Hoover Carpet Cleaner Max Extract Dual V WidePath Carpet Cleaner Machine F7412900,Black

Bought July 2010 for $180. We have a huge living room, 450 square feet. All of which is covered in very very light colored berber carpet. We've had this carpet for only 4 years and it was a mistake putting it in seeing as we have 3 kids, 2 dogs and 1 cat. It was extremely soiled. I had it professionally clean by ChemDry about 2 years ago, they got it very clean but some areas where the dogs had gone potty, were only faded. We cover that area with a rug anyway. I decided to buy my own cleaner instead of paying $200 to have it professionally cleaned again. I searched though Amazon and epinions and decided on this model, or the Hoover Dual V plum, which is the same model only in plum color instead of black. Any part in the picture supplied by Amazon that is purple, is actually black on this model. Putting together the machine is very easy to do. It basically comes already put together, the only thing you have to put on is the top 1/2 of the handle. Takes about 2-3 minutes. I like the idea of the ready mixing formula instead of mixing the water and formula together. Having too much formula left in your carpets will actually make it dingy faster. This model comes with a wash function and a rinse function. I washed and scrubbed until no more dirty water was being sucked up and then rinsed with plain hot water to wash out any soap residue that was left. The tanks are easy to fill and remove. The only problem I had was when you remove that water/formula tank, where it connects to the main unit, there is a small amount of water and formula left, which, once you tip it back will spill onto the the floor. There is really no way around this because thats how it was designed. I would soak up what was left with a paper towel and then tip the machine back to remove the recovery tank. Cleaning both of the tanks is the easiest I have every seen. Its quite impossible for any debris to get permanently stuck in the recovery tank which I have seen on every Bissell Spotbot I have ever owned! The water/formula tank is as simple as turning it over and letting the rest drain into a sink or with the formula, back into the bottle. This carpet cleaner cleaned my berber even better than ChemDry did 2 years ago. It was able to really get the pet stains out. If you have some really bad ones like I did, I would spray the formula on and then very very VERY slowly go over it so the brushes could scrub the carpet. My carpet looks almost brand new now! 1000 times better than it was before I cleaned it. This unit does not have an actual steamer, no carpet cleaner does. However it takes the heat from the unit and pushes it down into your carpet, similar to a blow drier. Your carpet will feel warm after cleaning for a few minutes and it decreases drying time tremendously! Some parts of my carpet were dry within 2 hours of being cleaned. I highly recommend this cleaner. I will be starting on the bedrooms this weekend and will update as need be should any problems arise, though I doubt they will. I love this cleaner and I'm glad I choose this model. Hoover is supposed to be the best you can buy and I heartily agree! Update 1/10/11. Price on Amazon $175 This cleaner is still working perfectly and works very very well at getting out left in stains, some that are even yers old! I just cleaned my sons room yesterday where my dog liked to go potty when she was potty training, about 18 months ago. There were some stains that didn't completely come up. One pass with this machine and they were gone! His carpet looks brand new! The only thing that didn't come out was a small red Kool Aid stain and a small blue ink pen stain. But both of those did fade quite a bit with cleaning. I am still very impressed with this machine. I'm glad I chose this one and am looking forward to many years of using it!

