Q What’s the difference between ‘Steam Cleaning’ and Hot Water Extraction?
A Nothing, they are the same carpet cleaning method!
Hot water extraction was invented long ago, and has always been a process of using hot water to flush dirt out of carpets, to put it simply. As technology progressed, manufacturers were able to get more and more heat out of the carpet cleaning machines they were creating, and eventually, great fire breathing beasts of machines were the norm in the USA.
These machines were (still are) capable of delivering water at well above boiling point. Whether that’s actually necessary on most jobs here in New Zealand is debateable, but the fact is that high temperature water produces lots of steam when it comes hissing out of the jets on the carpet cleaning wand, giving many the impression that the process is actually using steam to flush the carpets.
This of course is a myth, steam doesn’t carry any volume of dirt, or dirty water for that matter, and would not be suitable at all for flushing dirt from carpets. Despite that, the term ‘Steam Cleaning’ was born, used often to describe the process of Hot Water Extraction…
