BissellRevolution Hydrosteam Vacuum

Excellent product, better results from experience

BACKGROUND My wife and I have three indoor-only cats and have been cat parents for several decades. One of our cats currently has urination issues and frequently eschews the litter box. In the past, we had another cat with similar issues who basically wrecked the carpet in one room. Our cats are family, and when we adopt, we commit. We have owned a Bissell "Spot Bot" for years, and I've nicknamed it the "Scott Bot" because I'm the one who uses it more often. It works great, but for cleaning large areas it was faster to use the hose and scrub by hand. Faster, but decidedly unpleasant -- hence the decision to buy an upright carpet cleaner. ASSEMBLY AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS Although I'm very mechanically inclined, I think the assembly process is within reach of most people. The instructions are reasonably comprehensive, although as is often the case the diagrams are not large or detailed. Warning: Do NOT test-fit the handle into the base until you reach that point in the instructions. I like to familiarize myself with the parts before assembling something, and I slipped the pieces together intending it to be temporary. It took a trip to my workshop and half an hour of tinkering before I figured out how to undo my mistake. I would have been fine if I had followed the steps without trying to overthink it. In the Bissell survey response, I suggested they should make this clear in the instructions or provide an easy way to release it. I was impressed with the quality of parts and the accuracy of coupling and fit. The plastic tanks, in particular, are thick enough to be durable, something I believe was suggested by customers from Bissell's earlier models. The machined and molded parts fit snugly together and do not wobble. The assembled machine is not lightweight, but that's a reasonable tradeoff for durability with frequent use. FIRST USE We have two rooms with major problems, and I jumped right into the "deep end" with one of those rather than a regular living area. The room is about 12x14 feet (3.6 by 4.3 meters). There were bad urine stains over a basically L-shaped path from opposite corners of the room, with smaller problem areas elsewhere. My goal was to recover usability, with no expectation of miracles. We purchased the Bissell "3X" cleaning fluid that is made for cat urine. On advice of a review here, I pre-treated the area with Nature's Miracle (highest concentration variant) and allowed time for that to work before extraction, then went in with the HydroSteam. I was careful to mix the correct ratio of cleaning fluid to water in the tank. Per the Bissell instructions, I did not use the steam pre-treat setting on these deeply set urine stains but went directly to the max cleaning option. It's bulkier from the tanks, but the HydroSteam is no harder to push than a traditional (non-compact) vacuum sweeper. It takes a minute or two for warmup from a cold start but recovers faster if you just turn it off to service the clean and dirty fluid tanks. The motor spins up immediately even during preheating, which surprised me a little. I realized very quickly that the weight of the HydroSteam is a feature, not a bug: It needs to have some mass in order to press down into the carpet for decent suction. If it didn't, the user would have to lean on it -- and that would be miserable. The HydroSteam has a powerful motor that moves a lot of air, so it is inherently noisy. That said, the noise is of a lower frequency (pitch) than our regular vacuum sweeper, so I found it much less annoying even after extended use. The color in the dirty water tank left no doubt it was picking up "yuck" from the carpet. The quantity of recovered water is a lot less than the quantity of clean water. Some of this is attributable to steam dissipating into the room air, but the HydroSteam also leaves water in the carpet. It's impossible to remove all of the applied water, but I think the HydroSteam falls just slightly short of excellent here. TIP 1: SLOW DOWN on the suction phase of cleaning and make multiple passes. The instructions say to hold the button for a couple of passes to apply liquid and steam, then release the button for extraction. The removal of dirt only happens with removal of liquid (think about it!). Leaving liquid behind also means leaving dirt, so if you rush the suction phase, you're just moving the dirt around. TIP 2: ALLOW A LITTLE TIME between application and removal of fluid. What works well for me, after some trial and error, is to pick an area about as large as I can easily reach with just one or two steps. Apply the fluid over that area from one side to the other without doing the suction passes. Then return to the start of the area and begin SLOWLY running the suction pass. Either make multiple suction passes with the area as you go or work across with a single slow pass and then repeat the suction. Keep up the suction as long as the HydroSteam is pulling reasonable amounts of water. As others have noted, this process (intentionally) uses a lot of water. Servicing the two tanks is amazingly easy as they lift off and snap back into place. They're easy to clean with large openings. I had no problems with leakage through the self-sealing valves. They're clear plastic so it's easy to see when it's time to fill or empty them. I give the tanks five solid stars. Opening and de-clogging the brush area was astoundingly easy, with a removable cover and an open internal layout. Cleaning wet hair out of a brush will never be my idea of fun, but it was *much better* than I had expected. Again, five solid stars for superb design. RESULTS AFTER DRYING AND FOLLOW-UP The room looked clean when I finished, but I knew better than to think it would be one-and-done. It wasn't. I made three more passes of the room and saw improvement each time. There is still one area that has a slight stain visible if you are looking for it, but a casual observer probably would not notice. The room isn't perfect, and there is still a faint odor, but it is massively improved from its horrific starting condition, and it's definitely usable again. In retrospect, I probably would have needed at least one less iteration if I had realized from the start that the suction process has to be done *slowly* to be effective. If we had the HydroSteam during the lifetime of the cat that created this problem, and I had used it soon after the urine incidents, I believe the result would have been better. We just gave up on the room until now. This is a significant takeaway from the ownership experience: We have moved from despair and resignation to action. There is a problem still, but we can do something to cope with it. ONE ODDITY During one of the iterations of the room, the HydroSteam lost suction for no apparent reason. Thoroughly cleaning the brush area didn't help. I checked fluid levels and decided to service the tanks while I was already at a stop. I happened to need to unplug the HydroSteam and move to another outlet. When I powered it back on, with no other changes, it ran through its preheat as usual and the suction was back to normal. The motor runs constantly when the device is on, so I'm not convinced resetting the onboard computer could make any difference with the level of suction -- but maybe it does. Appliances sometimes have sensors and software algorithms that are not obvious to the user (such as temperature monitoring to prevent overheating). It's also possible my moving the device dislodged something that was partially blocking suction, or some other subtlety. OTHER APPLICATIONS In the same room was a fairly thin area rug with urine stains, so it was a natural candidate for the HydroSteam. That worked, but I learned an important lesson: TIP 3: Do not clean an area rug on top of other carpeting! The detergent dislodged the stains and trickled them right onto the carpet below. I had to re-clean that area of the room carpet. After that I took the area rug outdoors onto the concrete porch that could be hosed down. TIP4: For area rugs, consider cleaning from both sides "because you can". The HydroSteam worked fine on an oriental rug as well, but this time I took the rug outdoors from the start. Lesson learned! CLOSING THOUGHTS While not perfect, the HydroSteam is well designed and durably made. It's easy to use, easy to maintain, and delivers as good a result as we could reasonably expect given the starting condition of the carpet. Having our own carpet cleaner avoids procrastinating until things are bad enough to justify renting a machine. Cleaning a carpeted room is an occasional housework chore, not a major project undertaking. Ideally, I would like the HydroSteam to have a little better water extraction. I'm not sure if it needs a more powerful motor, slightly more weight on the leading edge, an improved brush or beater bar, or something else. Its performance now is very good but for me falls just slightly short of excellent. Overall, the slight deficiency in extraction is easily outweighed by the HydroSteam's positive attributes. The design and product quality are excellent, it's easy to use, and delivers excellent results with reasonable user effort. Servicing fluids is as easy as could be, and the way they have designed the brushes for easy cleaning is stellar. Five out of five stars. Recommended.