I live in a 1000sqft apt with my esposa & 2 pugs
If you don't know, pugs shed every day of their lives!
I've had one for about 3 weeks now and here are my impressions

Super easy to put together, all you need is a screwdriver for 2 screws
It's also a breeze to use and it did a great job on my carpets (don't forget to vacuum first though)
Better than the rug dr I'd rent (those things are filthy!)

So for 2 bedrooms, living, dining, and sofa it took about 2 gallons which means that I had to empty the dirty water twice and refill the clean water twice
I also used about 32oz of soap which is about [$$] if you buy the name brand

Cleaning is also easy, just poor the dirty water in the toilet and rinse it out with water and boom you are set
Like other people have said there is no pour spout so be careful when pouring out the dirty water (you don't want to make a mess)
There are a couple other things to clean up, like the front part that sucks up all the water from the carpet, and some other fitters and the scrub brushes and that whole area
I usually wait till the next day when the unit is dry and just wipe the bottom down and pick of any bunches of lint or dog hair, and clean the front nozzle only when necessary

Some word about the attachments
First the accessory tray on the back is a bit cumbersome, bulky, doesn't hold the hose very well, and I've found gets in the way of storing the power cord
So, I didn't attach mine and just have it hanging on a coat hanger in the closet

Secondly, the way the hoses attaches to the front of the unit for the sucking and the other to the side for the soap is also not so great
It's not like my vacuum cleaner where there is a tight fit
For the sucking hose you kind of put it in the whole and turn it, but there's nothing to stop it from turning it the other way :(
For the soap hose you just push it in, it doesn't seem very secure because it can easily be pulled out
That being said I had not experienced problems with either falling out though

Next the spin scrub hand tool, it sucks!
I tried to use it for some corners and my sofa and it did not do a good job
I think it's because the spinning brushes powered by the air flow and not a separate motor like the main unit
Don't use it at all, but that's just me

The other stair/upholstery tool is much better
I was able to give my sofa cushions a good clearing

Lastly be careful when done with the attachments because the hose will have some left over dirty water and soap (this is probably the messiest part of the whole thing)

Sorry I don't use the bare floor attachment to comment

Overall, I love this thing to clean my carpets and the sofa
Cleaning is easy, remember it is NOT nonexistent, you DO have things to clean

Having been so frustrated with my Bissell steam vac that I turned into very small pieces, it was clearly time for a new unit. With a labrador retriever in the house, and a dachshund that my wife refuses to house-train, we are in constant need of a steamvac. I consulted a friend, who suggested the Hoover V2.

I brought it home yesterday and assembled it. Assembly was easy, although I did note that the attachment tools carriage was incredibly flimsy, and did a very poor job of actually holding the tools. The only use I can see for this piece of CPS is if you're storing your steamvac in the garage for a few months. You can't really use the steamvac with the hose wrapped in place, as it doesn't stay in place for very long and quickly gets in the way.

The tanks lift in and out quite easily, and the solution/water tank is far superior to the old Hoover mixing tank. However, it is very "tall", and thus I was unable to fill it from our upstairs bathroom sinks. This was not the case with the previous Hoover and Bissell models that I've owned.

I had it up and running pretty quickly, and was impressed right away. The unit did a great job compared with its unfortunate predecessor. On the first empty of the recovery tank, I did notice that there is no convenient spout, so you have to be careful when pouring out the recovered fluid. I also noticed when I first removed the recovery tank that fluid spilled out as the unit rotated. This was irritating (see the aforementioned dachshund comment).

Overall, yesterday I was quite pleased with the performance, despite the minor inconveniences.

Today, however, I tried to complete the upstairs & stair cleaning with the steamvac, and my opinion of the device and Hoover has reached a low point. As of this morning, the unit was very leaky. Water from the clean tank pours out & down the back of the unit at a ferocious rate. During use, the water spits out behind the unit. It appears that the clean water and the solution are mixed in a piece of foam that sits beneath the solution & water tanks. this foam is retained by a piece of thin (plastic?), which on my steamvac is angled toward the back, exposing the foam at the rear. As this is where the water spits out, I assume that either the foam is oversaturated, or Hoover has just managed to ignore the fact that a leaking steamvac is not an attractive option to the customer.

