Steam Cleaner Safe on Hardwood?

Find out whether it is safe to use a steam cleaner on a hardwood floor. When cleaning a hardwood floor, you don’t want to use a lot of water; you want to damp mop it and use a good-quality hardwood…

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LESLIE: June in Vermont needs some help cleaning a wood floor. Tell us what’s going on.

JUNE: Yes. I’ve recently purchased one of these steam floor cleaners that is supposed to clean hardwood floors or any other type of flooring and also area rugs. And I just have become a little apprehensive about how safe it is. It cleans with a vapor. You heat up the water inside the machine and then the vapor cleans the floor. It has pads for cleaning your floors.

TOM: (overlapping voices) Right.

JUNE: And I just wondered what your opinion – if you had an opinion on these floor cleaners; how safe they were for the wood floors, especially the hardwood floor.

TOM: (overlapping voices) Well, I don’t think they’re going to hurt your wood floors. I mean generally, with a hardwood floor, you don’t want to use a lot of water; you want to damp mop it and use a good-quality hardwood floor cleaner. I don’t see the steam as being a problem because it’s not really going to sit there for a long time; it’s just going to loosen up the dirt and sort of move on.

LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Well, it may open the pores a smidgen if there’s not too much of a glaze on it, you know?

TOM: It’s going to cool really quickly. So I don’t think it’ll hurt your floors and if it does a great job cleaning them, then you should use it.

JUNE: OK. OK. Well, I thought it probably would be a lot easier because I have a lot of hardwood flooring. And I thought it would be a lot easier for me to clean it with a machine than going over it with a mop.

TOM: Well, any time you can get a machine to do the job for you, I say do it.

JUNE: Yeah. It’s a job. But it’s the vapor that’s supposed to clean it and I know some people that have used them and they swear by them. But I didn’t know what your opinion might be as to how safe it would be.

TOM: (overlapping voices) I don’t see any reason you can’t use it.

JUNE: OK. OK. Thank you very much.

TOM: You’re welcome, June. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.