Saturday 7 January 2012

Steam Cleaning (I'm In Luurve)

One of the compensations of my current lowly employment is being able to bring home, and play with, all the fascinating machinery used in contract cleaning.
Top of my list at the moment is the Osprey Steam Cleaner.
Now there's a funny face.
I love it (almost) as much as my Henry Vacuum Cleaner:
My sing-along pal.
We have a condensation problem in the bathroom at the flat which has resulted in unsightly mildew spreading across the ceiling.
Because I favour showering, rather than sitting in a bath full of my own filth, I hadn't actually noticed the extent of the hold it had taken:
Mildew is evil
After a perfunctory risk assessment, I charged my beautiful assistant with applying a bleach solution to the affected area:
Linda gets several more blond streaks in her hair
I then laid in with the steam cleaner, across the ceiling, down the tiled walls, around the sink and bath, and then over the vinyl flooring.
I became lost in time pausing only the refill the machine.
Linda says it took me about 4 hours.
I'm sure it only took me about 4 minutes.

The result is a bathroom that shines so hard I have to wear sunglasses in there:
Shiny, shiny!
I must have a steam cleaner of my own... NOW!

8 comments:

just john said...

I have to wonder who had these two thoughts:

1) Ospreys get awful dirty

2) Steam should remedy that

OutaSpaceMan said...

I'd love to see anyone explain that one away to an animal welfare officer.

just john said...

While we're kinda on the subject of cleaning stuff, my favorite back when I washed dishes for a living was the Jet Spray machine.

That, of course, sprays hot water at high power. So for grungy cement floors, it was like the inverse of airbrushing. (A recent Youtube showed somebody manually doing the a similar thing with subway walls.)

And it made me wonder: Would spraying your message on a wall by selectively cleaning bits of grafitti off from it count as vandalism?

OutaSpaceMan said...

I also have experience with that type of machine.
Hobart was it's name as I recall.
And once, whilst using a pressure washer, I wrote an incredibly rude word on the drive of a woman who wore a terrible wig.

Laurent said...

'Because I favour showering, rather than sitting in a bath full of my own filth' hahaha!

Ivy Arch said...

Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed this post!

Wartime Housewife said...

Can you hire such an item?

OutaSpaceMan said...

Thanks Ivy!

W.H.
if you are asking with a view to hiring one yourself, I'd suggest looking for your local hire shop, HSS springs to mind, Karcher have a similar type of machine but make sure you get a good range of attachments with it.

I've been experimenting endlessly with the Osprey and have even used it on our Indian rug with satisfactory results.

My next project will be the cooker.