Bissell Little Green Machine (from a skeptic)

[PerroneFord]

Alright, so I know this unit is popular with detailers. I've read about it on here and at other forums. After getting my butt kicked on a detail last week, I realized I needed to step up my interior game in a BIG way if I was going to call myself a detailer. So I decided to make 2 significant purchases. The first was a decent wet/dry vac. The second was one of these Little Green Machines. After much going back and forth, I settled on the ProHeat model with the turbo brush.

First let me say that this is NOT a professional tool. They don't market it as one, and if you are doing this for a living, you NEED to buy a professional tool. Ok, enough said.

I am a born skeptic. And though I've seen the photos of what people have done with this little machine, I still remained a bit skeptical. So I brought it home and decided to do a little test. My home carpet has not been cleaned in a long time. And the front door area takes a heavy beating. I don't allow shoes past that point so the rest of the carpet isn't as bad.

I decided to try several products and extract them off with the new machine. All products were things I've seen here. They were Folex, Oxyclean granules in water, Purple Power 100% strength, and Goop. I tried all three on my dirty carpet. Of these, I had previously used the Folex before and had been pretty happy with my results in most cases.

All four did a nice job on the carpet to be sure, but I would have to rate my results in the following order.

1. Goop
2. Purple Power 100%
3. Folex
4. Oxyclean

Now let me qualify that. The Oxyclean was not effective for pre-treating like the others. However it was the only one that got brushing the first time through. The others were agitated by hand only.

I was absolutely stunned at how well the Goop worked. No odor at all, just darn effective. The Purple Power is an engine degreaser. I sort of expected it to do well at removing what is essentially traffic lane grime. The Folex did it's normal very good job. I don't think it excels in this kind of thing though. If these were protein based stains and not grease/grime stains, it probably would have fared better. The Oxyclean did fine too, and would be the choice for cleaning a larger area. Used in conjuction with the others, it works remarkably well, and that is JUST what I did. I used the Oxyclean mixture on top of the others after initial results were in, and then played with the machine.

So, how did the machine do?

The instructions say NOT to use boiling water. I know from reading here that hot water works best. So I boiled some water, mixed it with some hot tap water, and put that in the machine. No chemicals. I thought the turbo-brush would be kinda gimmicky, but it really worked quite well. Just sprayed hot water onto the spots while running the brush.

I changed to the extraction nozzle (if you can call it that) and started pulling the dirt and water out. The suction on the machine isn't terrific. For uphostery it's probably more than sufficient. But it was pulling water and dirt up and you could see it working. Very nice! Once that process was complete, I attached the same nozzle to my Rigid Wet/Dry vac with a 2.5" to 1.25" reducer. I went over the area again, and it really did a nice job pulling out a lot more of the water.

The carpet looked very nice after this process. Easily as nice as the carpet out of the traffic lane. The tools were effective. Even running with just water in the machine, I felt it was quite effective.

So, $100 spent on the LGM, $3 on Goop, $5 on Folex, $8 on Oxyclean. I now feel like I can get any carpets or uphostery clean enough for my purposes. I'll dedicate an electric kettle for detailing and use that to get hot water.

Final analysis:

LGM is worth the $100 for a weekend hobbyist or home user. If you haven't tried Goop for mats and carpets in the car, you ARE missing something. It's cheap, non-toxic, biodegradble, and darn effective ($7 for a 4.5 pound tub at Harbor Freight). Using the Shop-Vac to extract after going over the area with the LGM seems to fix its only significant flaw, which is weak suction.

I'm happy, and I think my clients will be also.

Thanks for reading.