Looking to clean your art studio or other carpeted area in your house? Well consider a Hoover SteamVac. I purchased a Hoover SteamVac with CleanSurge as an impulse purchase when they were on sale at Sears the other day for $249 (reg $279). To recap, we have two small children that like to throw food on the floor when eating so our dining room carpet has been getting very stained.

Just to explain, a SteamVac doesn't actually use steam, just hot water and cleaning solution. The Hoover SteamVac with CleanSurge heats the water/solution mix to the desired temperature, dispensing it on the carpet and sucking the solution back up through the vacuum. Hot air running through the unit helps dry the carpet (although it still takes a couple of hours to dry fully).

Today was my first time using the unit and, boy, was I impressed! I did 2 rooms (dining and bedroom) using about 10oz solution total refilling twice and emptying dirty water three times - my one complaint is that the clean tank is bigger than the dirty tank, so you need to stop at different times to refill/empty.

The water that came out of the carpet was black. There was sludge at the bottom of the dirty water tank that looked like it had sand in it (ok, I confess, this was 3 years of dirt, but still, it's not like I don't vacuum...). Anyway, the carpets look great. They took about 2 hours to completely dry and the solution contains scotchguard so it should have some resistance to getting dirty.

I highly recommend a Hoover SteamVac with CleanSurge for anyone that wants to clean their carpets themselves, both saving money and being more convenient than a professional cleaning service. Now I've seen how dirty my carpets were I want to do the rest of the house including my studio that has pastel dust all over the floor. It'll be interesting to see if the water is black or ultramarine blue!