Bissell Carpet Shampoo

Bikerdave

I have just bought a Bissell Carpet Cleaner and was looking for supplies of the shampoo when I came across the thread “Bissell Carpet Shampoo ? ?”. This thread, now closed, has had a lot of reads since it was posted but has a couple of posts that are likely to mislead readers so I wanted to add my comments.

If you are using a Carpet Cleaner then you should use a product that is designed for carpet cleaning. Why? Because all cleaning detergents are designed for a purpose, they contain a mix of cleaning chemicals that are designed to work for the system that you are using them in. By system I mean the machine, so a laundry detergent is designed to clean laundry, a car detergent is designed to clean cars and a carpet detergent is designed to clean carpets.

Of course there will be similarities in the cleaning product and of course there is a chance that they will work without damaging the machine or the product (carpet) but if you have invested a lot of money in carpet and carpet cleaner why are you about to risk damage or shortening the life of these items by using a cleaning product that is not designed to work with them?

One post said “My idea is that anything foamy & well-dissolved will do;”. This statement demonstrates ignorance of cleaning.

Foam is not a requirement for proper cleaning it is essentially put in to satisfy the marketing department that use it to sell the product. The cleaning chemicals in the product do the cleaning; the foam is there purely for show. Secondly and more importantly any cleaning product that does foam will foam more in a vacuum device and you will end up with foam everywhere and depending on the cleaner model you could very easily wreck the machine with foam getting into the motor.

Django_wildheart’s advice is potentially dangerous to your machine and possibly your carpets. As a Trained Patents Lawyer I would expect that their advice would be limited to Patent legality and leave the science of cleaning machines and chemicals to someone who has experience and knowledge of cleaning.

One of the reasons that manufactures recommend only using their own products is that they are designed to work with their machines and the manufacturer knows that there will be good cleaning and no damage to the machine, so giving the manufacturer a good reputation.

When your machine fails to clean your carpets properly or it packs up out of warranty you will most likely blame the manufacturer while not considering the fact that you used cleaning detergent meant for cleaning the laundry.

Of course it is also used to encourage you to use their own products while there may well be other products on the market that will do exactly the same job. And of course some manufacturers do cynically exploit this massively.

All liquid cleaning detergents are designed to be used at a certain dilution, so when you use your laundry detergent how will you know what the correct dilution is? Do you use the same amount of the cheaper product as you do the more expensive product?

I worked in the truckwash industry and there were two cleaning detergents, one was a quarter the price of the other. The cheaper one you used at a dilution of 1:4 ie 1 litre of product to 4 litres of water while the expensive one you used at 1:50 so you used 1 litre of product to 50 of water.

The cheaper product contained a cheaper chemical that over a period of time made the paintwork of the truck go dull and lose its shine, while the more expensive product didn’t and also contained a wax. Both cleaned trucks perfectly well so which one would you buy?

"Don't spoil the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar "