Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)If you've ever had, or like to have your carpets "professionally cleaned" than this is the machine for you. If you've ever had your carpets done by a professional company, then I recommend you take a rug doctor right after they leave and run it with nothing but just hot water in it. You will not believe the amount of SOAP (and dirt) those professional companies leave behind. The soap itself is a dirt magnet. Clean your carpets yourself with this machine a few times and it will pay for itself AND your carpets will be much cleaner than how the professional companies leave it.
My husband and I have five indoor pets (a lab, a sheltie, 3 cats - who seem to constantly be puking hairballs on the carpet) and an 8 month old daughter, who also likes to puke pureed carrots on the carpet when we least expect it! Can I mention the occasional leaky poopy diaper?
This rug doctor gets all of the nasty cat vomit, baby BM's and rainbow baby food (carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, blueberries) out of our lightly colored beige carpet. We have used this for dog vomit and dog diarrhea as well with no stains left behind.
My sister's dog stayed with us once and peed on the carpet in the master bathroom. We used the rug doctor to clean it up. If you don't get the smell out, once one animal pees in the house, they will all start doing it to mark territory! We cleaned the spot with the rug doctor until the water ran clear and I couldn't smell anything in the carpet. When we replaced the carpet with tile and pulled the old carpet up, I looked for the pee stain. You could see a very, very faint brown outline of an irregular shape where the rug doctor solution had spread the urine out while cleaning the carpet. Curiosity got the better of me and I wondered if you could smell the pee UNDER the carpet, so I gave it a whiff. I couldn't detect an odor (my nose is pretty sensitive).
We use this machine to clean the carpets in our home every six months. We vacuum (with a Dyson DC17) on a regular basis but still the water we pull out of the carpet is an opaque brown (I should probably clean my carpets more than every six months with five pets and a kid, but I don't make the time to do so).
Another user mentioned using a slower pace with the machine than what the manufacturer recommends. We also do this. It seems you have to go pretty slow for it to do a really thorough job. Yes, it takes time, but when your carpets are as clean as they will ever be without being brand new, it's worth it!
Some tips that have worked well for us:
-You don't need nearly as much soap as they recommend. We use 1/2 or 1/3 of the recommended amount mixed with hot water and it does a great job (will save money on soap too!)
-We usually go back over the carpets a second and sometimes third time with just plain hot water to get out any residual soap (yes, even with the reduced amount) until the water we pull out of the carpet is clear (or nearly so). THEN I feel like the carpets are really clean.
-When cleaning up pet urine (if this is an issue for you): Use a flourescent black light (you can purchase one from a party store). This will make urine (and some other stains) glow in the dark. This way, you know EXACTLY where it is. After cleaning, you can check with the black light to see if you got all of the urine up or if you need to go over it again a few more times. The room needs to be completely dark (do at night) for the stain to show under the black light.
The rug doctor makes your house smell nice and fresh.
We just use the plain solution. The rug doctor came with some "special" samples like pet stain remover, odor remover, etc... Which I will probably use if and when our first bottle of solution runs out. We have found that the original formula works just fine for all of our messes.
CONS:
Only one con that we are aware of: If you are spot cleaning and you mix up too much solution, you want to empty it out of the rug doctor so it doesn't sit in there for months (mildew?). This is a royal pain. You either have to use all of the solution in your carpet (until it's empty) or wrestle the rug doctor over a sink or bath tub and turn it upside down. This thing is heavy and somewhat cumbersome (especially if it's full of water!). Even after dumping it upside down, there will still be a little bit of solution in it. It takes both me and my husband to empty it. One of us holds it on the edge of the bathtub while the other person pushes the button on the rug doctor to blow out all of the remaining solution in the bathtub. The person not balancing the rug doctor on the edge of the tub has to watch to see if the rug doctor is indeed done spouting out the residual solution. Yes, it's a bit of a pain, but still very worth it. (UPDATE 2/13/11 - THANKS TO ALL OF THE COMMENTATORS WE LEARNED YOU CAN HOLD THE UPHOLSTRY ATTACHMENT OVER THE DRAIN TO FLUSH LEFTOVERS OUT OF THE MACHINE - THANKS EVERYONE FOR THIS VERY SIMPLE IDEA THAT WE NEVER THOUGHT OF ON OUR OWN!)
We have not used the upholstery attachment, but if I ever do, I will come back and comment on it.
*****UPDATE***** 02/13/2011
Well, it took a little while but as promised I'm back to comment on using the upholstry attachment - ok, I haven't used it but my husband used it on the carpet under the floor mats in our vehicles. He claims it was not difficult and I am pleased that the greasy, dirty stains came out of the carpet inside the vehicles and now both smell really clean! Our rug doctor is still going strong (we moved a year ago and told the previous homeowners to not bother cleaning the carpets - we did it ourselves) and of course we were able to make all the carpet in the house look like new! We had painters who left a mess and we were able to get the paint drops out of the carpet with a little elbow grease and our rug doctor. Still doing an EXCELLENT job on the numerous cat pukes. The kids are now almost ages 4 and 2, we still have 2 dogs and now 2 cats. Rug Doctor cleans up all our messes (and the kids' and the pets'). We also inherited a dirty kitchen rug from the previous homeowners - we decided to give Rug Doctor a go at it and the rug changed colors before our eyes. Turns out the previous homeowner left us a pretty nice rug! When cleaning rugs on the hardwood, I am very paranoid, I roll up the rug and put a painter's plastic drop cloth underneath then unroll rug and then clean - keeps my hardwood floors nice and dry! Hope this helps!
Still love my Rug Doctor. Still highly recommended!!!
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