Clean carpets any time you want

Bissell 9200 ProHeat 2X Upright Deep Carpet Cleaner

The Need
I have 2 small children. My son who is about half a year loves to roll around and is very close to crawling. The condition of or carpets is pretty good but I cringe every time he stick his mouth on the carpet or rubs his hands on the carpet.

My daughter is 2 years old and loves to walk around the living room with a snack tray and a milk cup. I can’t tell you how many times that milk cup have spilled droplets onto our carpet.

My dog acts like most normal dogs in that he loves to roll around on the carpet to get a good back scratch. He at times will also scoot across the carpet. For those of you who don’t own dogs, scooting is the procedure in when a dog rubs his butt on the carpet to get a good scratch.

So over time I think my carpet gets more abuse outside of just regular walking traffic. With my two kids I have an additional need to get the carpets as clean as possible. I vacuum twice a week with a Dyson but dry cleaning can only do so much.

I haven’t cleaned my carpet in 4 years. I’ve only used spot cleaners and vacuumed 2 times a week.

Some Specs
-Upright carpet cleaner that looks like a large vacuum cleaner
-10 rows of brushes. The 9400 has 12 rows.
-Heats tap water and cleaning solution 25 degrees hotter for better cleaning. Also heats through the attachment tool.
-12 Amps of power
-Size: 19 x 13 x 44 inches
-Weight when empty is roughly 30 lbs

Assembly
The assembly is fairly simple. The main base is already put together and the only thing that needs to be attached is the hose brackets for storage and the main handle. It only takes a couple of screws to attach the main handle to the base, but I wasn’t very happy to how this is done. First, the screw holes that are used to put in the screws through the handle are a bit small. If you have an interchangeable screwdriver like me that changes multiple bits, it will be a bit tight and you won’t be able to tighten the screws. I had to get a small screwdriver to make its way down the deep and narrow shaft. Bissell really needs to open the hole diameter by at least a 10th of and inch. Once I got that down, I noticed that the fully assembled cleaner isn’t secured tightly enough. When you rock back the handle to move the entire cleaner on its back wheels you will see that the handle separating from the main base. The 4 screws don’t hold tight enough and you can see the plastic flexing under the weight of the empty cleaner. The 3 positions the cleaner will be in will be upright in storage, full released for cleaning, and upright but rocked back on the wheels for transportation. I don’t like that when I’m wheeling it from one location to another I can see the gap between the handle and the base. There needs to be a more ridged mounting are for the handle as the cleaner is so bottom heavy. I believe the mounting holes are probably plastic and even when tightened down with 4 screws the cleaner will bend the plastic mounts pretty easy. I fear over time this will not last and the plastic will eventually give out and break the plastic screw mounts. Broken handle means a broken cleaner.

Features
I like the custom cleaner function in that it has heavy traffic, normal clean, light clean and rinse. I’m not sure who is using light clean as that to me pretty much defeats the purpose of cleaning your carpet. Each setting is supposed to determine how much water and cleaning solution is used. I stuck with using the heavy and normal. I didn’t need to use the rinse function as the normal and heavy didn’t make the carpet so wet or soapy that I need to rinse it.

The solution tank is separate from the main dirty/clean tanks and this allows for constant storage. You don’t have to mix the solution so you can leave the solution in its compartment for storage. The clean water and dirty water compartments share the same tank area. The separation is that the clean water is in a bladder. The bladder sits in this tank and when the clean water is used up it will eventually end up in the tank area which has a max line indicator. I did notice that when I was done with the first pass I didn’t have any water in my bladder but for some reason I could continue cleaning. I wonder if it just used only cleaning solution. The carpet still seemed pretty damp but the only indicator that I have run out of clean water is if the dirty water is full, but when the clean water was empty the dirty water wasn’t at the max line.

The Bissell Proheat 2X has a patented built in heater that heats the water and solution. Many other cleaners do not heat the water yet still label themselves as “steam cleaners”. If the water is hot coming out, how is that a steam cleaner? Some other cleaners use the heat from the motor which isn’t very efficient and a built on heater is the way to go.

