How to use the hoover power dash

We've got white carpeting in our living/dining area and upstairs in the hallway and master bedroom. The carpet was not new when we bought the house, but had been cleaned, and looked great. We moved in with our three dogs and our two cats, and somehow, we haven't figured out what caused it, the carpet began to get a bit dirty, especially in areas where our biggest dog (Zeus, an 85 pound teddy bear) prefers to sleep.

Then, a few months ago, my elderly mother moved in with us, and she has two small dogs who decided to come along for the ride. One of those two dogs (Katie, a Feist dog who looks like a tiny deer more than anything else,) isn't housebroken. Is. Not. Housebroke. Not at all. Not even a little bit. She *was* housebroken at my mom's house, before Mom moved in with us, but Katie is a shelter dog, and we don't know if she was abused or just severely neglected before the shelter got her, but "timid" doesn't even begin to describe this dog. She's not afraid of *us* anymore, and gets along great with the other dogs, but fear is her steadfast companion, and for whatever reason, she has decided that one thing to be afraid of is the very idea of going outside without my mom.

The people who owned this house before we did also had a small dog. I don't know how well housebroken that dog was, but, I used to work for a carpet cleaning company, and one thing I learned there is about "wicking." What can happen is, let's say that your dog--or our Katie--pees on the carpet and happens to pee where some other dog once peed on the carpet too. Not only can Katie leave a stain, but, the moisture can actually cause the stain from the *old* pee to get wicked back up to the surface, just the same way that oil is wicked up in a lantern to burn by the .... well, by the wick.

So apparently Katie is pretty good at finding old pee stains because very often, where she chooses to pee we not only get her new pee stain, but another stain as well, with brown edges. Nice, right? Our white carpet quickly became white, yellow, brown, and ugh, colors. And yes, in this case, "ugh" is a color.

I was desperate. We can't afford new carpet and no one in their right mind would buy new carpet before the final dog was housebroken anyway, but if anyone had come over to visit with the carpet looking like this... okay, I was about to say I would have died of embarrassment but that would be overstating my degree of concern about what other people think by about a million degrees. Still, we're pretty fond of this house (a mid century modern) and its looks, and we wouldn't want the carpet to be the thing people remembered the most about the house, especially not when there's a backyard with 5 dogs pooping in it for them to remember instead. (Flies. We have flies. Even though we scoop, we have flies.)

Enter this little machine. For the price, I have to tell ya, I wasn't expecting *too* much. Then again, I was expecting *something* or I wouldn't have bought it.

What I got was, in fact, a lot more than I was expecting, I can tell you that.

I followed the quick start guide and put it together; all very simple.
I filled the water tank with water and a little of the detergent that came with it, plugged the machine in, and fired it up, after first tempering my husband and mother's expectations by letting them know that it was possible that it wouldn't do anything except make the wicking problem even worse, and advising them that for that reason, I was going to test just a small area.

Listen... well, no, just read. No wicking problem. New stains are gone. Old stains are gone. Does the carpet look brand new again? Well, no. But it looks as good as it does when we moved in here.

The machine spits the water into the carpet, rub-a-dub-dubs it however much you want it to, and then when you're ready, it sucks the water back out again, and applies some heat to help start it on its way to getting dry again. Easy as can be. In fact, I'm afraid to say this because we ARE talking about housework here but it's actually kind of.... well.... fun. I don't SAY that about housework. But the thing is that it's not housework I hate. In fact, I *love* housework when it's not overly strenuous, doesn't make me sweat, and I can look at what I've just done and really tell that I DID something, and this machine covers all those points. And for the price? Well.

All I can say is that it's one of the best purchases I've ever made, and if you could see my buying-history, and thank god you can't, you'd realize what a huge statement that is for me to say. There may be some carpet cleaning jobs it wouldn't be recommended for, but not any carpet cleaning jobs that *I* would ever do. That's a fact.

I love this thing. I love it so much I'm going to name it. I just haven't chosen the perfect name yet. I'm thinking "Slosh," though. Even though it doesn't. Slosh, that is.

Oh yeah, emptying out the dirty water so that you can put in some nice clean water and clean more carpet is easy as can be, also.

And be sure and vacuum first if you have pets. I didn't because I was in such a hurry to try this bad mofo out, and I was rewarded by having the machine spit out a couple of (quite clean!) hairballs while I was doing my test area. So yeah. Vacuum first.

Buy this. This is the droid you're looking for.

Can you use Hoover PowerDash as a vacuum?

Can you use Hoover Power Dash on carpet?