Do-it-yourself Carpet cleaners

You can hire a carpet cleaner from Asda, it's called Rug Doctor and you book it online from your nearest store.
It costs about £25 for 24 hours and you can buy the General Cleaner for it and different sprays for spot treatment.
My Son has cleaned my carpets downstairs a couple of times for me and it works brilliantly.

Thank you for all your advice, I’ll do some more research .

I agree with Nan the Wiser. I had a Vax shampooer which was n't that good and I sold it cheaply on Gumtree. Since then my daughter has hired a Rug Doctor machine from a local supermarket and thought it was fantastic. So much better than my old Vax.

I used to have a Vax carpet shampooer, but the pump failed not long after I bought it. They are quite good, but better results seem to be from hiring a Rug Doctor machine from your local supermarket which are more powerful, but quite hard work. My daughter hired one after her Bissel machine gave up the ghost, and was very impressed with the results.

I am now on my second Vax carpet cleaner and think they're brilliant. I have a lot of visitors and whilst many of them do take off their shoes in the house, there are just as many who don't. I also have two dogs who regularly come to stay along with small grandchildren. I have found that after Vaxing it my 20 year old wool carpet comes up almost like new.

I did have a steam cleaner which I used to clean the vinyl floors in the house and sometimes ran over my carpets but I cant say I rated it much. It may be because it was a fairly cheap on I dont know. It gave up the ghost last year and I bought a vax carpet cleaner instead as I had realised that steaming did not really clean dirty marks and spills of carpets.

I have a Vax like others have mentioned. I really like it. Its simple to use and works well. Carpets are left fairly dry and with heating on will dry off in a couple of hours
( even in my up to now quite damp house)..

Mr C cleaned two of our carpets with our (small) Vax carpet cleaner earlier this week, the heating was on a fairly low temperature and both were dry within two hours. The shorter pile carpet was dry under an hour, the longer with more dense pile took just under two hours. We thought both more than acceptable. Wouldn't be without it curvy as it just sucks up any major spills in seconds. The contents of a mug of black coffee on a cream carpet just disappeared which meant there was no blood to clean off . .

curvy that is about right. I did mine on a warm day last summer but with the heating on it will also dry quickly. The first time I used it I forgot to rinse so had to go over it again and it really didn't take too long to dry as it picks up the surplus water.

dragonfly46 , does it take long to dry? I think in the ads it says ‘dry in an hour ‘

I too have a Vax and find it very good. All my carpets are wool.

Thank you everyone. Ladymuck, I’ve heard good things about the vac carpet cleaner, I’ll do a bit of online research . I gather Which? gave it a very good review.I’d be interested to hear what other gransnetters
think ?

I've steam cleaned a stain on a carpet three times now (well more, if you count going over it several times each time) and the stain is still there.

I hadn't thought of using Vanish together with a steam cleaner, thank you Missfoodlove, I'll try that.

You can rent carpet cleaners. I've used one before and they work very well.

The white towelling cloths that go on my steamer white come off black.
I know my polti steamer cleans well. It was worth every penny.

Steam cleaners don't really clean, they just freshen. You need something with suction to remove dirt.
I have a Vax carpet cleaner which does the job very well, and I have pet hairs to deal with!

I should have made it clearer, it’s a steam cleaner I’m after!

I use vanish on stains then steam clean the carpet.
This works well on all my wool carpets, the only synthetic carpet I have is a stain magnet and hard to clean.