It’s a popular question. Should I rent a carpet cleaner? Should I just hire somebody? Should I just buy one? There’s valid reasons and arguments for all situations.

Personally, I like to have my own carpet cleaner at home, for spot cleaning and cleaning my carpets on my own. And then maybe hire somebody to come in every once in a long while to do a professional cleaning.

But, there are lots of opinions out there. Check this conversation out. There’s some pretty interesting comments in support of or against any of these options.

Some arguments that are made against renting a carpet cleaner:

• Sometimes the machines haven’t been cleaned well by the previous renters.
• There is a sort of “gross-factor” for some people where they don’t want to use a machine that has been used and maybe not properly cleaned on many different grimy carpets in many different people’s homes.
• Doing it yourself with a heavy, rented machine can be a lot of work.

Some arguments that are made for renting a carpet cleaner:

• Rented machines can be pretty powerful and can do a pretty good job.
• The machines can usually hold a lot of dirty water (less emptying).

Some arguments that are made against hiring a carpet cleaner:

• Can be expensive to have somebody come in and professionally clean your carpets.
• You still may have instances where you wish you could spot clean (because of spills or high traffic areas) and it would be overkill to hire somebody to come in and clean that stuff.

Some arguments that are made for hiring a carpet cleaner:

• They empty the dirty water into their own tanks and take it with them (not dumping it your tubs, toilets, sinks, etc.).
• They often have pretty powerful cleaning machines, and might even move your furniture around for you (less work for you).

Some arguments that are made against buying a carpet cleaner:

• Many of the machines that you can buy small dirty water tanks, and you might spend a lot of time emptying dirty water.
• Doing all the cleaning yourself for a large home with lots of carpet can be a lot of work.

Some arguments that are made for buying a carpet cleaner:

• You have the machine available at all times, and can use it whenever you need to, which comes in handy for spot cleaning and regular cleaning of high traffic areas.
• They can be pretty affordable compared to the cost of renting or hiring on a regular basis.

As you can see, there is really no clear answer to which scenario is the best. They all can have certain situational benefits.

Consider these situations:

Maybe you are currently a renter. You don’t have pets. You don’t have kids. You only spend maybe a year at most in most apartments you live in. In this situation, you might be best served by just hiring somebody to come in and clean the carpets when you move out of your apartments. Without kids or pets, there’s less likelihood that you’ll need to do spot cleaning. You may be able to get away with a cheap only-when-you-move-out type of cleaning.

Maybe you have kids or pets, or have high traffic areas where you can tell the carpets get dirty on a regular basis. You feel the need to clean your carpets with a deep cleaner every month, or every couple months. You often have situations where you need to spot clean messes or spills on carpets. You may be best served by buying a good carpet cleaner to keep in your home. It will be there when you need it, which might be pretty often.

Maybe you have the need for somewhat regular carpet cleanings, but you don’t really have the desire to store a carpet cleaner or make the commitment of buying a machine. This could be for many reasons, really. In this situation you may be best served by just renting a machine when you want to clean your carpets.

It all comes down to your situation – your budget, storage options and desire to do the cleaning work in your home. What does your gut feeling tell you, after weighing the options?

One mistake I made when I was a new carpet cleaner owner was not cleaning the machine enough. I had a fairly decent Hoover steam cleaner as my first model, and it had these brushes called “SpinScrub” brushes.

They are pretty neat in that they have a spinning action that does a really nice job of scrubbing the carpets when the machine is at work. I like it a lot better than the way Bissell machines work. Many Bissel machines I have seen just have a big spinning bar with brush bristles, sort of like what most vacuums have.

The Hoover brushes I think do a little better job of scrubbing the carpet from many different angles, breaking loose all sorts of stuff from the fibers. I could be wrong as a don’t have scientific evidence to back this up, but I just get the feeling that these SpinScrub brushes scrub very thoroughly.

Don't let this happen to yours! It's pretty easy to take this apart and clean these brushes up.

Well, anyways, I should get back to my main point. I didn’t do a good job of regularly cleaning my SpinScrub brushes at first, and the first time I did actually try to clean them, after months of use, it was a really big pain in the rear.