Being in a fairly bad mood, I proceeded to the Hoover website, to look at the troubleshooting section. No surprise - the troubleshooting part of the website is limited to a collection of trite FAQ's regarding the steamvac, clearly written by someone in marketing from the point of view of "what kind of things might we put on our website to make it look like some customer concerns were being addressed, while really just providing some clever reassurances for people considering purchase."

Now in the mood to unleash some choice pejoratives to the good folks at Hoover, I looked about their website for an email address. I did find a section where I could register the steamvac, and provide not only my email address, but all salient facts about my life. However, despite Hoover's apparent interest in contacting me, they did not provide a means to contact them. This implies to me that: a) they're sick of the volume of email complaining about their shoddy product, b) they just don't care, c) their webmaster is as incompetent as their engineers.

In any case, had I written this review yesterday, I would have rated the SteamVac V2 as a four or five star. Today, however, it gets a 1, and without some fast talking by the repairman, this particular SteamVac will be heading back to the manufacturer.

My brother is a professional carpet cleaner, and owns his own business. He lives too far away to help me, and told me that the home shampooers were essentially worthless junk. I have helped him on occasion, so I have experience with professional equipment. His equipment and service far exceeds normal "wand" steam cleaners, and represents the best that the industry has. Consequently, I was not expecting much from a home shampooer.

Having said that, this product does work, but not exceptionally well and very slowly. I do not mean this as a negative, as I was surprised it was able to help at all. If you take your time, and do it properly it is an effective cleaning tool. It is far from excellent in quality, and is dreadfully slow if done properly (roughly 5 times longer than professional equipment), but I am very happy with it nonetheless since it noticeably does clean the carpet.

If you do decide to use this product, I strongly recommend at least three passes, per room, which is partially the reason it is so time consuming. This assumes a dirty room of course. The first two passes do with detergent. The third time, just use hot water and no detergent. You absolutely do not want to leave detergent residue on carpets as it attracts dirt and it will resoil very quickly. If you only make one pass, do not use detergent, but only water. The fourth pass I make is the next morning, and again only with water. The carpet can smell pretty foul then, and the fourth pass cleans whatever wicked upped, at least to an extent. It also gets out any additional detergent residue.

If you do make four passes, the quality of the job is not exceptional but certainly adequate. If you make one pass, you will be surprised at how much dirt remains. Just for a test, do it a second time and look at the water. Then remember that if you had not done it that second time, all that would remain in the carpet. The third time the water is still brown, although for me it was much lighter. The fourth time the water is again noticeably clearer, and considering that quite a bit of that wicked up, I think a fourth time the same day may be overkill.

Also remember to move it slowly. It is much better to take twice as long with one stroke than to go twice as fast and take two. It needs time to suck up the fluids, so the quality of the job is very related to how much time you give each stroke.

One last option is to buy better chemicals, rather than use the Hoover detergent. Professional carpet cleaners typically use a pre-spray and often times no detergent at all, the residue issue being the reason for this inclination.

This is an addendum I am writing in May of 2005. My machine died about a month ago, after a long illness. The engine was getting progressively louder and the "rattling" sound it makes when it is shut off got longer. Now the machine has no suction and it is difficult to find a place that does the warranty work. Maybe you will have better luck with yours, particularly since I did use mine quite a bit during the time I had it (probably 30 hours). Overall mine did a pretty good job cleaning but became very loud and unpleasant, and suffered from unreliability.

After this, I bought the Hoover Commercial cleaner, which seems inferior in cleaning capability to this one, but is a more pleasant machine. I was not happy with the cleaning, however, so I finally just bought a real commercial machine (the Hoover Commercial is really a home machine, and not a particularly good one at that) costing roughly 10x as much. The commercial machine is too heavy and requires too much setup time for quick cleanups, so it is nice having one of these little ones for that type of work. In a similar vein, if you need to transport a machine to work on a house that the machine is not in, these smaller machines are well-suited for that. So, even if you get a commercial machine, these smaller machines still have some use, and the reliability problems I ran into would not have occurred nearly so quickly.

I was hesistant only because of the price... but I'll tell you compared to the cost of professional carpet cleaners it will pay for itself with a few uses and the results are great.

