McMinn & CheeseFloor Cleaners: Kärcher FCV 4 vs. AirCraft PowerGlide (vs. Mop & Bucket!)
It’s one of Rob’s Consumer Reports
Being retired, I’m mainly responsible for floor cleaning in the household. We’ve got a Roomba (an early model) and a standard vacuum cleaner (Sebo), but most of our floors are either laminate, floor boards, or tiles, so cleaning them with a mop and bucket was what we did… until it was my job.
About 18 months ago, I bought an AirCraft PowerGlide, which is a floor cleaner and polisher. It has a small capacity for water/floor cleaner and two rotating cleaning heads, with replaceable microfibre cloths. Two came with the machine. You remove the battery to charge it. As you’re cleaning, you can push a button on the adjustable handle, and water/floor cleaner will squirt out of the front. But use sparingly, and the microfibre pads do most of the work. There’s also a light on the front, to illuminate the bit of floor you’re cleaning.
It’s quite efficient, quick and easy to use, and the floor usually looks quite clean after you’re done. It’s not great at getting into corners and narrow spaces and the battery life is a bit shit. Usually enough to clean the downstairs and the bathroom, but always needs a charge when you’re done.
I’ve been quite happy with it, but then I saw the Kärcher FCV 3 and the FCV 4. We need something to clean the ceramic tiled floors at our place in France, so… There was a special offer, which meant the more advanced FCV 4 model was cheaper than the FCV 3, so I ordered one.
(It arrived yesterday, delivered by DHL, who delivered fully seven hours later than their email said they would. Slow handclap to that.)
Quite frankly, if you have hard floors to clean, the Kärcher is a game changer. They’re a well known Garden and Outdoors brand, and a lot of people will have one of their pressure washers.
The FCV 4 is a vacuum, and it’s a mop. It has a rotating microfibre roller (like a paint roller), separate water tanks for clean and dirty water, and a self-cleaning/charging station.
It’s delivered with a bottle of Natural floor cleaner (which has no nasty chemicals), and a multi-surface roller, but you can also buy replacement rollers specially designed for stone floors, or for pets. (That said, it looks as if the pet roller isn’t [yet?] available to order.) Other cleaning fluids are available: I ordered a bottle of Multi-Purpose/Universal, but there are also cleaners for waxed wood floors and sealed wood floors, depending on your needs.
The FCV 4 has a larger battery than the FCV 3, and also a built-in sensor, so if you use it on Auto mode, it adjusts its cleaning, depending on the surface, and works harder if it detects dirt. You can also manually switch modes, and there is a Dry mode for carpets/rugs and a Stairs mode.
The battery charges quite slowly and runs down alarmingly fast. Alarming, I think, only because the display is so bright and large! Actually, there’s enough juice to clean the whole house, upstairs and down.
Once you’re charged up, it’s easy to use. First fill the clean water tank, and add just half a capful of cleaning fluid. The bottles are 500ml, so the stuff should last a long time. Put the tank back in the machine, switch it on using the button at the top of the handle (nothing happens, but the lights come on), and then rest your foot on the base, pull the handle back, and it starts working.
The beauty of the roller and vacuum system is that it both cleans and dries as it goes. And because it’s a vacuum, it sucks up solid dirt, too, which means you don’t have to vacuum the floor before you wet clean it. It’s a one stop shop. Dirty water goes into a separate tank, so you’re not just spreading it over the floor. And because it’s sucking up water as it goes, the floor is only a little bit wet and dries very quickly. Anyone in a household knows that feeling of not being able to enter a room until the floor is dry. The floor dries almost immediately.
When the dirty water tank is full, the machine stops and alerts you. And, boy, is that water dirty. That floor you thought looked fairly clean? Oof. You can empty the tank and clean it with the provided brush. There are filters too, which can be cleaned when you’re finished, but they need to be dry before they go back in. Because we have a long haired cat, there was a lot of cat fur in the dirty water! Even though you’d have thought the floor was fairly clean to start with.
Battery indicator: 23%, not Error 2!After self-cleaningBut now it’s clean. And the water you’re pouring away is black. If you still have more to do, you top up the clean water again and go. As I said, we did the whole downstairs and then the upstairs, on mixed surfaces: linoleum tiles, laminate, stone tiles, wooden floorboards. Sitting where I am just now, the stone tiled floor is visibly lighter and brighter, even though I ran the AirCraft over it last Friday.
So we have a clear winner.
But there’s more: put the FCV 4 back on its charging cradle, top up the clean water tank, and hit the button for self cleaning. Over about 90 seconds, it spins and cleans its roller, and fills the dirty tank with another measure of black water. Should you need to, however, you can also chuck the roller into the washing machine, and the water tank can be put in the dishwasher (without its filters).
It’s great. Highly recommended. And you can tell it’s great, because my OH, who had absolutely no interest in using the AirCraft PowerGlide, dived right in with the Kärcher FCV 4. I imagine after you’ve used this a couple of times, your floors will be really clean. Next time I drop a fish pie all over the kitchen, maybe I’ll just eat it off the floor.
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