With so much interest in chemical-free cleaning, steam cleaning is being marketed as a greener alternative.
Steam cleaners et you blow a lot of typical household surfaces with a surge of steam to loosen grime and kill germs.
Here’s what you need to know before you invest. Steam cleaning requires the use of steam for cleaning.
Its uses include domestic applications for cleaning flooring and household dirt removal and industrial uses for removing grease and dirt from engines.
When used without soap, detergents, or other cleaning materials, steam cleaning is an environmentally friendly form of cleaning.
In ovens, steam cleaning is an alternative to self-cleaning that uses lower temperatures.
How to Steam Cleaning Work
Water is heated past the boiling point and pushed out by a nozzle, brush, or other attachment as pressurized steam. Vapour dislodges soil and destroys dust mites, molds, other allergens, and dangerous bacteria.
No suction is required, as high-heat humidity dries quickly.
Steam cleaning works well on rough, impenetrable surfaces, such as countertops and bathroom fixtures, and floors made of vinyl, laminate, polyurethane or tile. Some steam cleaners can also clean upholstery, mattresses, and curtains.
What items can Steam-Cleaning be effective for?
Painted walls and floors, including hardwood, cork, and unglazed tiles, can be affected by moisture. However, the heat from steam can also induce glass windows to crack.
Which features are worthy when choosing a steam cleaner?
Look out for a machine with a fast warm-up time; some generate steam in just 30 seconds, others require 3 minutes or more.
Handheld systems have about 10 minutes of cleaning time before the water needs to be refilled. Larger models of the canisters can last up to 45 minutes but are harder to maneuver.
Some devices enable you to keep the steam stream in place for up to 15 seconds to ensure proper sanitation, which can mean a long cleaning session for, say, the kitchen floor. Others only take 1 to 3 seconds.
Importance of steam cleaning
1. Chemical – Free Washing
A reliable steam cleaner, water, and heat are the only elements required for steam cleaning. Sanitizing and cleaning the home has never been easier and more environmentally friendly.
After all, does it really make sense to cook food on a countertop that has been washed with chemicals?
Not only do steam cleaners help to remove chemical residues in your house making it a safer place (especially for children and pets who basically live on the floor), but they also help the environment by reducing the number of chemicals that are washed down the drain and pumped back into our water supply.
2. A whole new standard of cleanness
Although you with steam cleaning you wl have to put your effort into cleaning, the results after using a steam cleaner exceed the traditional method of cleaning with a chemical solvent and a sponge or mop.
As steam deodorizes and sanitizes with heat and moisture, debris is cleaned thoroughly and easily, leaving a chemical-free method to make cleaning easier for you.
From bathrooms to basements, for large areas such as tile floors and countertops, carpeting, upholstery, and even barbecue grills, there are fixtures for cleaning every part of your home. You’re going to end up washing stuff that you’ve avoided for years.
3. Spending less money on cleaning supplies
Spend Less Money on Cleaning Products You’ll never have to settle on a lemon or pine fragrance again!
You’re never going to need a floor polisher, a glass shimmer, an oven cleaner, a tile blaster, or a bald guy in a white t-shirt that’s hanging around again (for those who haven’t got that reference—Mr. Clean).
You’re not even going to need those sweaty rubber gloves to shield your hands from solvents. Steam cleaning ensures that you have an excellent cleaning and sanitizing method to satisfy a range of cleaning needs around your house.
What are you going to do with all the extra money? What are you going to do with all that free space where you were supposed to stack solvents?
4. Track Down & Kill the Trickiest, Nastiest Culprit
Steam cleaning Kill Viruses and Mold. Bacteria, viruses, and mold may not be visible, but they are actually some of the most harmful organisms in your home that can cause irritation, allergies, and infections.
When you use a steam cleaning, tiny hot steam molecules enter the pores of the surface that you clean, and when they come into contact with the cold surface of the pores, they expand and push all dirt, debris, and bacteria to the surface.
Vapor molecules are so hot that they can not only remove pathogens like E. Coli and Salmonella from the surface pores, however, but also destroy them as well. Good-bye to contagious rivals!
5. Kill & Regulate Allergens such as Dust Mites
When the sun is streaming in, there are little “things” floating in the stream of light. Many of these airborne particles are some of the most prominent allergy causers in your home—the waste matter of dust mites.
Dust mites are second only to pollen in the leading cause of allergic reactions. These small, sneezing-inducing pests can be eliminated daily using a steam cleaner.
Some allergic reactions result in asthma (which is on the rise among children), but studies show that avoiding allergens in early childhood can prevent the onset of asthma.
Steam cleaning is a perfect way to keep everyone in your home safe by extracting these allergens from your mattresses, pillows, and upholstered furniture.
6. Steam cleaning your Children & Toys
Steam Cleaning for Kids’ Toys will help turn a germ-ridden, odor-free nursery into a shimmering clean, chemical-free baby sanctuary.
Toys, particularly those that children share while playing, are notorious germ traps that are more than efficient at attracting a host of body fluids.
A steam cleaner can destroy any remaining visitors that may stay after a play date loaded with sneezes and runny noses.
7. The New Best Friend of Pet Lover
Steam Cleaning kills Fleas. Because you have a cat, your house doesn’t have to smell like one.
Steam cleaning can eradicate smells from your dog, sanitize birdcages and aquariums, and spruce up the litter box, so you don’t need to hold your breath when you walk by.
High-temperature heat destroys fleas, their nests, and their larvae—a steam cleaner can safely eliminate these tenacious pests without the use of harsh, poisonous chemicals.
8. Dust Mites: What you’re not seeing is hurting you?
Get Rid of Dust Mites with Steam CleaningDust mites, the annoying relatives of the tick and spider, feel at home in your home or more precisely, in your mattresses, upholstery, rugs, carpets, quilts, pillows, and stuffed animals.
In these fragile, pulpy conditions, dust mites feed on the flakes of dead skin that humans and animals have shed over time.
They leave behind their waste, which is a big allergen and an asthma cause for many people. Here’s some easy math for you: one dust mite deposits up to 20 drops a day and the average bed is infested with millions of dust mites.
A lot of people are in bed for an average of eight hours per day so you lie side by side with an immense amount of debris that can make you feel like you haven’t been in bed for eight hours.
So what’s this going to do with steam cleaning? Oh, just like steam destroys fleas, steam cleaning will obliterate dust mite colonies in your mattresses and carpets.
Daily home steam cleaning followed by vacuuming with HEPA vacuum to pick up allergenic debris would make a big difference in the quality of your home’s air and most importantly, your family’s health.