The rotating brushes do a good job scrubbing and grooming carpet and ALL parts are easy to remove, fill, carry, replace, rinse out or clean. Easy minimal assembly. Easy to get the hang of and use on carpets. Haven't tried it on my kitchen tile yet. One of the best features is that you control shampoo application and can set machine to automatically rinse(apply suction)on the backward stroke. It will rinse with water and immediately suck it up on the backstroke if you tell it to (by holding button)or you have the option of just sucking alone(no water added). The benefit is you can scrub an area several times without wetting the carpet excessively AND you can use the suction without water to get the carpet very dry (which means it is dry enough to walk on pretty fast).
I've used the handtool with rotating brushes on the stairs and in hard to get to places. This tool is not fabulous, but good. You really have to follow the directions and get the hang of which direction to pull the tool in, when to spray the shampoo, etc. Maybe with practice I'll like it more.

2 things - this machine uses hot air forced onto the carpet for added cleaning and drying. When you have the hand tools plugged in, the brushes don't rotate on the big vac, but be aware that the hot air still comes out the bottom. The area where the vac is sitting while you're using the handtools will get quite warm if not moved periodically. Also the clean water/shampoo tank will drip a tiny bit from the valves on bottom for a second when removed during/after use so do this on tile or have a paper towel handy.

Like I said, I ALMOST purchased the earlier model F6030-900 SteamVac, because of all the good reviews I saw. I had decided against the V2 based on reviews of the earlier models, incl. F7220-900. BUT, when I couldn't seem to find just the model I wanted and was tiring of driving all over, I decided to try this model. I have an elderly dog who has lots of urinary problems and I just had to have something that would work well. I've got to tell you, I am VERY happy with the results. I especially like how all the removable parts are easy to remove and re-install. I like that the detergent isn't mixed with the water, so you preserve that. PLEASE NOTE: Make sure to watch the upper, clean water tank, to make sure you have water in there, otherwise you will be using straight detergent, like I did. The dirty water tank indicator is great. It seems the suction is just great too, as it has also been in my Hoover WindTunnel vacuum cleaner. The unit is also VERY easy to clean afterwards. I couldn't be more pleased!

Where do I begin?? We rented a rug doctor over the weekend (YUCK!) and much to my dismay, the rugs still looked dirty this morning! I was disgusted with the condition of the rented machine, not to mention the gunk I had to clean out of it even before we used it. I noticed some stains that the rental machine left and decided to look into buying a machine instead. This one was very highly rated on [Amazon.com] so we tracked one down at another store here in town (we were lucky, it was their last one)... I am thrilled. There are several features I'd like to point out;

1. machine can be used to soap and then rinse with out the soap, nice to have that choice when one is trying to get all of the soap out.

2. soap is automatically mixed from an easy to access compartment (just pour it in!... no guess work or measuring)

3. when you don't press the trigger, the machine just vacuums which gets A LOT of the excess water out at the end.

4. brushes can be off or on.. there's a switch for that too! (they thought of everything!)

5. this little gal is LIGHT WEIGHT! Plus, you can push it back and forth like a vacuum.. can't do that with a Rug Doctor!

6. bottom container holds two runs with the top container.. plus has a "full" indicator. Fewer trips to the toilet (that is where we dump our dirty water)

Good luck in your rug machine search.. as a clean-freak.. I highly recommend this!

We read all the reviews, both plus and con and checked out the Hoover web site. We were ready to consider ordering on-line but wanted to "feel" the item. We checked Target, Costco, Sears, and walked into another national store and found this unit for $$$! We couldn't believe it so immediately bought it Jan 4.

My husband immediately (after reading the manual thoroughly) began the test runs. After forgetting the dry phase, he went back and sucked all the water up. Some grease stains had come back after professional cleaning and they are now gone. Coffee was spilled on upholstered chair and carpet and they are gone. The upholstery unit worked well and at this moment we are definitely happy. Oh yes, in today's paper Kmart has this unit on sale at a considerable savings.

We also have tried some left over Bissell solution and it works very well. We will be trying, as suggested, less cleaner from a supply house.

We are retired and live in about 2000 sq ft, 1 level home with carpet in all rooms except the kitchen. We will not be putting it to the same test that an active family with kids and pets would but the ease of operation and knowing we can keep the home clean is a big plus.

