Eureka 313A Enviro Hard-Surface Floor Steamer

The top steam mops: Results of steam mop first hand comparisons & studying of comps, August 7, 2009

By 

A. Chandler –

  

  

  

Know going in If you get the Envirosteamer, know that, though it cleans the best, the first two times you use it the water goes through holes faster than it will in subsequent uses, so it will go through steam faster and your floors will be wetter than normal. Enough people wrote me to know this happened the first one or two times as it did my first time of use, then after that the mop was normal, our floors are great and it lasts waaaah longer. We don’t know why. Just know that going in. After the first two initializing uses it steams perfect! Also obviously the steam lasts longest if you don’t hold the mop above the floor to walk to another area since the steam pours out as it will with any steam mop if you do.

(update: This review was updated on 11-2-09 after I got to compare the Bissell as well as add notes about the Ladybugg steamer at the bottom, and then on 11-30 when I got to compare the SteamFast SF-140 and on 12-7 to compare the Steam Boy)

I live in a neighborhood where EVERY home is “green built certified” this means that, to have that certification, the builder built no homes with carpet. All the main floors are polished concrete and the upper floors wood. The bathrooms all have tile and/or slate in every home.

Because of this, as you could imagine, steam mops are quite the neccessity…not only because they get the hard surfaces better than anything else, but because they are also “green” and clean chemical free. I’ll be honest, for us…that’s a bonus but we weren’t cleaning chemical free before. We like chemical free for our pet’s paws but I’ll confess I was mopping with chemicals before I got my steamer and just kept the pets out of the room while doing it because, up until then, I couldn’t get it clean any other way.

Okay, so that said…we decided to have a steamer show down to compare 7 different steamers because my friends and I knew as long as we are in these homes we are gonna have to have a steamer to get all these hard floors clean…we may as well figure out which one to buy next go round. Because my own home is graced with 2 cats, 3 dogs, and two gregarious cooks, my kitchen floor (which had not ever been cleaned by a steamer since my steamer had just arrived) was the testing spot.

Mind you, I vaccuum twice per week and do a mega mop twice a week. I THOUGHT I had pretty clean floors in spite of my pet capacity.

I thought wrong. These picked up dirt so well it’s scary

So here’s the results:

1. steam mops are the mac daddys of clean floors. What these things picked up was tremendous and no comparison to my vigorous prior constant major mopping.

2. So now I’ll break down the elements of each mop we used and then go into more detail about each at the end.

We tried out:
“S”: The shark by Europro
“E” The Envirosteamer by Eureka
“H” the haan steamer
“M” the Monster
“B” The Bissell Green Tea
“SF” The SteamFast SF-140 by SteamFast
“SB” The SteamBoy T1

CORD LENGTH: so you don’t have to stop and unplug and replug in somewhere else:
Shark ( will be referred to as S):20 feet
Envirosteamer (will be referred to as E): 25 feet *Note* The Envirosteamer has a clip at the top of the handle to keep the cord out of the way. When it’s plugged in and you need more cord length, a light tug undoes this cord on the clip so that you have the full 25′ of cord. Otherwise it’s only around 20 feet. It’s made to do this.
Haan: (will be referred to as H)19’8″
Monster (will be referred to as M): 25 feet
Bissell (will be referred to as B) 17 feet
SteamFast (will be referred to as SF): 18.7 ft.
SteamBoy (will be referred to as SB): 16 ft.

STEAM TEMPERATURE: this is a primary element. The hotter the steam, the more dirt picked up and hot steam will also kill parasites, mold and mildew and loosen more dirt:
S 110 degrees. lame
E 220 degrees. very hot
H 212 degrees. very hot
M 266 degrees. hottest…although the envirosteamer and haan seemed plenty hot enough. The shark didn’t clean nearly as well and this was one reason. 110 degrees just isn’t going to melt off stuck on grime.
B 125 degrees. Note that, because of this low steam temperature the manual said that if I wanted to sanitize the floor or pick up caked on spills, I had to hold the steamer on the spot for 15 seconds but no more than 20 because that could damage some floors. Now I don’t know about you, but if I can sanitize with one swipe of the other steamers because of their sanitizing temps my floor will be done WAY faster but I don’t have a timer to worry about the extra 5 secons where my wood floors could get damaged. My sink water is hotter than this so it would take less time to use a regular mop if I have to hold the steamer on every spot of my floor for 15…

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A Virtual Hands-On Demo of this Great Steam Mop, December 30, 2009

By 

Timothy B. Riley (San Antonio, TX USA) –

  

  

  

Customer Video Review Length:: 2:59 Mins

I cook often and my kitchen floor seems to collect it’s own share of whatever I’m making. I always mop but conventional mops and buckets just never made much sense to me as the water and detergent gets dirty in no time and then you have to keep using it or change the water every 5 minutes. However, I had never heard of a steam mop until I read a review from Amazon’s #1 Reviewer who had gone to the trouble of testing over a half a dozen different brands. I took her recommendation (thanks Alana!) and added the Eureka to my Amazon wish list. Luckily for me, my downstairs neighbor (and friend) bought it for me for Christmas.

I decided to do a video review because I thought that it would be helpful for other folks to see what it looks like and how it works. A couple of things that I forgot to mention:

* My mop came with two cleaning pads
* The instructions warn that if you machine wash and dry the pads they might shrink a little (they were right)
* If you have very hard water you might want to use distilled water (which I do)
* You should not use any cleaner or detergent inside of the steamer
* Next to the green power light is a red light that warns you when the water tanks needs refilling

I thought that my video review was going pretty well until the steamer scared my neighbor’s toy Yorkie (she had brought the dog along with her) and the puppy started to bark at it. Oh well… I hope that it is helpful to you anyway.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to mention that the first time that I used the Enviro Steamer it didn’t work correctly. The water came out quickly (it was empty in 5 minutes) and wasn’t very hot. It got my floors really wet and not very clean. I refilled it, let it warm up longer than before (8 minutes) and the steam just poured out. I was able to get my floor really clean and the water lasted for about 20 minutes. I have now heard from several people that had the same experience so I thought that I would add this note. If you are having this problem you might want to give your unit a couple of tries before sending it back.

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