Vacuums, Steamers, Floor care

Keep Your Home Clean With the Right Floor Care Products

Keeping your home clean is a multistep process, with floor care laying the foundation for everything else. A freshly vacuumed carpet or mopped floor just seems to make the whole room look and feel so much cleaner. From wall-to-wall carpeting to area rugs to bare floors, there are many tools you can use reduce the dust, dirt, grime, and other debris that builds up of your floors. Knowing what vacuum cleaners, sweepers, steam cleaners, and other devices work for your specific needs lets you keep your floors spic and span.

Vacuum cleaners

There are many different types of vacuum cleaners, and each one works best with specific flooring and types of surfaces. Types of vacuum cleaners include uprights, sticks, canisters, robotic, handheld, and ones designed specifically for picking up pet hair.

• An upright is among the most common type of vacuum cleaners. Uprights are ideal because they work on a multitude of flooring types from deep pile carpeting to wood and tile floors. Uprights can be bagged or bagless. Bagged uprights usually have HEPA filters to keep the dust and pollen to a minimum; however, the bag needs replacing periodically. Bagless uprights contain what the vacuum cleaner picks up in a container attached to the vacuum, which empties easily.
• Stick vacuums are a light version of an upright vacuum cleaner. These types of vacuums are not as powerful as most other kinds but work well on bare floors and are good for low-pile carpeting like area rugs. They are also good for people who have a limited amount of storage space.
• Canister vacuum cleaners are powerful like uprights but are able clean in narrow spaces like a stick vacuum. These also have bags that must be changed out and often come with some accessories, such as crevice tools and brush attachments ideal for vacuuming upholstered furniture.
• Handheld vacuums are cordless, battery-powered, rechargeable vacuum cleaners ideal for cleaning up small areas like stairs. They're useful for cleaning up quickly when it would be bothersome to bring out a larger vacuum cleaner.
• Robotic vacuum cleaners are also battery-powered and rechargeable vacuum cleaners, but they clean floors without human assistance. They are usually disc-shaped, meaning they can get under spaces that a normal vacuum cleaner cannot.
• Pet vacuums can, in most cases, be an upright, canister, or stick vacuum cleaner, although there are some robotic and handheld vacuums specifically designed for pet hair. These tend to be powerful vacuum cleaners that can lift pet hair from carpeting and furniture and can keep the pet hair from getting caught in the vacuum cleaner's gearing.

Carpet cleaners

Carpet cleaners use water and detergent to deep clean carpets, removing built-up grime, dirt, and stains. Steam cleaners are carpet cleaners that use the hot water extraction method to remove stains and dirt. The hot water sprays onto the carpeting, sometimes with a cleaning solution, and then the steam cleaner sucks the water back up, taking the loosened dirt and other foreign material with it. Regular carpet cleaners follow the same process - only normal temperature water is mixed with a cleaning solution, sprayed onto the carpet, then vacuumed up with the steam cleaner.

Most carpet cleaners are like upright vacuum cleaners in style, although there are some canister and portable carpet cleaners available as well.

Sweepers and wet-dry vacuum cleaners

Sweepers are an even lighter version of a vacuum cleaner. There typically have a handle that attaches to a base that has a rotating brush to pick up debris and dirt. These are not good for heavy-duty cleaning. Many are push-powered, although there are some that are battery-powered and rechargeable.

At the other end of the vacuum spectrum, wet-dry, or shop, vacuum cleaners are powerful vacuum cleaners capable of picking up heavy-duty debris and liquids. These vacuum cleaners are barrel-shaped and come with wide, flexible hoses. These are typically seen in workshops, and are superb at picking up sawdust and metal shavings.

Accessories

There are numerous accessories available for vacuum cleaners with the most often needed ones being replacement vacuum cleaner bags and filters. As with the air filter on a car, the filters on a vacuum cleaner keep dust and pollen from being spit into the air while the vacuum is in use. Filters are replaceable easily as most just slide in and out from their position in the vacuum cleaner. Each type and brand of vacuum cleaner have specific bags that they use, so consult the owner's manual for your vacuum cleaner before purchasing replacement bags. If you've misplaced your owner's manual, you can usual find one online by searching for the model number of the vacuum. Replacement usually also offer some form of filtration, and some are scented to make the room smell better after using the vacuum cleaner.

There are specific cleaning solutions required when using carpet and steam cleaners, and many are made by the manufacturer of the carpet cleaner. Both vacuum cleaners and carpet cleaners sometimes need to have certain parts replaced with belts being a common replacement for vacuum cleaners and pads and brushes being typical replacements for carpet cleaners.