Steam Cleaners

Steam Cleaners

Steam cleans by heat rather than chemistry, which is the whole reason to own one. Nothing is left on the floor afterwards, so it suits a house with a crawling baby, a dog that licks the tiles, or anyone who has given up on detergent residue turning hard floors dull. The split is between a steam mop, which is a flat head on a stick for sealed floors, and a cylinder steam cleaner, which puts the boiler in a body on the floor and gives you a hose with nozzles and brushes for grout, hobs, taps, shower screens and the inside of an oven. Several machines now do both, with a handheld unit that detaches from the floor head. Heat up time is the specification that decides whether a steam mop gets used or abandoned, and anything much beyond half a minute tends to end up in a press. After that, check the pad is machine washable and that spares are easy to get, because pads are consumable. Steam is for sealed surfaces only: unsealed timber, laminate with open joints and anything waxed will take on moisture, so check the floor before the machine. Distilled or filtered water extends the life of the boiler in a hard water area, though most modern units tolerate tap water.

Shark holds most of this range through the Klik n Flip and Steam and Scrub mops, the automatic models with a steam blaster for stuck on marks, and a combined floor and handheld unit. Karcher covers the cylinder end with the SC1, SC2 and SC3 EasyFix, which come with the nozzle and brush sets for bathrooms and kitchens. Morphy Richards and Russell Hobbs cover the value end, including twelve in one multi surface units. Wet spills and carpet stains are a different job, handled in Carpet Cleaners.

Steam mops are a common gift and a common impulse buy, so they are reduced most often in the run up to Christmas and again in the spring cleaning weeks. Prices are live all year, so see what is reduced now on vacuum cleaners on sale.