I've owned my Steam Vac now for 2 years. I haven't used it in over a year, and when I took it out to clean - it leaked everywhere. I read online this was a common problem, so I called Hoover: 330-499-9499. I explained the problem to them, and they are UPSing a newly designed water tank FREE OF CHARGE. My advise to you if you have this leaking problam - CALL HOOVER DIRECTLY. Do NOT call a service center and spend $40-50 on a tank. Hoover will replace it for FREE.

Having two dogs and a cat AND 3 young boys, this product seemd to be just the thing that I was in need of. In addition, my father in law had an older model of the F425900 and it worked like a dream. I bought the V2 and had it up and running in no time. Like other reviewers, I found the hose attachement to be cumbersome, but could live with the hassle that it presented. However, the second time that I used the unit, the seperate detergent tank simply fell off the water resevior!. Turns out that the detergent resevior is only held in place by a small adhesive strip and once this isnt sticky anymore (which ist long since its stuck to a tank that holds hot water) it falls of and is useless.

I thought to myself, "no problem, i'll just use the unit without it and mix the detergent in the main water resevoir just like the older models." Big mistake. Without the detergent resevior in place, the main water unit drains onto the floor! Horrible design-why the engineers didnt' think to mold the two unit togeter is beyond me. Wait until Hoover fixes this problem before you buy this model.

First of all, without doing any homework and relying on the fact that Bissel has a long standing and good reputation I succumbed to their advertising and bought the Bissel top-of-the line Pro-Heat Steamvac because it was self propelled and heats the hot tap water up to 180 degrees. BIG MISTAKE!! Sure it's self propelled but on my Berber carpeting it wouldn't even move at all when trying to push it against the grain of the carpet with the normal force exerted by a healthy male. If you pushed really hard it would move in a stuttering fashion making really nasty, unpleasant noises that sounded as if the plastic nozzle would soon break if I persisted. On a cut pile carpet it moved in any direction just as a Steamvac is supposed to. Apart from that the suction was pathetic and all it removed was a little dirt and hair. The tank inside a tank concept is also a very poor design in my opinion. Next I did what I should have done in the first place, i.e did some Internet research and talked to a few people. I then realized I needed a Hoover and not a Bissell. I took the Bissell back to Sears and got my $280 back. I then bought the top-of-the-line Hoover for the exact same price - the model number has changed to F7431-900 but it is the same Steamvac as the F7425-900. Maybe they have made some minor changes but the appearance and specs. are the same. Having 6 separate soft brushes that rotate about a vertical axis versus the single roller brush rotating about a horizontal axis on the Bissell makes all the difference in the world for moving on closed loop carpeting such as Berber. The other major improvements are the suction of the Dual V nozzle, the absence of belts, ability to turn the brushes on or off, and the completely separate, one gallon, clean and dirty water tanks. I ran some tests and the Hoover sucks up almost all of the water it sprays on the carpet and even using no detergent whatsoever the dirty water ended up looking like black coffee with lots of grounds, and the carpet only felt damp to the touch. Both of these machines are not built like the high quality, made in the USA, vacuum cleaners of many years ago, almost everything is made of plastic (unlike the old Kirbys) and they will not take much abuse or ignorance on the part of the user. It is essential to read the manual thoroughly and get to know how to connect and disconnect the tanks correctly so that they seal properly and you don't get leakage. You also have to clean out all lint buildups that may occur. There is also a right way and a wrong way to clean carpets and this is all explained in the manual. I also don't think it's a good idea to loan out your Steamvac if you want it to remain in good working order. The tool caddy on both machines is best left in the closet, hanging on a coat hangar for those rare occasions when you need it. All and all I think the Hoover F7431-900 is a great, very compact, Steamvac and it sure beats the old machines where you had to trail a long hose connected to your hot faucet and also drag around a heavy canister along with its hoses. If you follow all the directions and keep your Steamvac to tank interfaces nice and clean you shouldn't have any leakage problems unless of course you damage one of the tanks. I believe the Hoover is overly generous on the amount of detergent it adds to the water (after all they make a nice profit on detergent) but you can easily dilute it with as much water as you like when you fill the detergent tank. Unless you have several messy pets (or children) you can probably get by with either no detergent at all, or with a greatly diluted mixture.