Musings from the Junque Pile - New Steam Mop vs. The Old one

They don't sell my old Shark Steam Mop anymore, so the picture to the left is the closest I could come to it. It is the If you click on it, it takes you to the Amazon.com sales page for it. This one is called the Shark Professional Steam Pocket Mop - Model S3601.
I loved it, and was sad when it broke and couldn't be fixed.  Unfortunately, it appears the Shark steam mops do break quite easily, and seem to have a working life of about 1 year. Mine lasted 2, so I was pretty happy with it.

 I also liked this mop because it had 2 different mop heads, one rectangular for doing large open areas, and a triangular one that got into corners and smaller areas. I was easy to switch mopheads, and it was easy to fill with water.  I liked that you could control the steam by a pump in the handle - want more steam? Swipe faster.  I always felt like I got a good workout using it.

So, as I said, the Shark mop died. And I cried. But then I started researching for new mops. What I saw is that if you wanted to spend $$$ you could get are very, heavy, but eminently reliable steam mop that will do everything you want, including cook you dinner.  If I wanted a lesser priced model, I needed to be prepared for it to break within 1 to 2 years.  I found an very precise review of differing machines on Amazon. Click here to read it.

After reading that review, and some others on differing sites, DaHubster and I decided on the Eureka Enviro Hard-Surface Floor Steamer,313A . It was supposed to have hotter steam than the Shark, and it had a no pump-action handle, so it was less likely to break. At $59.00, it was quite a bit cheaper than the Shark, so if it breaks quicker than the Shark did, my nose won't be too out of joint.

The first time I tried the Eureka steam mop, I accidentally overfilled the water reservoir. This caused the unit to not heat properly, and water to run out of the bottom of the mop. What a mess! I changed the cleaning pad, drained the water and tried again.

I couldn't figure out when the Eureka was heated up because it was so quiet (and I had my house-cleaning music blaring). There was no visible steam rising from the bottom of the mop either, to tell me it was ready to go.  My old Shark mop made that Whooshing noise when it was hot enough to use, as well as visible steam) so I had no trouble knowing when to start mopping.  The Eureka also takes 4 or more minutes to come up to tempurature, whereas the Shark mop was less than 2 minutes.

One last thing that I liked more about the Shark was the removable mop heads. I used the triangular head quite often, and it helped get into the corners more than the Eureka. After I steam-mopped the bathroom floor, I had to go around the baseboards with a liquid spray cleaner and paper towel to get the gunk that the Eureka pushed in there, and didn't get picked up by the cloth mop head.

I think you can see that I'm leaning towards liking the Shark mop more than the Eureka.  It's still early in the game, though, so if the Eureka works in the long run, I can overlook the long start up time and the lack of being able to clean corners with it.