Bissell Flip-It Hard Floor Cleaner Review

Overall 3.50 of 5 view all 2 reviews

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Publisher's Circle

LauraBelle
South Elgin, IL

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Does What I REALLY Need It To

Budget-Conscious, renovating my kitchen, cleaning crew of Pergo filled house

Pros

Convenient, Cleans every day meses

Cons

Can't switch back and forth

DEC

2007

Intro
I know Rumbas are the in thing, but it just doesn't make sense for me to get one of those. I have two carpets in my house. 2. That's it. 2, my bedroom and my daughter's bedroom. I now have Pergo in my kitchen, living room, son's room, stairs, landing in the foyer, hallway, and den. Additionally, I have sheet goods in one bathroom, tile on the other, as well as tile in the foyer. I decided instead of getting an expensive vacuum, to invest in a really good hard floor cleaner. Researching a more expensive cleaner, a cheap cleaner, and one in the middle, I chose the the one in the middle after finding out the production of the more expensive one wasn't that much better than the middle-of-the-road one, the Bissell Flip-It Hard Floor Cleaner. I've been waiting for the right time to get it, and with it being on sale at Target for $1o off, bringing the price down to $69, and holding onto $35 in Target gift cards, I knew the time was now.

The Assembly
Putting it together was very easy, probably slightly more so than putting together a regular vacuum cleaner. All that was required was inserting the handle and screwing it in in one place. The problem was the instructions didn't accurately describe where to screw it in, and I found the spot hiding away behind the clean water tank.

The Operation
The Bissell Flip-It Hard Floor Cleaner is promoted that you can simply "flip it" to switch back and forth from dry to wet cleaning, but I found it only truly worked to do all the dry first, then do the wet. On one side there's a dry vacuum to completely sweep your bare floors, whether they be hard wood, laminate, tile, sheet goods, etc. Then on the "flip side" is a wet floor cleaner that shoots out jets from the clean tank that is a mixture of special floor cleaner and water. When I tried to dry vacuum, wet clean the floor, then switch back to dry vacuuming, I found that the cleaner couldn't ignore the wet and would do a pseudo dry/wet cleaning that worked, but wasn't the best.

Other than that, I had read that the vacuum functions on these multi-purposes floor cleaners weren't the best, with a lower suction, but that they cleaned very close. I found the cleaner to picked up everything I needed it to for the every day type of cleaning, but it didn't really get into the very tight corners like I wanted it to. For every day use, though, it's more than adequate. For the wet function, there are two choices provided, a brush that is inserted in the bottom, and a soft pad, for different cleaning different flooring types, since one should be scrubbed and the other more or less just wiped. These worked very well but again wouldn't get in the very tight corners. It didn't seem to suck up the leftover wet on the floor as much as it said it would, though. Not that it left puddles, but it does leave your floor wet, not dry.

The Clean Up of the Clean Up
After you're done cleaning your floors with the Bissell Flip-It Hard Floor Cleaner, the first thing to do is clean out the dirty tank. This includes everything picked up when you were vacuuming and washing the floor. It's all in one tank, so depending on how dirty it is, you might not want to empty it into the sink. I have two hairy dogs, so even just for one day's use, I'm picking up huge amounts of dog hair. It says to clean out the filter periodically, but I found it caked with dog hair after just one use, so I completely clean it out each time. It's not time-consuming though, as you really just remove the dirty tank, dump it out, take out the filter, shake that out, and dump out what's in the reservoir where the filter resides. After, rinse the pieces out, then let them sit and dry in order to put it back together.

Conclusion
While the Bissell Flip-It Hard Floor Cleaner didn't do the total job of my dreams, it did absolutely everything I really needed it to. It picked up the day to day dirt off the floor, then washed the same area. It could be closer of a clean, and would be much more easier to be able to flip back and forth instead of doing all dry cleaning, than all wet cleaning, yet by the time I'm done, the floor looks completely clean, and the dirty tank tells me I'm picking up lots of dirt.