suggestions for steam cleaners

My little steamer is hitting the wall, too. It just doesn't have the output or the pressure to do what I want. I imagine the Shark is probably very similar in it's abilities, or lack thereof.



My 125 dollar SteamFast unit kept me happy for a while. Until I realized all the stuff I *could* be doing, now it just doesn't quite cut it. For one, if I'm using a non-restrictive attachment with it, the pressure is gone in about 45 seconds of constant use. Then you have to wait three minutes for the pressure to rebuild.



If I would have had any idea how truly useful a steamer is, I woulda saved for a better/bigger/more powerful model.



Ya know all that polish/wax residue you always find around door jambs, badges, insignias, etc. on customer cars? Quick shot of steam... bam, it's gone. Brake dust, wheels, arches, engines, interiors, even glass. It's all fair game. And it's fast. Well, as fast as your steamer is. It seems that unless you pony up the cash for a good one, you'll be time-limited by your steamer.



Oh, and one final tip on using a steamer... You know those obnoxious dealership stickers they always put on the rear of a car? Steam makes quick work of both the sticker and the adhesive.
 
Jakerooni- Just keep in mind that it'll give you a somewhat limited view of what you can do with a steamer. It'll be fine for everything it has the power to do, it just won't have *much* of that power so it might not be able to do a whole lot. Sorry if that sounds mealy-mouthed but it's hard for me to say whether you should spend the $ on that or just apply it towards a more potent one :nixweiss
 
I bought a McCullough MC 1275 at HF for $75.00 last week with a 15% coupon from Motor Trend. Yeah it's a cheapie but the best of the cheapies (or so I read).

So far, so good. I'm aware it'll whet my appetite for a good steamer but it's OK for me so far. I paid an extra $19.99 for a 2 year bring-it-back-get-another-one warranty.

The steam lasts about 45 minutes before stopping for a refill should I need to go longer. I figured it was much nicer and stronger than those little hand-held ones.
 
Well my thinking is I have the $40 right now to go try this out. I still have about 3 weeks or so before I'll the extra grand lying around to plunk down on a real machine. I figure I should be able to see something in the 3 weeks to give me an idea on what I'm in for.
 
As a dry cleaner, I've used commercial steam gun attached to a $15K boiler, the kind meant to be used 24/7 for 30 years straight, so there are steam cleaners for all sorts of applications but I do have some expectations for the small ones ($500-800 range. In my shop, we had the boiler set for about 80 PSI, so I'm used to having that sort of pressure coming out of the gun to do the job. I think I would be disspointed by a steamer that didn't have enough steam pressure to do the job quickly. So having a small $40 steamer putting out maybe 20 PSI with a 1/2 hour of steam may be useless, because it takes 10 times longer to do the same job as say a $1,000 steamer. So I need something in between, I want it to work as fast, or maybe 80% as fast as what a commercial detail operation would use like with your Daimer 1500, but I don't need continous fill since I doubt I would use it more than 1-2 hours straight, not something that powerful that works fast. So do you think there are any good steam cleaners are close to as powerful as your Daimer 1500 but not rated for commercial use like yours?



It would kinda be cool to use it on my clothes, I miss having what dry cleaners call a spotting gun and a real steam iron (not the kind you plug into electricity, but run completly on steam, they really make ironing a lot easier and they have less risk of burning your clothes).
 
buellwinkle- I dunno, but I bet there are some cheaper steamers that'll put out ~80psi.



Note that it can be surprising how fast you go through a tankful of water. I was using my 1500C yesterday on my wife's A8 ( and *NO* it did *NOT* do a good job on the back sides of some winter wheels, had to use other measures for those) and I refilled it a few times.



Refilling a non-continuous model is a PIA IMO as the job comes to a screeching halt, often when you *really* don't want to stop working to just sit around cooling your heels for an extended period (wait while it cools down, then wait until it heats back up..).



And yeah...I've spent enough time in the back of tailors' shops to appreciate a *real* steam iron ;)



A *real* steam cleaner is sorta more along the lines of the stuff you use at the dry cleaner shop. I had a propane-powered one when I was younger that'd strip paint on its highest setting. That thing was really something, sometimes wish I still had it.
 
So are you saying that when they say 3 hours, that's not 3 hours of continous steam? Or is that 3 hours wether you use steam or not? Or does that time drop drastically when you have it on full blast? So how much real work time can I expect say per litre of tank capacity?



Absolutely you don't want to have to stop to let it cool down so you can refill it and then wait for it to heat up again.
 
Buellwinkle- I can't really say how long...I simply don't pay attention to the clock and I can't say for *certain* that I start with the steamer's tank completely filled up :nixweiss



Sorry to be so clueless :o But it seems that whenever I'm doing a sorta-big job (a full interior, let alone something like an undercarriage), I *always* end up refilling the 1500. I refill it often enough that the continous fill has become a must-have IMO.



When I use my smaller steamer (DeLonghi Euro-Steamer) I run through its (smaller) tank pretty fast and then I have to cool my heels until it can be refilled.



So...again apologizing for not having good answers here...I find the continuous fill to be a really big deal, and remember that I'm *not* a pro who's using it on big jobs all the time. I'd bet anything that "three hour run time" is *NOT* based on using it on the max output setting, but I'm just guessing and I don't want to say they're fibbing either.



EDIT: something else occurred to me; some other manufacturer claims that the continuous fill results in "wetter" steam. I've criticized this opinion in the past, but I've come to think that the output of the Daimer *is* a little on the wet side. No, it's not a biggie, and it's worth it *to me* for the quick refilling, but I wanted to say that I've come around a little on the topic and I now don't think the argument is completely BS. More stuff to consider...
 
The continous feed models have a much smaller capacity, for example, the equivalent to Daimers bottom of the line, their 200S for $800 which not continous fill is double the capacity of their 300CS for $900 that is continuous fill. But the claimed 4 hours of use time on the 200S is probably more than I'll ever need, but if it's false, and I'll go through that at full blast in an hour, then it may not be enough.



Just curious on how it works. So you have a boiler thank and a refill tank that feeds the boiler, how does it do that because there's a pressure differential.
 
buellwinkle said:
..Just curious on how it works. So you have a boiler thank and a refill tank that feeds the boiler, how does it do that because there's a pressure differential.
Click to expand...



Beats me how it works :nixweiss It does work nice and slick though...the steam stops and the red light comes on to say "no water", you refill it, and you instantly have steam again.
 
so what's a good amount of PSI when it coms to steam cleaners for easily cleaning brake dust and spotting on carpets etc...???
 
I ordered a Realibale T630, $379, no tax, shipped free. Vapor steam at 58 PSI. I wanted vapor steam and something more powerful than the low cost units but feel I didn't need the 60-70PSI of the units costing twice as much. I look at it this way, a pro needs to work fast because time is money. If I'm cleaning a kitchen or bathroom once in a while, I'm not in as much a rush. More PSI means you can clean faster. As a dry cleaner, I had 100 PSI of steam in my hands in a spotting gun I used on peoples clothes and it worked really fast on removing stains, so I know what steam can do as much as anybody, steam ran my business.



It should get here sometime next week (I've been waiting 3 weeks, never, ever buy from AllergyBuyersClub.com, they lie, lie, lie and when you think they are done, they bring in someone else to lie some more). I'll let you know how it goes.
 
buellwinkle- Hope that steamer works out for you. And thanks for the caveat about AllergyBuyersClub. Think I might just throw out their catalog.
 
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