With a 6 year old son around, floors get dirty. I'm on my second Dyson vac, and floors are usually pretty clean, but he has had a few spills. Up to this point I've been spot treating things as they happen, but some haven't come out very well. And I finally got to the point where I wanted to get the carpets cleaned. So I thought i'd try this myself first before having some company come in and do something. Assembly was simple, two screws for the handle. Everything else just snaps into place. In my last house I had a Bissel or whatever, and it was about the worst carpet cleaner that could've been designed. I used it once, was more hassle than it was worth. This one is the opposite. Well designed, simple, and mess free. Filling the water tank is a snap, and filling the detergent part is also easy, even with the large bottle of solution I purchased. Definitely buy extra since the small bottle that comes with the unit will last for about a small bedroom and part of a hallway... One thing I didn't like at first was the lack of anything solid when it came to snapping the water tanks into place. It all just felt LOOSE, like nothing was really there. I kept popping things off and on a couple times the first few refills/empties because it just didn't seem like things were really secured, but they are. The clean water tank goes right in and out, very easily, very quickly, with no mess or dripping, other than a little bit of liquid right on the bottom of the shelf where it sits, which is normal. The dirty reservoir looks like it's not really all the way connected almost, since you can see the edge of the seal from the nozzle coming up the front, but it is. Two locking levers on each side and it's secured. The unit rolls easily, and there was no water or soap anywhere it shouldn't be. Nothing oversprayed, it all went right where it was supposed to go. Little noisy, but that was expected since this thing needs to have good suction to pull the water back up out of the carpet. I've uploaded pictures of the water I pulled out, which was amazing as this gets regularly vacuumed, and I had not expected it to be QUITE so dirty... I'm waiting for daylight now so I can see the results better than just with CF lighting... A couple of spots that were old stains got a little cleaner, less noticeable, not gone, but better than I've ever been able to get it. What surprised me was that some of the other stains I had given up on DID come out. They recommend to remove the clean water tank before dropping the handle to the floor to get at the dirty water tank when it needs emptying, but I found it much easier to just tilt the handle back a bit, not even as much as you do when it's in use, then pop the dirty tank out, and lock the handle upright again while you empty it. The shape of the dirty tank doesn't give you any real good pouring location, so I just used the rear corner of it. Dumped it in the toilet, then I found to get some of the residue still in there from cleaned out (small fibers from carpet, grainy stuff like dirt/sand), I just used a small dixie cup with some water, poured it in, and dumped it right away, easy to do after there's not a lot of water in there again. I did a great room, dining room, my son's bedroom, and the entire hallway in a little over an hour and a half, taking my time. Not any strain on the arms using the unit either. Once I was all finished, I was pleased at how easy it was to clean the unit. No cleaning needed for the clean water tank obviously, other than I did rinse out the detergent part of the tank. Dirty tank is easy, one piece inside removes and I didn't have to do anything but put some water in there and woosh it around and dump it. The cover, however, is a little trickier, as it's "hollow". There's the bottom and top piece, and between them is the airflow for the water pulled from the carpet. So fibers and such get stuck in there, and there's not much access to get between them. I found that putting some water from a dixie up in there was enough to get most of the gunk out. About the only little bit of minute debris left is right at the edge around the circumference where the top and bottom join, that little tight space will probably keep the junk in there forever. The nozzle on the front, the "V" where it gets pulled up, snaps right off, but again, it's hollow, no good way to get inside for almost any of it. Fortunately, the only place things really accumulated was the very bottom where it meets the carpet (easy to get at with a tweezers) and the small circular port where you can attach the hose (also easy to get with said tweezers). Brushes pull right off, and the whole unit disassembles easily by popping three tabs on each side (see my uploaded photo for pics of the tabs). The housing for the brushes cleaned easily, some paper towel to wipe the fibers and such off, and rinsed in water. The brushes, on the other hand, were far tougher. They started out bright green, but they were black by the time I was done. And it wasn't just that they got discolored with dirt, the black was carpet fiber that got up in the bristles. So there was no easy way to just pull it out, but what I found was by using those tweezers again (handiest cleaning tool for this I've found), I could kind of start at the top where the bristles were secured to the circular brush, and work the "invading" fibers out as if I was brushing hair. Took a couple minutes per brush to get all the bristles cleaned, but by the time I was done, they looked just about new again. Wiped the bottom of the vac where it also picked up dirt and fibers just from rubbing along the floor, and that was about it. No tools needed to disassemble for cleaning, all the parts just come off by hand. Except if you want to get as far as I did cleaning the brushes, then those tweezers again came in handy, were perfect for sliding in to release those tabs to pull apart the housing that holds the spinning brushes. Easy to operate, easy to clean, and results that were far better than I had hoped. Granted, I would've loved the miracle if it got a couple of the spots that will never be removed, but I'm more than satisfied with the minor magic it worked on the rest of the dirty spots I had. Carpet hasn't looked this clean since I had the house built 5 years ago (Yes, this if the first time it was shampooed and wet vacuumed). Biggest pain is, as always, moving everything out of the room, and having to move it back in again. My fan is going on the last spot, everything is dry already, saving the replacement until tomorrow through just to make absolutely sure there's no moisture I can't feel that will leave spots when I put things back and the wood and metal contacts it. Far cheaper than the professionals would have been, and gives me more than just the one cleaning. Can't beat that.

