My Hoover Floor Mate’s okay but . . . - Hoover Floormate H3000 Upright Wet/Dry Vacuum
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Anything that let’s me lay down a mop is a sure sale as far as I’m concerned. I gave up on the idea of buying one of the steam vapor cleaners and decide that the Floor Mate might just be the ticket. (No pads to change during long cleaning session or wash afterward. Still, it took several weeks of waiting for the Hoover Floor Mate’s price to come down at least $20.00 or so from the initial $200 a pop it was selling for — and to find it available in local stores — before I decided on the purchase.
Price-wise, in my heart of hearts, I feel that $150 or slightly under is the fair price for this machine considering its present abilities — and disabilities. So, I suggest that some might better served by waiting a bit to see how much further prices will lower in another few weeks. Also, if you just must have one, check out eBay, etc., where they’re presently selling for about $170 on the average. However, that’s not necessarily a deal as eBay shoppers would most likely have to pay roughly $20 for shipping.
Considering the positive heading of this review why do I suggest you wait for a price drop? $200 is too much money to spend for a machine that still needs development.
First — though the Hoover people make perfectly decent examples of both — the Floor Mate is neither a full-fledged vacuum nor a full-fledged floor scrubber. For the vacuuming of bare floors, this machine has no bristle strip on the nozzle to help dislodge grit and dust — only the squeegee blades that ride just above the surface of the floor. All you get is what the air flow is able to lift off the floor. Unless you’re attacking very light soil and debris you may well want to consider using your regular vacuum for a more thorough job of sweeping before wet cleaning even with the Floor Mate.
As for floor scrubbing, the Floor Mate’s six little revolving soft brushes provide action adequate for light to general everyday “mopping”. I did find that using a spray cleaner like Fantastik as a “spot cleaning agent” gave the brush mechanism a boost that got me results of the impressive kind.
In general, I have to say the design of the Floor Mate is nifty but for floor cleaning I found its cleaning solution capacity a bit disappointing. It could stand to be at least double (2 quarts instead of 1). This might mean making the body of the machine a wee bit wider but it would definitely be a boon as far as cleaning mileage goes. This also leads to another point. With the stop and go for refills and emptying if you’ve a floor area larger than one small room’s to clean, taller people will find the stop and go all the more irksome due to having to bend and reach for the switch on the machine’s side each time they turn it on and off.
It’s dust collection capacity and capability are fine for very light soil and debris situations only. Powdery soil and fluff especially can cause clogging up of the small plastic screen that lies just before the chamber that houses a washable pleated filter responsible for the major portion of air filtration. Picking fuzz off the plastic screen and cleaning the pleated filter once it’s dust laden in the process of emptying out the collection container didn’t contribute to any of my ideas of great fun. However, an actual dust bag in a device like this would call for an overly elaborate design.
How did the Floor Mate come to win my affection? After I made the purchase I did not take my Floor Mate home — I took it to work. I work in a small downtown Manhattan office in an industrial building in lower Manhattan.
Though we’re not a shop, tradesmen, salesmen and messengers track lots of stuff in daily. It had been many, many a moon since we’d had a service in to mop and wax and there were especially bad areas where the wheels of office chairs had ground dirt solidly into the vinyl tile floor. This seemed the best place to see just what I was getting for my money.
The cutesy infomercials that I’d seen had left me cold all along yet it seemed to me that if the Floor Mate could put at least a dent in something like the stuff in that office, I could give my official Gadget Freak Seal of Approval. So I ventured into my own little skirmish in the war on dirt and put my new Floor Mate through its paces.
First I used it to vacuum and found the floor suitable for mopping in short order. (You will want to pick up paper clips, kids’ toy parts, etc. before starting to work.)
When actually mopping, I first hit the grungy spots with a good spritzing with Fantastik then let them sit a minute and with repeated passes of the Floor Mate got really nice results for the effort. If you follow this example — spray sparingly and do keep an eye on the collection tank to avoid foam build-up.
The biggest annoyance was — as stated prior — the machine’s small capacity. Nonetheless, for general house cleaning this machine should be quite helpful I’d think except in the average American bathroom. Because of maneuverability, the cleaning process would be easier and faster with just a good old mop.
If you’ve got more serious scrubbing issues than the usual, try Hoover’s FloorMax F5300. You can’t vacuum with it but it will put down cleaning solution, scrub wonderfully and suck it up again. I’ve owned one and can recommend it highly for scrubbing and polishing.
As for the Hoover Floor Mate — I’m always appreciative when you look at something and have a sense of serious thought being employed in its making. Thus, I can’t help but like the ingenuity that Hoover has displayed in designing the Floor Mate and have to say that if they design a later version with bigger capacity and just a touch more scrubbing oomph — I’ll buy it right off the bat.
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Tags: dry, machine, prices, service, solution
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