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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
-
This cleaner has saved my dog's life!
Long review short, if you're looking for a carpet cleaner, BUY THIS MACHINE.
I have to say that I am extremely happy with buying the 9500 Proheat. I was very wary about it working as advertised, but all of my fears went away after the first couple of uses. First some background: I am a 34 year old male, and I've lived in my house for 12 years now and have never had the carpets cleaned. Imagine how much dirt I've let accumulate with the traffic of two people, and two 75lb. dogs running in and out of the house every day. For the past couple of years, I was considering just buying new carpeting and then taking better care of it, but unfortunately my German Sheppard has developed all kinds of health problems. He has congestive heart failure, but his heart medication and water pills are working wonders and he's as playful as ever. The problem is, his water pill makes him need to pee a lot more often. Unfortunately, he sometimes decides to pee behind the couch. Tiring of cleaning up the mess every morning with normal carpet cleaning products, and the smell of urine not getting out of the carpet, I decided to buy the Bissell after some thorough research.
Putting it together wasn't too difficult, but I think the instructions could be a little better by including actual photos instead of illustrations of what part goes where.
At the risk of making myself look like a fool, please use this next section to help you learn from MY mistakes: I thought to myself, how hard can this be, just run the machine and that's that. I filled the bladder with water and the soap container with soap. Immediately, the soap container leaked all over the place. Well, I had cross threaded the cap so it wasn't seated correctly, I haven't had a problem since. My next step was turning the unit on and water began to leak all over the place from the hose. I checked the switch on the front and it was set to clean the floors so I thought I had a broken machine. I was getting aggravated because of the soap thing and the water spraying and leaking all over the place was very HOT. Again, user error caused the problem. When I put the hose together and latched it in like you're supposed to, I didn't pay attention to how I had the hand tool faced, the trigger was being pressed down so of course it was spraying water, just like it was designed. Solving that problem, I began to clean the carpet behind the couch but no matter what I did, the carpet was way too wet after each pass. Now I started to think about the negative reviews where others were having problems with wetness, I wasn't seeing an improvement in the carpet, it was just getting worse with all of the water, and I thought how this was the last hope for my dog's life in the house and how it seemingly wasn't panning out. I decided to forget I was a guy and I ACTUALLY READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!! Lo and behold, I was doing things wrong. Imagine that.
I found that the proper way to clean the carpet is: WHILE HOLDING DOWN THE TRIGGER, make a slow forward pass, and then a slow backward pass over the same line. Next, RELEASE THE TRIGGER and repeat the back and forth action. Repeat this second part until you no longer see water being sucked up. Suddenly, my results were improving!
After knowing how to properly use the Proheat, I once again began to clean the area behind the couch. It took many passes for the Bissell to clean 12 years of neglect and a couple weeks of pee. It literally took me 7 hours to clean up the 3' by 3' peed on areas to the point where the water being sucked up was no longer black. I learned two lessons here, normal carpet cleaning sprays and scrubbing is a useless task (doesn't clean deeply), and I will never neglect my carpets again. Thankfully, the rest of the carpet, while taking more than a few passes, did not take nearly as long to clean as the peed on areas.
The results? WOW! I can't believe the improvement. The carpet is almost back to its original color amazingly. If it weren't trampled down from 12 years of traffic, it would look new again, but that part is not the Bissell's problem, just the cleaning up of the dirt and it did its job admirably. And used correctly, the Proheat dries the carpet very well, leaving only a slight dampness that dries completely in a couple of hours. I've had this unit for a month now and have almost finished cleaning my entire house and it's still working just as well as Day One. While I haven't tried the powered hand tool yet, the 3" hand tool has worked fantastically well on my couch. I cleaned one half of the back to see how good it would work, and the difference between the two halves is like night and day. I was astonished by how dirty the couch actually is.
To sum things up, I am very satisfied with my purchase of the Bissell 9500 Proheat 2X. It cleaned my carpet very well, and the urine smell is no longer there from my dog's mishaps. Thankfully, his accidents have become WAAAAAAAAAAY less frequent too, added bonus! I think part of that is the Bissell getting rid of his scent. I really didn't want to turn him into an outside dog or worse yet, have to put him down.
If you're looking into purchasing this product, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it. This machine cleans and dries well when used properly and if you avoid my earlier mistakes I have no doubts that you'll be very satisfied with your purchase.
Rating: -
Does a great job. Fantastic. (The cleanup is a little messy).
I read the instructions before using this machine, but I didn't really know what I was doing until a couple of hours into a large room. I'll give details on how to use this for those who care.
The Cleaning
Our carpet has never been steam cleaned in the entire time we have lived here. So that is at least 7 years. There were stains all over the place because of our 2 cats and our 2 yr old girl. After cleaning our room the carpet looked fantastic. It looks pretty close to brand new. The cleanshot option works great. Once you get your aim right you can get rid of some of the worst stains like this. It got all the stains out of all the rooms except for a 2 year old faint cool-aid stain. (That one is going to take more work).
