McCulloch MC1385 Deluxe Canister Steam Cleaner, 2-Hour Runtime, Chemical-Free, 23 Accessories: Mop Head, Brushes & More - Built for Home, Tile, Carpet, Furniture, & Personal Car Detailing

For months I have been reading reviews trying to figure out if the McCulloch Steam Cleaner was worth it. Some people loved it, while others derided it. I read dozens of reviews looking for balance among them. Finally, I ordered it and hoped for the best. The beauty of Amazon user's reviews is that with enough reviews, positive or not, it is possible to figure out an accurate 'feel' for a product. This one kind of had me stumped. There are plenty of reviews already, but I hope my opinion is helpful in further clarifying the many previous good reviews.It is well made, seems to be an ABS plastic, so it will withstand some punishment. The brass fittings are a nice touch and just part of the overall good build of the machine. There are several parts for different cleaning applications, such as floors, a squeegee for flat surfaces, and several different small heads, some with nylon bristles, others, metal. The unit is fully assembled, except for one piece, the handle, which takes about 10 seconds to attach with the included screwdriver. I do wish they designed something for cord storage. I just gather in and bind it with a heavy elastic band. I find the unit small and even when full of water, not heavy. The cord and the steam hose are both adequately long for me. Before I started, I took 5 minutes to read the manual. I didn't use distilled water, but I have filtered water and I expect I will have to follow the process removing minerals every so often. There is no sound that I can tell, coming from the base unit, but the escaping steam makes a loud hiss, nothing that bothered me, others or pets. You couldn't watch television with someone using this in the same room, but the sound is what I expected with a machine that sprays steam.The base control is a button/trigger that also has a lock for continuous steaming. I cleaned all over and this little machine surprised me. I cleaned my bath and shower and overall, I was impressed. The porcelain wall tile, toilet and marble floor came out quite literally, as new. The textured privacy glass, the metal all over was perfect. Using cloths to wipe up following the steam was fast and easy. My 8' x 4' mirror wall cleaned fast and easy with no streaks. The grout in the floor and walls was cleaner, not perfect, but good. A second time might yield better results. Where it didn't work so well was soap residue and mineral deposits. There were some mineral deposits on the granite counter, those actually came out, and with just a little more effort than I had been using. I was surprised, as the soap reside in the shower did come off the walls, but very very slowly but on the tub floor, it really wasn't worth it and would have taken a long time and likely a few refills of water. I am a pretty neat and tidy person to begin with, so these surfaces are not untouched for months and I am expecting the steam cleaner to instantly overcome that. It seems to be a combination of minerals and soap residue that needs to be scrubbed off and the steam cleaner isn't up to the task. Given how hard it is to get that off manually, I'm hardly surprised the steam cleaner can't remove it. The reddish colored iron water stains however, came right off. These are stains that appears reddish in tone in sinks, tubs, shower and toilets.The pressure of the unit is adequate for cleaning around the home. Thinking of steam cleaning your car engine with this machine? I think that is a stretch. Do not buy this unit thinking that you are getting the power of a pressure washer, you don't. A little more pressure would be nice, but for cleaning around the home, this does a nice job as is. The reservoir holds 48 oz of water and if you need just a quick clean, you add 16 oz, which will give you about 15 minutes of steam, also the less water you add, the faster it heats up. A full tank took several minutes to heat up, I didn't time it, but it was fast enough. The plastic bristle heads seem to melt sooner than I'd thought, but I count those as a disposable part, plus replacement is inexpensive.In the kitchen, the cleaning continued. My refrigerator is newer and looks clean, but this machine brought out stuff from every crack and crevice. The controls, the door seals and the surface are indistinguishable from new. The same with the dishwasher, range hood and the stove, their previously unreachable crevices that hide dirt are now reachable. They never looked this clean before. Porcelain sinks in the bath and kitchen are items that I don't think a steam cleaner can clean adequately. They might be clean on the surface, but the stains tend to be in the porcelain and beyond the reach of steam cleaning. I used a liquid cleanser on the kitchen sink and finished with the kitchen. It was exceptionally clean. One thing to note is the superb job that steam cleaning does on metal surfaces. The range, the faucets, trim all look out-of-the-box new.I cleaned microfiber upholstery, painted walls, the Litter Robot LRII Automatic Self-Cleaning Litter Box, Beige, windows sills and screens, bath & kitchen cabinets and inside the microwave. With few exceptions, the McCulloch Steam Cleaner has taken everything I have thrown at it. I bet this can steam clothes, but I haven't tried it.So, for me, I am quite happy that I listened to the positive reviews. As to those that didn't have a positive experience, my only thoughts are that they may have been used to a more powerful (and expensive) unit, they have significant minerals in their water or possibly they expect more of this steam cleaning unit than they should. I can't say, those are guesses. My experience has been almost completely positive.Pros:* cleans most surfaces fast and easy with no chemicals* versatile attachments* simple operation* small & lightweight* impressive cleaning of many surfacesCons:* no organizer for the power cord* steam pressure is adequate, but a little more would be good* can't remove heavy soap residue/minerals from bathtub & showerBottom Line:At this price range, this unit is hands down, a great performer. I did look at other units that were 4x and 10x the cost of the McCulloch Steam Cleaner, an amount which is far more than I am willing to spend. For household cleaning, this unit did an impressive job and left most everything noticeably cleaner. Only exceptions are the heavy soap residue and minerals which I still need to use elbow grease and cleaner. With that said, this is a very good value for a good steam cleaner.