Super easy to use. Very simple setup and quick start from pulling it out of the closet to cleaning the stains. We bought this because we have 4 animals (2 cats 2 dogs) who seem to believe our house is a giant litter box. We are constantly pulling out this cleaner to get new spots around the walls and the couch. Filling up the device is easy, just unhook the top compartment, add water in one slot, cleaner in the other and you are ready to go. We have used so many different types of cleaners as well and never had any issues from the machine. Though the best results we have seen so far have been by using Tide laundry soap. We put two tablespoons in the cleaner slot with no issues. We were worried about it foaming up, but it instead gave us the cleanest best smelling carpets we have ever had. I love the wash/rinse feature. You can really see a difference in the carpet after you do the rinse, and with such great suction you can see the stains lifting out as you go. Thanks to the suction the carpets also dry really fast. I attachments are nice, though I find myself using them less and less. I first thought the attachments were the way to go, but have found better success with the main scrubber. One tip is as you are working on a spot, apply light pressure to the cleaner water collection unit and move the machine side to side. This really works the scrubbers and the cleaner deep into the spots and helps them pull right out. I would suggest testing this on a side spot first to make sure you dont damage your carpet with the extra force of the rotating brush. This would be a five star review if it were not for a few downsides. The first is that when you turn it off it tends to leak out a line of water out of the suction compartment. The solution is simple enough though, just keep the cleaner moving until about 5 seconds after switching off. This will spread that leak to an unnoticeable area. Secondly, the water fill up compartment leaks oh so slightly. You never notice during cleaning, its after you store it with some leftover water in it. The solution is just to empty both compartments when done. Lastly, animal hair gets trapped in the cleaner almost instantly, and is disgusting to clean out. Overall though, this cleaner is amazing for every day use. We have already put dozens of hours on it and it seems to be holding up nicely. Some parts appear cheap, so I wont be surprised if I encounter issues moving forward, but so far I feel I have already gotten my monies worth.

I have low pile carpet and young kids and my carpets hadn't been cleaned for probably a year because my other carpet cleaner broke and I didn't have enough money to buy a new one or even rent a machine, so when I saw this one for the low price of approximately $160.00 and I just happened to have been able to work it out in my budget, I snatched it right up. Now, let me tell you -- My carpets were so bad that I probably should have used a more professional machine, but this one did an exceptional job, considering the job it had to do. Because of how bad off my carpet was, it took me all day just to do most of my living room - I had to use the cleaner at a snail's pace, literally, to give the brushes the opportunity to scrub the dirt and yuckies out of my carpet. This was not a typical, ordinary carpet cleaning and by all rights this machine should not have gotten my carpet as clean as it did - that's how bad my carpet was! I am impressed that my old, stained carpet actually has luster now. I like the ability to wash and rinse at the same time, but I think it would be great if I could turn the heat function on and off at will because I'd rather not try to dry the carpet until after it is rinsed, but I can work around that. Additionally, the hand tools do not have a rinse function, so if you are cleaning furniture or stairs, you won't be able to rinse the detergent out. A rinse function for the hand tools would be awesome. The tanks are easy to fill and empty and the entire machine is easy to use, easy to push and pull, and easy to keep clean. I love the scrubbing hand tool, too! With my lower back problems and fibromyalgia and associated chronic fatigue, I found this machine no more difficult to operate than my vacuum cleaner (which is a very inexpensive, light weight machine), with the exception of how often I had to empty and fill the tanks, but again, that's because of how bad my carpet was. Normal carpet cleaning would go much faster and without so many times having to fill and empty the tanks, I assure you. The "magic mixing" function is a plus, too - no more having to mix the detergents, it mixes itself into the water - no fuss, no muss, and no spilling detergent all over yourself and the floor. No more squinting through my Coke-bottle bi-focals to get the right measurements, either. The whole thing is simple and fantastic. I'm so impressed! I would definitely recommend this product to everyone - especially for the price! It's so easy to use I'll bet a married man could use it with one hand tied to the tv remote. Now if only they'd make one of these that moves the furniture, too... ;o)

