apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Believe The Food Emporium rents the big units...

You should just rent a cleaning unit. I doubt you'd need to use one enough for it to be worth storing.

Everything I've heard from health care specialists, including a friend who got her PhD in toxicology & epidimiology is that you should never wet your carpet. I.e. vacuum the carpet, and spot clean a dirty spot.

As you have a rug, you may do what's done in the Caribbean and Finland - take it out, beat it with a broom, and hang (on fence or wire) it in the sun.

Taking it outside to beat it is not an option since the rug is really of carpet size with only a 1" margin all around the room. It has to stay in place. A small spot cleaner is probably best but I have no experience with them so wanted to find out if anyone has and which one(s) work best.

I haven't used the one in the picture, but I did have a Bissell Little Green that I used a lot in my last place. We had a large apt by this site (740 sq ft) with wall to wall carpet, and a basset hound with huge paws and bladder stones.

The Little Green is a little larger than the one in the picture, with a brush attached to a hose that's attached to a unit about 14 inches high and 20 inches wide.

The Little Green did a hell of a job spot cleaning, and there were at least 2 afternoons when I cleaned the bulk of the apartment. You have to work with it the first few times to get the technique down (proper amount of water, plus time spent sucking it up), but it definitely got a lot of spots out. It was also great on the high-traffic areas.

Our spots tended to be the dog urine, also food spills (I had to put half my kitchen gear in the dining area), and the general dirt that gets tracked in.

It didn't work so well on the sisal rug, but that almost goes without saying.

It came with a regular brush attachment and also some turbo brush. The turbo brush had rollers in it, but to me, it was only an annoying increase in sound but less powerful in cleaning.

If the one in the pic has automated rolling brushes, I might be wary. But for small spots, based on my experience I see no reason it wouldn't cut the mustard.

(I still have my little green but my mom gave us an upright Hoover. It's much faster, but in many ways a pain in the ass)

there's a key food in brooklyn (williamsburg) on grand st that rents them also.
does anyone know if you can get bedbugs from these machines? after i rented one and cleaned my whole apartment i realized that maybe there could have been bugs... any ideas?
i've used the bissell little green machine before, and it's good for small things... but i'm not sure about using it on a big carpet.

I've used the Capture system with great results...i pretreated spots with a spray, then used this damp powder--similar in texture to sawdust. I scrubbed it into the carpet with a stiff
push broom reserved only for this use...then let the powder air dry for half and hour or so, then vacuum it up. It worked very well, and was considerably less expensive and faster than the steam cleaner...plus you do not end up with wet rugs--you can walk on your rug right away. I purchased mine at Home Depot.
http://www.epinions.com/content_106647096964

polkadot - thanks! I've never heard of this product but after reading the reviews I'm going to get it. Since I live in one room I don't have the time or patience to wait for an entire room sized rug to dry. And I'm not crazy about the chemicals. So Capture seems like the perfect solution (no pun intended).