Keeping your floor clean enough to eat off can be a herculean task if you have young children and pets in the home.
While the best robotic vacuum cleaners and mops these days do a great job, sometimes they can be hit and miss – and might even require two passes to get your floors really clean.
That’s particularly the case if you have dogs like ours.
We have a golden retriever that sheds enough hair to leave the floor feeling ‘slippery’ if it is not cleaned enough.
Our other dog loves chewing tennis balls until there are only tiny shreds left.
Throw into the mix some young children spilling food, play paint, toys and other objects around the house and you have a scenario that a mere bot might not cope with.
That’s where something like the Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch Steam comes to the fore.
This is a heavy duty, cordless wet/dry vacuum and steam mop which is ideal for families with lots of hard floors to clean.
After unboxing it, the first thing you notice is that it is heavy.
Fortunately it has a self-propulsion system so it literally glides around the floor. Wear socks and it almost drags you along with it!
Most importantly it uses 140 degree steam to dissolve stains on floors.
Steam mode is particularly good for high traffic areas like the kitchen and bathrooms, where cleanliness is next to godliness.
I only wished I had it a few weeks earlier when I managed to cause one of my fridge shelves in the door to come crashing down, leaving every sort of liquid on the floor. Cleaning that up manually was not fun.
The Tineco stretch is the sort of thing that will melt away items like eggs, jam, grease as well as other sticky messes from your tiled floors and sealed hard floors.
It’s called a stretch because it has a lay flat handle which allows it to get under couches, beds and other furniture. The 180 degree ultra flat design reduces to about 13cm.
With many families concerned about the use of chemicals in the home, you can see the appeal of this product.
“Australians are more conscious than ever about the best way to clean their floors hygienically,’’ Jade Tang, Tineco Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand, said.
“We see consumers prioritising hygiene, health and convenience with a growing demand for steam-powered systems that deliver not just spotless floors, but the peace of mind that comes with knowing they’re truly sanitised — all without the need for chemicals,’’ Mr Tang said.
“Steam cleaning is no longer a niche category — it’s quickly becoming the standard for modern, health-driven home care.
“Tineco’s innovations, including TÜV-certified hygiene standards and intelligent self-cleaning mechanisms, reflect how technology is meeting the evolving expectations of Australian households.”
Tineco says its flagship device eliminates 99.9 per cent of bacteria.
It has a dual block anti-tangle design which is important for coping with things like dog and human hair.
The Tineco Floor One S7 Steam has a run time of up to 80 minutes, though that reduces considerably if you are using maximum suction or lots of steam.
You can change settings from auto to max suction or steam easily via a mode button on the handle.
A digital display shows what mode you are in and also how much runtime you have left.
The device also tells you when you make changes in quite a loud volume, which thankfully can be adjusted.
We have an average four bedroom house with a lot of tiled space and it was able to cover all of our cleaning needs (apart from carpets) in under 30 minutes.
The advantage of it over a bot is that it is quicker and does a better job of deep cleaning your tiles. It can leave them initially wetter than a bot would though, especially if you overlap with your cleaning too much.
My wife, who has manually mopped our floors each week even with a bot in operation, has loved using the Tineco cleaner, particularly given it is self propelling both in a forward and backwards direction.
After use, the S7 Stretch Steam cleans itself with a touch of a button using fresh water heated by 85 degree hot air to dissolve stains from the pipe to the brush roller.
There is a tank for fresh water and a tank which has a filter for the dirty water which should be emptied after each clean.
The colour of the dirty water is testament to the fact that it working well.
The Floor One S7 Stretch Steam features 21kpa suction, triple-sided edge cleaning, a 45 degree swivel design, uses a smart sensor to determine cleaning effort, and has upgraded pouch cells.
It has a RRP of $1,199 via Tineco Online Store, Harvey Norman, JB HiFi, The Good Guys, Bing Lee, Retravision, Mobileciti, Big W Online. Shopping around online might get even better deals, based on our quick scan.