My wife and I had been looking to buy a carpet cleaner for awhile, and after doing our research we were a little hesitant to pull the trigger on one because it seemed like every brand had it's drawbacks. We also have a Hoover hard floor cleaner and like it, so we decided to go with the Dual V. We have used it two times now and I am happy to say that we are very pleased. Many of the reviews bring up varying pros and cons so I decided to address our experience with the Dual V. Setup- You have to attach the top handle to the carpet cleaner, very easy to do, simple instructions. Anyone can do this. Many of the reviews cite that the Hoover is a little heavy. I didn't think it was very heavy at all. Granted it has a one gallon water tank, so with that full it adds some weight. But empty, most people will be able to lug it around wherever they need it with little problems. Besides it needs to have some heft to be able to get good suction while vacuuming the dirty water. As far as cleaning goes, the machine works awesome. Our carpet hadn't been cleaned in fifteen months, and the light tan color was looking dirty, along with various stains such as chew spit, coffee, etc. Without pre-treating the Hoover cleaned them up with no problems. In some areas I had to go over them two or three times, but the Hoover eventually got them. Did it look like it did brand new? Probably not, but darn close. My wife came home and could not find the spots where the old stains were! And she has eyes like a hawk. On top of the good cleaning, the suction left the carpet only mildly damp. The carpet was completely dry in two to three hours, with the ceiling fan on and windows open. I cleaned the carpet by applying shampoo on the forward stroke, and sucking the dirty water up on the reverse stroke. I then went back over the area again with no additional solution. The hoover makes it easy to see when you get most of the water because the holding take is clear and you can see the water as it is getting sucked up. As far as refilling, I had to fill up twice while doing an area about 20 x 15 feet. Again I could have covered more ground but I had to go over many areas a few times because of how dirty the carpet was. Refilling was easy, 2-3 minute process to empty and refill. The shampoo holding take holds approx. 16 oz, and I probably had about a third remaining after doing the whole room, so I would guess you could get 4 tanks per 16 oz. Clean up was easy, Rinsed out the holding tank, pulled off the brushes for a rinse, and wiped down the bottom. Five minutes total. As far as leaking, the only time it leaked a few drops was when refilling the clean water tank. This is because the the seals hold a little water, not really a leak, just a few drops from each of the seals while taking it off the cleaner. As far as the attachments go, they do an adequate job. The handle to the attachments does drip a little while cleaning. Not a huge deal, but it does drip. The attachments do get good suction, the powerbrush spins, but does so slowly. Adequate for doing stairs, but I did clean my car upholstery to test it out, and the bulk (or length) of the handle does make it hard to get into some of the tight spots in a vehicle interior. The upholstery did come out looking nice and clean though. **The one negative about the attachments is that the hose attaches to the top part of the suction piece on the base of the machine. This causes some drips down from the front of the vacuum. I would recommend putting a towel under the base part of the suction piece if using for stairs or furniture where the carpet cleaner might be on carpet. Other tidbits such as noise, the Hoover is no louder than an average vacuum cleaner. To sum it up the Hoover is a great machine for the price that will keep your carpets looking clean and *almost* new. I have no experience with other brands of carpet cleaners, and providing the Hoover keeps cleaning like it has been, I don't think I ever will. Bottom line, worth the money. You won't be disappointed. -