The Cleanup
The cleanup is pretty disgusting. Really really really disgusting. You will want to wear a gas mask and a hazmat suit for this. I think probably every steam cleaner is the same in this area, but its pretty gross. I produced a large pile of dirty carpet fiber from cleaning our living room area. Every couple of minutes I would see rolls of fiber left behind on the floor. I learned quickly that you need to pick these up every time they are produced. So I would have to stop the machine every 5 minutes, pick up the fibers, and start again. Finally I got a handvac out and used this. I'd just vacuum up the rolls as I went. Our carpet was really dirty so I had to empty the water tank several times. I was looking at the black and white checkered disc that spins when you squeeze the handle trigger. When this stopped spinning when I squeezed, then I knew it was time to empty the water tank. (Maybe thats not often enough). I think I probably had to clean the tank 2 times for every 1 tank full of formula. You are going to want to do empty this in the toilet, and rinse it and fill it in a bathtub. After I emptied the tank I would have to rinse out all the carpet fiber that got into it. The hardest part is where the water comes out of the tank. There would be a collection of fiber that doesn't easily come out. The top part of the water tank will have fibers in it too. Just fill it up full of water and shake it around a bit and you'll get it all out after a couple of tries.
Also the rollers will end up with fiber all in them. Now I realize that its probably best to put on rubber gloves and pull out the big wads of it for every cleaning of the water tank. But I didn't do this until I had done 3 rooms.
How To Clean a Room
I went through a bottle of formula before I realized that you don't squeeze the handle the entire time you move across an area. Here is what I ended up doing.
1) Vacuum the area really well. (I have a dyson for this, but of course you don't need a dyson).
2) Clean the area with the bissel. When you squeeze the handle, you are dispensing the formula onto the floor. The goal is to dispense formula over the entire floor only once. So you squeeze the handle and move the bissel in one direction and then release the handle and move back over that same area again.
3) Rinse an area. After I have cleaned a good portion (like make a 5 ft square of carpet) I flick the switch to water rinse. Then I squeeze the handle for both directions of each swipe of carpet. (So you are squeezing the handle twice as long as when you are dispensing formula). Flick the switch back to clean and clean the next area. Keep doing this for an entire room: clean, rinse, clean, rinse, clean, rinse, etc.
4) Cleaning a tough stain. I was too lazy to follow directions and go over all the stains with the tough stain cleaner first. But the clean shot option took care of all of our stains. You go through formula faster this way, but I still find that easier than using tough stain formula first on a room and then cleaning it. (And our cats have puked all over our house, so this was a very very heavily stained carpet).
5) Drying. The bissel is supposed to help dry the floor. I don't have another cleaner to compare this to. What I did (and I'm not sure if this is correct), is I turned on the heater option for the entire process of cleaning and rinsing. After the rinse I went over each again one more time without ever squeezing the handle (just so this would do more drying). So if you do this, then you are doing this for a room: clean, rinse, dry, clean, rinse, dry, etc. After I was done, the floor was still damp. When I walked into the hard kitchen floor after walking across the living room floor (after I cleaned it) I fell on my butt because the bottom of my feet were so slick. So be careful. I wore shoes and put towels on the kitchen floor so I and my pregnant wife wouldn't fall.
5) Moving furniture. We have fleas. So I felt that I needed to do literally every square inch of a room. So I moved every piece of furniture in the room and got every square inch. What I did was I did the area around the furniture, and then moved the furniture onto where I had cleaned and then did where the furniture stood. Then moved it all back.
Rating: -
Best investment ever!
This product has got to be one of the best investments I have ever made! I was a little worried about this cleaner after reading some of the more critical reviews, but having had good luck with Bissel products in the past I thought I would give it a shot. It does seem to use a little more shampoo than I am used to, but it sure seems to be doing something with it. I have 4 dogs running in and out all day long and, as I'm sure you'll all apprecriate, my carpet takes a fair beating. I have had this product for 3 weeks now and have used it twice a week since I got it. I have never seen my carpet look (or smell) better! It is so quick and easy to set up that it doesn't seem like any more of a chore than vacuuming and if someone has an accident on the carpet, it's ready to go in minutes. I'm not sure that it needed to come with as many small attachments as it did, but I guess some people might use them. They all seem to work well enough though (I had to test them all :P) I'm so glad I bought this cleaner. It's fantastic. Worth every penny
Rating: -
Great machine!
I LOVE this carpet cleaner. Smart design, well made, and it works exactly as promised.
We have three cats, two over the age of 15, which means vomit and the occasional pee spot are part of our lives. (Yay.) I bought the big Bissell to replace a Bissell Little Green portable cleaner that never worked as well as I'd hoped. Big step up in price... and a MONUMENTAL step up in performance.
I'm happy to say the ProHeat is just as easy to use for quick spot treatments as the portable cleaner was, which surprised me. The Turbo Brush is a bit of a disappointment (kind of a wimpy rotating brush), but the other tools do a fine job.
And this machine is GREAT on a whole room. It did a better job than the last professional cleaners we hired, and compared to a recent Rug Doctor rental, well, fuhgeddaboudit. (The Rug Doctor fiasco is what finally prompted me to make this purchase.) I love the clean-water rinse, which you can do as you go since the Bissell stores the water and cleaning solution in separate tanks.
I vacuum with our Dyson before cleaning the carpet, so I don't get too much fuzz when I run the Bissell. No leaks, either; I store the machine in a carpeted closet without worry.
The Bissell is easy to fill and clean... easier, even, than the Little Green. By the time I rinse out all the components, and suck a little clear water up with the hose if I've used the tools, I don't feel as if there's any grossness left in or on the cleaner.
Clean carpet, clean machine. I'm definitely a satisfied customer!