I had to use a metal brush to clean most of the junk out of the brushes, and that was something that I only figured out after experimenting with a few different methods of scraping the junk out of the brushes on the steam cleaner.

How I cleaned my SpinScrub brushes

Taking the carpet cleaner apart to access the brushes wasn’t too bad. I was able to take it apart without having to really read any instructions on how to do it. So for that reason I would consider it pretty user-friendly from a maintenance standpoint.

Once I had taken my machine apart enough to get the individual brushes out of the unit, I started running some really hot water in the bath tub. I basically sat on the edge of the tub, running the brushes under hot water, using a metal brush to scrape the junk out of the brushes. It didn’t take too long once I got a groove down and figured out the best approach.

The stuff I scraped out of the brushes was remains of detergent, carpet fibers and other stuff, so it was like trying to get condensed lint or something out of a really tight brush. It wasn’t too hard, but it wasn’t really very easy either. I’d put it in the moderately difficult and frustrating category.

I’d imagine this experience is about the same for any type of carpet cleaner. They all have brushes of some sort that will get dirty from heavy use.

My recommendation for cleaning carpet cleaner brushes

I would recommend that if you have a carpet cleaner that you use regularly, that you clean the brushes on a regular basis. It’s an easy thing to forget. But it’s easier to do if you don’t let it go for too long. I ran into trouble because I put it off for months. But then I learned. So just keep up on this sort of stuff and maintenance will generally be a lot easier. This applies to many things, really.

I just had an experience where a carpet steam cleaner came in handy in a very unexpected way. I had a revelation of sorts, in regards to realizing the flexibility of this steam cleaner that I have for cleaning carpets.

A huge aquarium

I recently moved my 75 gallon saltwater aquarium from one apartment to another. I had to move, and moving this aquarium is not fun.

Part of moving an aquarium, of course, is draining the water.

Using a siphon

Well, I used a manual siphon to drain the first 50 gallons or so of water, and then I got down to that last little bit on the bottom, about 2 inches deep, of just gross looking water. And the siphon wasn’t cutting it anymore. I was kind of at a loss as to what I was going to do to get this aquarium water out of the bottom.

It’s not just a tank that you can “tip and drain” – you need to really picture what I was up against here. This thing is about 4 feet wide, 2 feet vertically deep and about a foot deep to the wall. It’s big.

Using the carpet steam cleaner

My friend, who happens to be a custodian, was helping me move this thing. As I was standing around trying to figure out how I was gonna suck the water out, he looks over at my carpet extractor and says “hey just use this thing, it’ll be like a shop vac”.

Great point!

My carpet cleaner had a hose attachment, and I was able to just stick the hose into the bottom of the aquarium, turn the extractor on and just let it suck the rest of the water out of the bottom.

The only thing I really ran into, in terms of negatives, was that my carpet cleaner waste tank only hold about a gallon of water, so I had to make a few trips to get the rest of the water out of the aquarium – which was about 5 gallons.

But the carpet steam cleaner made it easy.

Yeah! I never had thought of using the cleaner in that way, but it worked great and saved me a lot of grief when moving that aquarium.

It’s pretty easy to run into this situation, your carpet steam cleaner leaking!

It’s not fun, and it might happen at random times. With today’s steam cleaners, it can often be pretty easy to test a few things and get it fixed.

Finding some troubleshooting info?

First of all, consult the manual, sometimes they warn of common issues and there might be a simple troubleshooting solution outlined.

If that doesn’t yield any good info, try the Web. Searching online can reveal solutions.

Test a few things

In addition to finding info about trying to fix a leak, it also is pretty easy to test a few things on your own.

Simply detach and reattach the water containers, for instance, and try to focus on testing places where seals exist on removable parts.

For example, I ran into an issue where my steam cleaner wasn’t sucking any water up off the carpet, it was pretty alarming. It’s not fun to see a bunch of detergent on the carpet, scrubbed in nicely, and not getting sucked back out by the cleaner.

I removed the waste water tank and reattached it, trying to get a better attachment on the seals. It worked again. Magic!

So, I guess what I’m trying to get at is that sometimes you just need to tinker and you might find that the solution is pretty simple. Hopefully.