Does it work on wood floors?
Written: Sep 13 '02
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Pros: Inexpensive
Cons: Questionable utility for wood floors
The Bottom Line: Still trying to find a use for this one.
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| sneddren's Full Review: Hoover Floormax F2300 Upright Vacuum |
I was interested in buying a wood floor cleaner/buffer from Hoover after I had such a good experience with the Hoover SteamVac (see my other Epinion review). Our house is about 2/3 hard wood floor and 1/3 carpet and the wood floor was really starting to show signs of wear-minor scratches and dulling of the finish. So I did some research and the Hoover F2300 seemed to be the right machine for the job. Everything that I read about this machine indicated that it was designed to work on wood floors and would both clean and buff them. Perfect!
So I bought the F2300 through Amazon.com (kudos again to Amazon...they sent me a $50 gift certificate for buying the SteamVac and I applied that to this F2300 purchase, leaving me with a total purchase price of $50 and free shipping) and quickly assembled the machine upon its arrival. The assembly was very easy and the machine looked solid. It is really just a matter of snapping together the handle and putting the brushes on (it comes with two sets of brushes...a scrubber and felt pad attachments for buffing). So far so good.
The operating instructions for the F2300 were equally straighforward-tilt the handle down to turn the machine on, return the handle to upright to stop it. After reading the instructions (which were a little more complicated than I expected) I realized that there may be a problem. The instructions were divided into three parallel sections...one for wood floors that have a waxed surface, one for urethane coated wood floors and a third for surface-stained wood floors. Dilemna time! What type of floors did I have??? The type of floor is critical, as you can't wax urethane coated floors...the instructions gave a very basic test for determining which floor you have, but it was so basic that it didn't help me much. To this day, I'm still not sure whether my floors are urethane coated or wax coated.
And there is the problem-unless you have wood floors that are wax coated, the F2300 is pretty worthless. The only thing you can use the machine for is to buff the floor with the felt pads and that didn't seem to do much at all for my floors. In fact, it did nothing.
So my review is, unfortunately, a work in progress. Until I can figure out what type of floor I have, I won't be able to really use this machine. And if I have the wrong type of wood floor, the machine will be useless. I subsequently did some more research on how to determine floor type and even went to the local hardware store for advice, but so far the tests have not led me to a conclusion as to the type of floor.
I did try to use the F2300 on some of the tile floor we have and, alas, it didn't do much there either. The scrubbing didn't seem to clean the surface at all. All in all, this is not the machine I expected it to be and I wish that Hoover could clarify the potential problems with using this machine on different floor types. Had I known at the time of purchase, I would have not bought this machine.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 50
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Epinions.com ID:
sneddren
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Reviews written: 36
Trusted by: 6 members
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