Since moving into our house over ten years ago, we’ve decorated, in some instances, renovated and redecorated all the rooms more than once. This has included things like rewiring, new boiler putting in a new kitchen and bathroom, ripping out the old stair rail and putting in a new new flooring throughout, painting walls, building a conservatory and porch, adding new doors and windows and landscaping the garden.
We’ve got to the and and are now having to start again! We’ve also found that the addition of 4 dogs, cats, children and rodents has meant that areas we have previously decorated now look like they have never been touched.
We are always looking out for things to help around the house. We get through vacuums and washing machines at an unbelievable rate. I have previously owned carpet cleaners, but my hubby , Andy, thought that there was no way they could touch the professional carpet cleaner we hire, so a useless investment. However, the latest addition of a puppy and an adult dog that is not housetrained have helped him to agree with me, we needed a carpet cleaner to call our own! So we decided to buy a Vax DualPower Plus.
We bought the carpet cleaner at argos for £99.99. We got it home, built it up, which was very easy, but did require a Philips head screwdriver. We chose to buy a couple of the recommended cleaned cleaning fluid so we could see it in action as recommended by the makers. We got two bottles of cleaning fluid for £12.49, but there was a small complementary tub with the DualPower Plus too. We then set too to watch the budget beast in action!
Pros
Budget Version
Amazing at deep cleaning
Great Stain Removal
Leaves carpet fairly dry
Easy to set up and put away
Is suitable for children over 8 J
Cons
Fairly Heavy and quite slow to use compared to some
No Upholstery attachment
Product Description from Argos
Refresh dull, tired looking carpets with the Vax Dual Power Plus carpet washer. Quick and easy set up and use and means you'll have your carpets washed in no time at all. Plus, with pre and post treatment trigger sprays, you can break down embedded dirt before cleaning and protect your carpets after.
Bring tired carpets back to life with the vax dual power plus carpet washer. The vax dual power plus is a quick cleaning carpet cleaner that's compact and lightweight and thanks to 2 rotating brushbars it deep cleans and refreshes carpets.
With additional treatment trigger sprays included, even the most stubborn stains can be removed; pre-treatment spray to break down embedded dirt before cleaning and post treatment spray to protect your carpets after.
Suitable for carpets.
2.7 litre clean water tank capacity.
1.5 litre dirty water tank capacity.
8m power cord.
2 rotating brush bars.
Safety cut out indicator when tank is full.
Edge to edge cleaning.
Sucks up spills.
Adjustable floor head for carpet cleaning.
1 x 250 ml ultra+ carpet cleaning solution, 1 x pre-treatment solution, 1 x post treatment solution.
Weight 5.8kg.
Manufacturer's 2 year guarantee.
EAN: 5012512162003.
On opening the box, we found the various components, of the the carpet washer in a few pieces to be put together, a bottle of Ultra+ Cleaning Solution, Pre Treatment Spray, Post Treatment Spray and a simple user guide.
We studied the user guide to see what to do. Assembling the carpet washer was a simple and quick task – all we needed to do was insert the handle into the base, pop three screws in and then click the water / solution tank into place. Fill the top tank with the solution and ready to go.
The Vax DualPower Plus is like an old model upright vacuum cleaner, you press a pedal at the bottom with your foot which allows you to recline the handle at one side and a pedal to get the motor going at the other. There is a trigger on the handle that releases the solution and water mix.
The user manual suggests that “For best results apply solution on the forward stroke and release the trigger to recover solution on the backward stroke.” So, that is what we did. We walked forward in a straight line with the trigger held so that the carpet cleaner is releasing the solution, then walked backwards over the same line without holding the trigger so that the carpet cleaner sucks up the water from the carpet.
We went over the same line two or three times, both ways, very slowly to ensure that as much of the solution was collected as possible, we found that it generally collected around 70% of the solution we put down, but if we kept going without the spray a few times it collected more. We did have to pick up the dog hair that it had dragged out from deep in the depths of the carpet or it would get clogged! Do not wear socks as they end up drenched! Although the carpet was wet to the touch after we had finished, it was just damp, not soaking.
As our carpet was extremely stained before the wash. It had had dog wee in a patch by the door as our new girl is not used to living inside and she has just been spayed and our puppy is only 6 months old, so his previous accident days are still evident! It was very easy to see a visible difference immediately after we had used the Vax DualPower Plus Carpet Cleaner. It smelt much fresher, and believe me I did not need to get down to sniff that! The liquid that came out of the dirty water tank suggested that a lot of dirt had been removed and it was absolutely full of hairs! We were very shocked as we do vac at least once a day and we vacuumed before we started the washing, so the amount coming out was amazing! We got through around 6 full tanks of water and each tank contains 2.7 litres!
When we went to bed, the carpet was still slightly damp and we had the heating on high to try and dry the carpet out, so we did not sleep well!
The next morning, we decided to give it another go. We were absolutely amazed that the dirt was still pulling out of the carpet that we now though was ….well, clean is not the right word due to what had been on it…acceptable! However, a second go and there were yet more lines of cleaner still carpet and more filthy water to prove us wrong!
Cost
The Vax Dual Power Plus costs £99.99 at Argos currently. It can be bought from a number of other retailers such as Amazon. As with most technology, you can buy a carpet cleaner for a range of budgets . You can pick one up for anywhere between £40 and £1000, so this is very much the budget end of the market.
The Dual PowerPlus is at the cheaper end of the market, we have had expensive and thought we would give a budget version a go and were not upset. Often the cheaper products are not as good as the expensive ones, however, in this case we have been pleasantly surprised. You can get other gadgets to go with the more expensive ones, such as the upholstery attachments and hoses, but we wanted to see how a budget version really faired, as more often than not, the people who really require these items, like us, have young children and a limited budget.
I just now wish I had done a before picture but had not actually realised how bad it was until I saw the budget beast in action! This is a second day, second go picture.