I researched a lot of carpet cleaners before purchasing this one. My last one, a Bissell, did not last as long as I would have liked it to and this Hoover seemed to have a lot of good reviews. The packaging was great, but huge, and we were missing one of the attachments. There is an 800 number I am hoping will replace this one small part. Also, after having used it 4 times now, it is slowly leaking from the bottom of the clean water tank. It's a slow drip, but noticeable, as it drips on my foot and on the adjacent wood floors, causing frequent stops to clean up the mess. I'm not sure if it's detergent or just straight water that is dripping, but it is a problem for me. The unit is VERY heavy when fully assembled - about as much as the rented Rug Doctors from the store. I have to take it apart and carry it in multiple trips to get up and down the stairs. The power cord is surprisingly short - and a pain for me. It's barely long enough to do one room at a time. My vacuum (a Shark) has a cord long enough I can plug it into the hall and do all bedrooms and the living room w/o having to move it. I'm not a fan of the fact that when it finds dog hair in a chunk, it spits it out the sides of the unit. This causes me to either have to stop and wipe off the wet, plastic wheels, so it's not spread all over, or dig under a piece of heavy furniture to find the clump and pick it up. The pros: I LOVE the multi-head brushes - this seems to make a huge difference. I like that it does NOT have a heater on board - this probably saves some weight and electricity. You use hot water in the clean tank anyway, and I doubt the cleaning is affected by the temp of the water very much. It is easy to take apart to clean each part separately (for storage). The attachments seem like they will be useful - but admittedly, I have not used them yet. The dirty water tank is the same size as the clean water tank. In several models I've used (and borrowed from friends), I would have to empty the dirty water tank before I had even used all of the clean water. This seems to be designed better than most and evens out. It dries really fast - less than an hour on berber carpet. I would not recommend using the Borax and OxyClean as suggested in some of the reviews and YouTube videos - this will likely clog the machine and cause it to break down easily. Also, the owner's manual (yes, I actually read it) advises against the granule-type cleaners. Of course, they recommend you use ONLY Hoover brand cleaners. I've been using Hoover cleaners and Vinegar and found this to be a great combo.

The scrubbers stopping working appears to be the biggest weakness - just look through the Amazon questions and reviews. I had this carpet cleaner for a year and a half when the scrubbers failed. Some people reported that the plastic peg that turns the scrubbers would break (see photograph). This was not the case with mine. I opened the turbine brush gear (part that turns the brushes) and one of the plastic gears was totally stripped (see the photograph). The stripped plastic gear connected to a metal gear that turned the scrubbers, which would surely encounter resistance. I am not an engineer, but this matchup of materials appears destined for failure. Though I would not buy this cleaner again, I generously gave it two stars instead of one for few reasons; (1) I used this cleaner a lot and it probably would have lasted longer in another home. (2) Maybe I should have cleaned it more often during use? The brushes would gather clumps of pet hair and carpet fiber, which probably put resistance on the failed gear (I still think it is a bad design). I still kept the shampooer pretty clean and keeping it much cleaner would not have been reasonable to expect. (3) Plenty of people seem happy with this shampooer so it is not a complete lemon. (4) Maybe I did not take precautions to reduce strain on the gears? Should I have tilted the shampooer back, turned the power off, and then waited until the brushes stopped spinning? It's a shame that the brushes seem to be an unreasonable weakness with this unit because it really did a great job cleaning the carpets. The scrubbing was very effective (when working) and the suction was powerful so little water remained. I ordered a new turbine brush gear for about $40 and I will repair the shampooer myself. Even if it works like new, I am giving it away and I am going back to Bissell. UPDATE 4/4/2015 I changed my two stars rating to one! I had emailed Hoover asking them for a replacement part number before I found it online. I must say they were fast to respond, but only to tell me this: "For safety and liability reasons, Hoover does not provide electrical components, motor or related parts directly to consumers. To avoid possible injury or voiding of your warranty, we strongly advise that you have electrical repairs done by an authorized Hoover Service Technician. The part(s) that you are inquiring about may be available from the dealer(s) listed below. Please call for price and availability. If these locations are unable to assist you, additional locations can be found by visiting http://hoover.com/locator/." Hoover customer support was of no assistance. I am not paying to repair what was a $175 shampooer. The cost of the repair would probably be more than half the cost of the shampooer.