The attachments are standard stuff like the spraying crevice tool, 3” tough stain brush and a Scotchguard protector applicator. I don’t use the spraying tool as I don’t really think it’s necessary to clean the carpet right at the wall. The carpet cleaner is fine enough in getting close enough to the wall. The Scotchguard protector applicator is a hose attachment that allows you to spray the carpet and protect your carpet with their special solution. This is ment to be a post treatment application to help protect from addition dirt and only required every 12 months. The key is to do this when it’s damp from the cleaning. Bissell recommends applying the protector after every cleaning in high traffic areas but I’ll go ahead and do it every year. The stain brush is a stationary brush and doesn’t have moving bristles like turbobrush which is included in the 9400.

Cleaning
My carpet has a few stained areas that didn’t come out with my carpet spot remover. I didn’t pretreat any of the carpet as I wanted to see what the machine can do without pre-treatment of hard stains. I did use hot tap water and the instructions state to not use boiling water or microwaved water as that would damage the bladder. I have to say it got out at least 75 percent of all stains that were on my carpet. It didn’t get the couple of juice stains or some really old throw up stains, but overall it got a lot of the stains out. Besides just the stains, it got a lot more hair and dirt out. I vacuumed the carpet prior to cleaning and the cleaner still got more out of the carpet. I am very impressed that the cleaner could get that much out considering I vacuum so much. The suction from the cleaner isn’t as strong as a regular vacuum as it has to suck the dirt through a long nozzle head. So when you’re cleaning the carpet you will actually roll some dirt and hair into balls and it will not be able to suck it up. So instead, it just leaves these big balls of wet dirty behind. It is pretty gross to see a visibly clean only to watch giant dirt balls come up. I noticed that the carpet was moist and not like drenched in water. You can tell the heater is working because the carpet is noticeably warm after cleaning it. The instructions state to take a slow forward and backward motion while using the solution. It then says to take another pass without using the solution solely to suck up the excess water and solution in the carpet. I have found that is pretty much all you need to do. Going over the same area another time didn’t suck up that much more moisture from the carpet. Also, you can’t see if the cleaner is sucking up moisture from the carpet as you have to be kneeling in front of it but you’re pushing the cleaner. Unless you have a second person telling you no more liquid is being drawn out, you won’t know if it is. I just do a bare foot test to see how damp the carpet is after I clean it and going over the section just one time was enough in my case.

Clean Up
The instructions states that you only have to dump the dirty water out and rinse the bladder clean inside and out. The brush bar and the front nozzle were really dirty but the dirty water wasn’t as dirty as I would have thought. I decided to clean the front nozzle and that is pretty easy to remove. Cleaning that out was as easy as just flushing hot water through it. The front nozzle is easily removable but the brush bar is held down with a couple screws and doesn’t seem to be setup for daily cleaning. I plan to only clean the nozzles and leave the brush bar as it is until it’s really dirty. I just let the tank and nozzle air dry and then reassemble for storage. The carpet was pretty dry in about 1 hour. I couldn’t even tell the carpet was even wet after about 2-3 hours.

Closing Thoughts
The carpet was cleaner and fluffier then before I cleaned it. The cleaner is pretty heavy and you’re not going to be able to tip it over or rock it out of place when it’s got all that water inside of it. The tank is not as large as commercial tanks but I was able to do my living room and master bedroom in 1 sweep. I still have half a tank left of solution but ran out of clean water. I would suggest checking the level of the clean water regularly. The clean/dirty water tank snaps easily into the base of the vacuum and is very easy to carry from the sink to the vacuum. I did notice that when I was done with the first room and I put the cleaner in the upright position that the cleaner left a row of dirt where it was sitting. This could be a problem if you plan to do multiple rooms but need to wheel it over to the different rooms as you will be leaving dirt marks every time you set the cleaner up for wheeling.

Paid $160.00
Trial solution is only good for one tank
Full solution bottles run $10 but are bigger then the trial bottles.