Read a lot of reviews when deciding between this and the similar Wagner item. Ultimately got this one because it was available as a Warehouse Deal for under $95. For me it's probably really a 4.5 star item. I'd give it 6 stars if it had a strong vacuum feature built in to pull up the dirty liquid. Many people knock this device for unfair reasons. #1 bad rap is water coming out of the nozzle instead of steam. Come on people, use your brains! Steam is vaporized water. If you run steam through a few feet of cool tubing it's going to condense into water. There are ways to work around this. Use it continuously rather than brief spurts which reduces the water and makes the steam hotter or use a pail, directing the first few seconds into the pail until the water is gone. Also, once the steam hits something cool it will condense into water so be ready to wipe. BTW, that brings up another gripe that people mention. Continuous use will cause the nozzle and trigger parts to get pretty warm. Not really much of an issue. Others gripe that the steam isn't hot enough. It's a matter of opinion, I guess, but there are some realities involved. Your wall outlets will only support about 1800 watts so a machine like this can only heat so much water to turn it into steam. To get it hotter would mean less steam production or you'd have to plug it into a 240v outlet and many people don't have that. Continuous use does a lot for upping the steam temperature. If the steam were much hotter, you'd be reading complaints about melted and deformed plastics. I think this machine strikes the appropriate balance. One legitimate gripe is the flimsy plastic construction. Has plastic gotten so expensive that making the parts 50% thicker would add that much to the cost? I accept the device for what it is. A tool that most people will only be using occasionally. There are better, more sturdy devices for people who'll use this frequently.I've had it a couple of weeks and tried it on various things. Windows: works pretty good but a little messy. I used a chamois to clean up the water drips. Really great with a spray bottle of strong cleaner to clean your vinyl window casings, seals and felt scrapers. Again, chamois with a bucket of clean water gives best results. Walls: works pretty good to clean cooking oils and cigarette smoke film from glossy paints. This pretty much dissolves cigarette smoke film on anything from paint to plastics to metal or glass. Vinyl Mini Blinds: Oh, such a pain to clean with anything. I sprayed them with some strong cleaner, gave it a minuet or two and they came out pretty darn good. I think removal and cleaning in the bathtub might make the job less messy and would make rinsing easier. Microwave: I get mine pretty clean with a scrubber sponge and normal dish soap but finishing off with steam is the icing on the cake. Gets the nooks and crannies, corners and grills. Touchpad looked new and the rest of the oven was darn close. Upholstery: May get certain stains loosened up but this is really no substitute for a suction type upholstery cleaner and soap. I wasn't too impressed. Sink and Countertop: I have very hard water and my issues are more with calcium deposits than grime. This did nothing for water deposits. Leather Jacket: Used steam as a first step in a re-dye. Worked OK but not a big advantage over saddle soap and a brush. Took about 90 minutes to do a really good job. Coffee Maker: Didn't do much better than dishwasher plus soap and a sponge. Deep Fryer: Thought this would do a really good job but it was no better than using a strong degreaser and scrubber sponge with hot water from the sink. Slow and messy. Included scrubber pad clogged quickly and wore fast. Stove and Toaster Oven: Fine for hard to get to edges of the glass top on the stove but don't think this is your ticket for removing burnt-on food.Other random observations- The little brushes suck. they're too stiff when you start and too soft after a few minutes of use. The scrubber was unimpressive too. All these things wore down quickly and you're better off using a scrubber or brush that suits your need and use the steam to assist the scrubbing process. The window squeegee worked fine but sopping up the water is a pain. Much quicker than Windex and paper towels. Zero streaks. Did not use the mop attachment. Having no water gauge is lame. You don't know when your going to need to add water and then you don't know how much to add when it's not empty. The wheels seem mostly useless. I pick it up and move it.Overall I'm very happy with my little steam cleaner and I haven't even used it for the 2 things I bought it for, removing wallpaper and detailing car interiors. Unless you have a specific thing that you need a steam machine for (like wallpaper or bedbugs) you should think of this as another tool in your cleaning arsenal. It probably won't replace anything else you have now, it'll just help you to do a better job. Sometimes it'll save you time. Sometimes it'll save you work. For the most part, it's not going to save you a lot in cleaning chemicals. You'll mostly still use those. I understand these are really great with the hard plastics in a used car. I can see this as a great tool for cleaning a refrigerator. Not sure about the germ cleaning capabilities, I have my doubts about using this, alone, to mop a floor when your goal is killing germs. A bucket of very hot water and mop solution is probably more effective. All said, I definitely would buy it again and recommend it to friends.

I owned a McCulloch steam cleaner for a long time, and it is such a fantastic tool for cleaning ANY surface, knooks and crannies - floors, walls, vents, bathrooms, getting into all of the fixtures and corners and caulk, cars - you name it. Just bought the new 1385 as my old one was on its last legs. Many improvements - bigger tank with a pressure/volume meter, bigger mop head for floors. However, the accessories leave a lot to be desired - there is one that is a triangle with ineffective brushes, which can snap into another one but flimisily with more ineffective brushes, and no pads that fit that contraption. The worst though is the squeegee attachment. The old one had a very good squeegee, but they decided to make two tools out of this one - a squeegee on one side and a set of ineffective brushes on the other side, with the steam ports on that side. Why? It makes two bad tools in one. Not only can you not drag the squeegee down with steam on your window, but the squeegee is angled backwards so if you use the brush side to clean a window and then try to flip it over, the squeegee is angled opposite the way it should be, so you have to push the squeegee downwards instead of pulling it. Makes it impossible for tall windows. I tried to find video of how to use this contraption, and I see if I could find anyone that made a regular squeegee adaptor. This one tool I used about 10-15% of the time. Really disappointed with that.