Shark Vac Then Steam

With all the construction work on the new entry way addition, our house has sure taken a beating over the last couple of months from a cleanliness perspective.  It seems like the entire main floor is perpetually covered in a layer of construction-related dust and the kitchen floor, in particular, is various levels of muddy, dusty, and just plain dirty depending on the day.  In an effort to try to resolve the issues with the kitchen floor without spending all of my free time scrubbing it, I bought a Shark Vac Then Steam last weekend, figuring it would be nice to have for all the new tile being installed in the entry way and powder room also.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the purchase, but it didn’t turn out to be the miracle cure for a perpetually filthy kitchen floor that I’d hoped for.  The hard floor vacuum seems to do an ok job, but the suction is all coming from the rear center of the vacuum head, so it does miss things that are around the edges of the room.  For stuff in the middle, though, it picks up the debris without kicking it all over the floor like my regular vacuum does (even in “hard floor” mode).  I’ve never had one specifically designed for hard floors, so I’m not sure how it compares to other models, but I do prefer it to using my normal vacuum on the hard floor.

Shark Vac Then Steam

The steam mop also works pretty much as advertised.  It puts out a good amount of steam and the floor feels really clean afterwards.  My only complaint is that it leaves the floor looking really streaked.  Our kitchen floor is a Pergo laminate “tile” floor and I did some reading online after the first time it happened.  After reading on the Pergo site about recommended care of the laminate floor, it sounded like the streaking was most likely caused by a build up of dirt and other cleaners (Swiffer Wet Jet cleaning solution, etc.) in the tile.  The recommendation was to deep clean the floor with a mixture of vinegar and water, which I did.  Immediately afterwards, I was able to use the steam mop with no streaking in the kitchen.  A few days later, though, when the floor was muddy from the contractors again, I used the steam mop to clean up and it streaked something awful.

I still have a couple of other things I want to try – maybe switching the cleaning pad to the one for heavy duty cleaning or maybe switching off to a clean one after the worst of the mess is picked up.  I’m thinking the streaking this last time is probably because a thin layer of dirt and mud was getting spread around by the steam mop.  I’m also curious to see if this will continue to be a problem once the construction work is done and the level of filth in the kitchen is reduced to a more normal amount.

I do like the concept of the steam mop a lot – I like that there’s no build up of cleaners on the floor and I like that the cleaning pads can go in the washer and be reused rather than being disposable.  I’m really hoping to have better results with it when I’m starting with a floor that’s not as dirty as what we’re living with now …

Filed Under: Cleaning and Organizing

One thought on “Shark Vac Then Steam

  1. Sarah says:

    I have a VAC then Steam myself, it works great to keep clean and maintain a cleaning. It is not great at cleaning BIG messes, things like the contractors tracking in mud and dirt needs a little more Effort! But once thats done its GREAT at keeping the floor clean and sanitized. I love this product, i found mine at this AWESOME site i sepnt like 85 dollars on it….
    http://stores.ilikenew.com/-strse-61/Shark-2-dsh-in-dsh-1-Vac-Then/Detail.bok

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