Monday, July 9, 2018

portable carpet cleaner

Now that we are living in an apartment with carpet everywhere it made sense to get a carpet cleaner, especially now that we've been feeding the cats wet food. (Wet food hork is a completely different deal than dry food hork! Yikes!!) We were going through bottles of the spray carpet stain remover and rolls of paper towels. I decided to go with a portable one rather than an upright, because it seemed more versatile, like being able to clean the cat trees, human furniture, etc. I also wanted something that I could easily grab and go at the sound of hork.

I did a little research and decided on the Bissell SpotClean™ Pro Portable Carpet Cleaner 3624. I bought it directly from Bissell.com for $109.00 and free shipping (the list price is $129 and I took advantage of a sale of $20 off). On Amazon.com, it's also $129 and free shipping with Prime.


It's a relatively small unit when all closed up.

It has the clean water tank up front and the dirty tank in the back. In the clean tank you put in a capful of the cleaner mix with the clean hot water. (It comes with a small bottle of cleaner). There are some carpet cleaners that will heat the cleaning solution for you, that seemed silly to me (another part to break or wear out), why not just use hot water to start with?! On this unit, I like that the clean water tank is designed to sit flat on a surface when upside down and being filled - the human factor engineer  who designed that gets a gold star. 


It's not very heavy too, which is nice.

I used it to spot clean some work-stains on the rug in Oliver's room and to clean the cat tree, that has been in desperate need for a cleaning for some time. But, before you can use the carpet cleaner, you have to use the traditional suck-monster to get all the furs and other stuff up first.


Many reviewers complain that the debris gets caught in the clear plastic piece on the cleaning tools and there is no way to really clean it without using something to fish out the yuck. Those reviewers are very much correct, as well engineered as this device is, this bit is just plain stupid. If you are not going to make it cleanable, then why have it clear plastic so we can see how gross it is in there?! (Design engineer just lost their gold star.) 


The cleaner did a fantastic job on cleaning the carpet stains and the cat tree. 

Some reviewers complained about the noise of this machine. I didn't experience it to be any louder than a regular vacuum. The cats didn't get scared of it like they do a real life suck-monster.
Top of the dirty tank.
Another annoying design shortcoming is cleaning the debris from the top of the dirty water tank. There is a small filter on there to help separate out the chunks (cat fur), which makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that they didn't make it easy to get the debris out of there. Again, needing to poke with a tool - it's not a huge deal, just annoying. Once that stuff was out, it's pretty easy to dump the dirty water and rinse out the top and bottom parts. 

In the picture above, you'll notice on the top left, the nasty gray dirty water. All that nasty was on the rug and the cat tree - yuck! 

Oliver enjoying the freshly cleaned cat tree!
I had one problem when using it, the sprayer part leaked quite a bit when I wasn't activating the sprayer. It only did so for maybe half the job and then stopped, not sure what that was about, definitely something I'll keep an eye on. Many reviewers mention that the hose eventually breaks just on the base of the tool handle. Seeing how this is designed, I can easily see how this will happen, especially as the unit ages and the hose gets more brittle. Even knowing that in advance, I thought this was still the device to get. It comes with a 2-year limited warranty, so I can see how Bissell responds to the hose breaking and/or engineer my own fix when that time comes.

I am very, very pleased with how this device gets the carpets clean. It has a lot of amazing suck-power, so it gets up a lot of the water after cleaning. The cat tree is just like new and the ancient nasty carpet stains are no more thanks to the Bissell SpotClean™ Pro!  I'll keep using it and will post an updated review if my opinion changes - for now, it's a winner!  Yah for clean carpets and clean kitty furniture!!!

Gotta try out all the clean kitty tree perches

Camped out in it's sleeping spot (closet).
One more little thing to note - the unit comes with two tools, a Stain Tool and a 6" Stair Tool. I only used the smaller stain tool. One little annoying thing is that there is no on-board storage for the extra tool. I decided to play it safe and banished the stair tool to live in a different part of the closet for fear it would cavort with the stain tool and come after me in the night. 

Theo could care less about carpet cleaners
* There is no disclaimer regarding this review because I purchased it with my hard earned money with no assistance from anyone associated with the manufacturer, their agents, family, friends, or non-friends.

4 comments:

  1. Excellent review! I am amazed it could do such a great job. And I am very happy for all of you that it does. You have a lot to do. I have a new sucky monster this past several months that I bought specifically for its ability to get up pet hair. Works so well I cannot stop talking about it. (as you can see).

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  2. Wow, it did a great job on the cat tree!!

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  3. A great review of the product, with pluses and minuses! "I also wanted something that I could easily grab and go at the sound of hork."...HAHAHAHAhahahahahahaha!

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  4. guyz...thanx for de honest ree veew ....de food servizz gurlz been thinkin bout a kleener ...her mite go with thiz brand now !!! thanx ~~~~~ ☺☺♥♥ wavez two everee one anda happee twoozday ~~

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