I had not had my carpets cleaned since moving here. At that time, we replaced most of the carpeting, but the great room carpet was OK. Fast forward 8 years. We have a small dog, whom we raised from a pup, meaning with all the little glitches that come invariably with house breaking, and including one several-months' stint of a kid moving back in with her huge tank of a dog. Plus, it's a pretty sure thing that dogs drag in a lot of dirt. The carpets, needless to say, looked dingy and shabby. The hubs' sister, a OCD clean freak, announced she was coming for a visit. I can't move the furniture by myself, so it all but precluded having an outside company coming in, as they all indicate they will only do "light furniture moving." So I got the bright idea to look for something that I could buy to do the high traffic areas myself. After much research, I decided on this Hoover model. Amazon shipped it out very quickly. I'm not exactly Mrs. Goodwrench, but the hardest part of assembly ended up wrestling the machine out of the 3 boxes by myself. The instructions are clearly illustrated, even for the highly mechanically-challenged. I was up and running in about a half hour. And WOW, does this thing work! In the great room alone, I pulled out 6 full tanks of black water. I have an incredible vacuum cleaner, the Shark Rotator, that gets just about everything. This stuff was beyond the reach of any vacuum. Thinking about my husband playing with the dog on that carpet creeped me out totally! But now, well, let the fetch match begin! And my messy, stained carpet is now completely spotless! Now THAT is something to get excited about. I did not find changing water, either the clean water supply, or emptying the dirty water, to be at all difficult. Time consuming, yes. Difficult, no. Neither was reseating either of those tanks rocket science. That doesn't mean, however, that it's not hard physical labor. It is. If you don't want to have to work hard, be advised then you'd be best served by hiring a company to come in and do it for you. Plus, the machine is admittedly heavy, but that's only to be expected. Water weighs a lot, namely 8 pounds a gallon. A full day of pushing and pulling this machine around, and emptying/filling, will leave you exhausted. But when you see the fruits of your labor, you'll realize it's a good exhausted! Hard work that yields noticeably positive results is quite rewarding. Be sure to keep a rag towel handy to wipe up spills. Some leaked out each time I removed the dirty water to dump into the toilet. Be aware that when either of the tanks needs to be filled or emptied, there will be some unavoidable drips, so it's best to do those tasks with the machine on a bare floor that can be wiped up once the machine is reassembled. If you try to do those tasks on carpet, you'll be frustrated. Remember that it's dirty work that generates lots of dirty water, so a modicum of planning helps a lot. The extraction is excellent. My carpets were completely dry in about 3 hours, and for south Florida, where even with air conditioning our humidity level is always relatively high, that's a big thing. There's virtually no time for mold to proliferate. A small issue I have with the machine is the tool caddy, which came dislodged by accident a few times, and doesn't effectively hold the hose. The small brackets that are meant to hold the hose in place are too small to be effective, and are not up to the task. To divest myself of the repeated annoyance, I simply put the assembly away in a closet until the hose was needed for upholstery cleaning. Additionally, I did not find the extraction on the upholstery, using the spin brush attachment that is tucked away in the handle, to be nearly as effective. The couch and recliners were left far wetter than the carpet. Still, all was dry in about 8 hours, hardly a big deal. It did extract some very dirty water, so I know it does work. Those will likely need to be re-cleaned to obtain satisfactory results. A small (one pint) bottle of cleaning solution comes with the machine. I found a half-gallon (64ounces) of this same solution at Walmart for $17.99. Be aware that the machine uses a lot of cleaner if your carpets are heavily soiled like mine were. So be sure to buy a bottle or two to make sure you're ready for when your machine makes its maiden cleaning debut, thereby avoiding disappointment. The fresh linen scent leaves a very pleasant, light, clean aroma that dissipates within a few hours. Next, I'm going to look into obtaining the hard floor brush attachment (an extra optional piece) for cleaning the grout in between my tile from time-to-time. The only issue that remains unexamined is the longevity of the unit, for which time will be the judge. However, with all I just cleaned, the machine has already paid for itself. This gave an outstanding performance, right out of the gate. Excellent addition to your cleaning arsenal.