area. So yeah. Vacuum first.Buy this. This is the droid you're looking for.

We had a professional carpet cleaner do the entire house back in April with fair/good results. The problem is we have a very light-colored (almost white) beige carpet with high traffic area blackish track marks in and out of the den and master bedroom. I tried carpet sprays, I tried powdered carpet cleaners, etc. to no avail, which was why we called the carpet cleaner back in April. So he got most of the high traffic area marks to look maybe 80-90% better, but he did not clean the area against the front of the couch bc he couldn't get the edge of his machine close enough to the couch. He should have just moved the darn couch a foot back like I did a few days ago so he could get to all the carpet. In any event after only three months, we started to see the same dirty high traffic areas reappearing even though we never wear shoes in the house and the carpets in our den and master bedroom looked like they needed a light cleaning again because it was not really 100% when the carpet cleaner finished. He said it was an old carpet and hey what can you do? Rather than have the carpet cleaner come back out for an afternoon with the need to start moving furniture, tables, plants etc. again, I figured why not give this machine a try? It was worth it because this Hoover has done a good job overall, I did need to go over the carpet in the den 2-3 times to get rid of the blackish high traffic areas and did the area in front of the couch three times because the professional carpet cleaner didn't bother to clean there. I asked a family member to look at the entire den when I was done and they said 100% better. It actually looks BETTER than when the professional carpet cleaner cleaned it! This is a 20-year old carpet in a heavily used area and it actually looks really good now. As noted, I had to do the den twice and the black high traffic marks three times, but so what? The bottom line is the carpet looks great now. Overall, I am really impressed with this machine. Everything works the way it says and it is a snap to use. PLUS the suction is so good the carpets are barely damp when done and are dry (at least in our low humidity climate in the desert) within a few hours, even though I used a few full tanks of solution in one room (den). With the clear brush cover you can see all the dirty cleaning solution being sucked back into the dirty water tank as you go over the carpet. I do note that I have to go pretty slow back and forth on both the cleaning and suction strokes in order to let the machine roller clean the carpet and then to allow it to suction out as much liquid as possible, but no big deal, the results are worth it. I had a little difficulty getting the HOSE attachment plugged in to the machine to do upholstery, but I used a touch of silicone spray on a rag where the water nozzle plugs into the machine and that fixed it. I've seen a few complaints that the cleaning solution bottle needs refilled often or the dirty water tank needs emptying often. Yes, you will need to refill the cleaning solution container a few times if you go slow enough to actually allow the machine to clean the carpet in a large area, and the dirty water tank fills up fast (it also has an audible change in tone to let you know you need to empty it), but no big deal. I keep a 5-gallon plastic bucket in the room I'm cleaning and empty the dirty water in there and just take the one big bucket out to empty it when I 'm done. I would advise maybe NOT emptying the dirty water container into a sink or toilet because there may be lint, dirt, etc. in there which may clog drain pipes?Bottom line - very impressive results for a great price, and the entire unit and attachments seem to be high quality. It is also REALLY easy to rinse the roller areas and dirty water tank when done. THE ONLY GRIPE I HAVE IS I DID NOT GET ANY 'SAMPLE" CLEANING SOLUTION WITH THE UNIT DESPITE THE BOX AND INSTUCTIONS SAYING IT COMES IN THE BOX. HAD I NOT ORDERED A CONTAINER OF THE HOOVER OXY SOLUTION WHICH WAS DELEIVERED SAME TIME AS THE MACHINE I WOULD HAVE HAD NO CLEANING SOLUTION AT ALL. Overall, I am really satisfied with this carpet cleaner and I wish I would have bought one years ago.