Is There a Carpet Cleaner That Heats the Water

Yes: the BISSELL Little Green HydroSteam Pet is the one machine on this page that heats its own water. Water and cleaning solution pass through a built-in heater on the way to the carpet, and what arrives at the stain is steam.

Every machine in this category cleans the same way: hot water extraction. That method is also the reason a cleaner with no heater in it can still be sold as a steam cleaner. The steam in the name is your hot water, not the machine's.

ProHeat machines only hold the temperature of the water you pour in, and which bissell carpet cleaners heat the water comes down to the Little Green HydroSteam Pet alone.

Best Heated Carpet Cleaner

The best heated carpet cleaner is the BISSELL Little Green HydroSteam Pet, and the heater is the case for it.

It splits the work across three modes. SteamWash goes after oily and sticky messes, Steam refreshes upholstery, grout and tile, and Wash takes spills and pet accidents. Match the mode to the mess and let the heater do the part your tap water can't.

Is a heated carpet cleaner worth it? For oily stains, sticky spills, or upholstery and tile you want steamed clean, yes. Those are the jobs where heat changes the outcome, and that's the argument for this machine over one that runs on the water you pour in.

BISSELL's two figures for the machine:

One of them is about the stain coming out, the other about the surface coming back. On a sofa, the second number decides whether you'll steam it a second time.

The clean tank holds 64 oz, which means fewer trips to the sink in the middle of a job. The body weighs 13 lb, light enough to carry from one stair to the next without setting it down, and a 15 ft cord with a 4.8 ft hose reaches along a couch or into a back seat. A 5 in Tough Stain Tool and a Multi-Surface Tool come with it, and BISSELL's surface list includes auto and garage.

Portable Carpet Cleaner with Heat

The best portable carpet cleaner with heat is the BISSELL Little Green HydroSteam Pet, the pick named above.

You'll want a portable spot cleaner, or one of the best handheld carpet cleaners, for small messes: isolated stains, pet accidents, stairs, upholstery, rugs and car interiors rather than whole rooms.

The Shark carpet cleaner in this group, the StainStriker HairPro, doesn't heat the water. It scored 165 against a 145 category average, the best stain result on record for a portable spot cleaner.

If the stain score matters most and you can live without heat, get the Shark StainStriker HairPro. If you want the machine to heat its own water, get the BISSELL Little Green HydroSteam Pet.

One decision sits ahead of the rest, and it's the model number. BISSELL sells a long list of machines under the Little Green name, and the number decides which one you get, from a plain Little Green that holds 48 oz at 9.65 lb and runs on hot tap water to the heated HydroSteam Pet. We'd buy by the number and look for the heater before anything else.

Proheat Carpet Cleaner

A ProHeat carpet cleaner doesn't heat water. The badge marks the machines that hold the temperature of the water you pour in, so you fill the tank with warm tap water.

The mechanism is HeatWave Technology, and it draws on the motor's own heat rather than a heating element. Your water stays near the temperature you started with for the length of the clean. Nothing inside the machine raises it higher.

The BISSELL carpet cleaners carrying the ProHeat badge come as an upright and a spot cleaner on this page. The ProHeat 2X Revolution Pet Pro is the upright: a 1 gallon clean tank, an 11 in cleaning path, a 12 row dual DirtLifter PowerBrush, 17.5 lb, a 25 ft cord and a 10 ft hose. The SpotClean ProHeat is the spot cleaner: 37 oz in the clean tank at 8.5 lb, with a 3 in Tough Stain Tool for stairs, carpet and auto.

The upright dries carpet in about 30 minutes, carries a 5 year warranty, and shows 4.6 stars from 4,649 ratings.

The ProHeat machines hold the heat you bring instead of making any of their own.

On cleaning, the upright makes a separate claim:

That claim is about soil coming out of a carpet. The temperature still starts at your sink.

Hot Water Carpet Cleaner

A hot water carpet cleaner sprays a mix of hot water and cleaning formula into the carpet and sucks it back up with the dirt, and stores sell the same machine as a carpet shampooer.

On every BISSELL machine here without a heater, that hot water comes from your tap. The full-size one is the Big Green Machine: warm tap water goes into a 1.75 gallon tank, and the body weighs 42 lb, which is weight you park and leave in place.

Deep clean every 6 to 12 months, and sooner in high-traffic rooms or homes with pets and children, where the best carpet shampooer for pet urine question starts.

Heated Carpet Cleaner Rental

Renting is the other way to run hot water extraction in your own house, on a 24 or 48 hour term rather than as a purchase. Rug Doctor's uprights spray hot water and formula into the carpet and vacuum it back up with the dirt, the same method behind the steam cleaner label on the machines you'd buy.

The two uprights are the Mighty Pro and the Wide Track, available at thousands of locations across the United States and Canada. Both scrub with a vibrating brush, carry two large tanks and fold down their handles. If you want a rotating brush instead, start with the portable carpet cleaner with rotating brush rental.

The add-on worth asking for is the upholstery and stair tool: a 12 ft hose and a 4 in wide tool that reach stairs, sofas, upholstered chairs, area rugs and auto interiors.