For those stubborn stains and small spillages, this model comes with a lengthy hose and Vax’s innovative SpinScrub hand tool. This is like a miniature version of the rotating brushes on the floor head, with a single brush that rotates under the power of the air-flow.

The main handle, waste water bin and the twinned water and cleaning fluid container all clip together with the sort of ease that comes from Vax’s longstanding experience in carpet washers. Both clean and dirty water containers are suitably capacious, and ample to clean an average-sized room. If you want to do a full wash and rinse clean, you might need to empty the waste and refill water mid-way around the room. We found Vax’s more basic upholstery tool much better for detail cleaning on carpets. This tool has a trigger spray release and suction slot, with scrubbing action provided by manually agitating the leading edge of the tool into the carpet. There’s a trigger release to spray water/detergent mix onto the troublesome spot and a front suction slot to vacuum up waste water. It spins fairly slowly thanks to some internal gearing, but we found it didn’t really have enough grunt and could easily be stopped if you pushed the brush into the carpet. We attached the hose to the Vax and started working the area with the SpinScrub brush. This worked fairly well, but you can’t push it into the pile as the brush simply stops spinning. The upholstery tool became our tool of choice for the spill and following a few passes with some elbow-grease agitation, the wine stain had gone completely. Without any pre-treatment, that is a frankly amazing result.A tiny assembling error, that could be fixed in no time at all, could be causing this watery problem. Refer to your manual for advice and you could save yourself a lot of time! Moving over the red wine, the dirty water drawn from the carpet immediately turned a reddish-brown. Two or three passes significantly reduced the spill and the subsequent stain, but the long line of red was still clearly visible.

For areas that are particularly dirty you can increase the amount of detergent and water mix sprayed onto the floor using a boost switch that can be found on the handle. This gives the carpet a more serious soaking, but does consume water and detergent at quite an alarming rate. That violates any law, statute, ordinance or regulation (including, but not limited to, those governing export control, consumer protection, unfair competition, anti-discrimination or false advertising); You agree to indemnify and hold Vax (and its officers, directors, agents, subsidiaries, joint ventures, employees and third-party service providers, including but not limited to Bazaarvoice, Inc.), harmless from all claims, demands, and damages (actual and consequential) of every kind and nature, known and unknown including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of a breach of your representations and warranties set forth above, or your violation of any law or the rights of a third party. Given the state of the dirty water, we went over most parts of the 2m x 3m rug twice, running a rinse on the second run. That too pulled up extra dirt. The carpet was left looking very buffed and slightly damp to the touch, so it was difficult to determine the full extent of the cleaning straight away.

The method is much the same for using either of the smaller cleaning tools. Having attached the nicely long and flexible hose to the body of the cleaner, you spray, scrub and vacuum up dirty water as you go. We preferred the upholstery tool for serious carpet scrubbing, but the SpinScrub tool worked wonders on an old faux-leather sofa.

The Dual Power Pro Advance isn’t a subtle device. When it is fired into life, the sound of the motor, suction pump and mechanical noise from the many brushes are quite loud and suggest this cleaner means business. And it does. In just one forward-cleaning sweep and return stroke, the colour of the extracted liquid resembled a muddy puddle. And this from a cream carpet that we’d have otherwise declared fairly clean after the vacuuming!

815/1298

Its relatively affordable asking price compared to getting in a professional cleaner make it a bit of a bargain too. We suspect that once you’ve taken the Vax Dual Power Pro Advance for a whirl, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without.