BISSELL® Big Green® PET PRO Carpet Cleaner, 3288

We finally bought the Big Green Machine after renting the PetSmart version several times. All in all, this is a nice, easy to use carpet cleaner and I recommend it. More Detail: Unboxing: The cleaner is practically assembled when it arrives in its sturdy box. If you have trouble lifting heavy objects, it might be best to cut the bottom off the box and lift the box off, rather than trying to lift the machine out of the box. The accessory hose is in the box in the space between the cleaner and the box. Packed inside the waste bin is a sample of soap that you must remove. There are also a couple of other pieces of shipping material that need to be removed. I also found that the drain plug for the clean water reservoir was loose, so I tightened that up. The unit arrived in great shape with no visible damage to the packaging or the unit itself. This is basically the same unit as the commercial version, from what I can tell. I cant speak to the motors themselves, but it sounds the same as the rental version. The only things different are that the directions for use are not stamped directly on the machine, and there is no rental motor counter, which records the number of hours on the machine. Otherwise, quality, fit, and finish is almost identical to what Ive seen from the PetSmart rentals. Setup for use: Setup is fairly straight forward and easy. The bottom reservoir is for warm water and the cleaning solution. The cap is large and easy to put on and remove. That unit nestles down in the bottom, with a nozzle that allows the liquid to be drawn out for spraying. On top of that goes the dirty water receptacle, followed by the clear lid, which locks in place. You can see the dirty water as it is sucked up via the clear lid. The cord is heavy duty and long enough for all the uses I have. The only thing it cant do is reach from one end of our upstair hallway to the other, but it runs the full length of the house, so it is a long hallway! Use and Cleaning: The unit is relatively easy to move around. The large rear wheels make it an easy roll from place to place when you tip it back onto the wheels. The low center of gravity from the handles connection point at the bottom of the unit keeps it steady and even as you push and pull it across the carpet. It is a bit heavy to pick up via deadlift, but my relatively small wife can pick it up if she does it carefully. Shes not going far with it, mind you, but she was able to load and unload it from our SUV when we rented these. It has a nice grab handle on the front and the rear. The cleaner does a good job of getting the carpets clean and removing most of the moisture from the carpet. Our drying times have been relatively quick, which is good. You really dont want soggy carpets. I am giving four stars, however, because our particular unit seems not to spray well on the forward motion, or at least not as consistently as the rental versions did. It is spraying the cleaning solution, but one pass does not seem to wet the carpet enough. I found myself doing a pass up and back with the trigger depressed, and then two additional passes to remove the liquid. Drying time was still good. But, because it doesnt seem as effective with one pass only, Im holding a star back. It may be something that will improve with us, or it may just be this unit. It still cleans well. This unit needs a little help with heavy stains, as you would expect. We pretreat spots with Resolve carpet cleaner and a little light scrubbing. Then, going over the spots with Big Green it does a great job removing the stains. I make extra passes over high traffic areas or tough stains and it does make a huge difference. Ive mostly used the carpet cleaning system that came with my Kirby in recent years, but this is a superior clean than that one. Depending on the pile of your carpet and the amount of pet hair in your home, you will notice clumps of fibers/hair under the unit and in the waste area. At times clumps will become large enough that they will fall off the machine during use. Its not a big problem, and not unique to this cleaner. If you have a carpet or pets that shed, you can stop and clean it off periodically during use. Cleanup: As with all cleaners, cleaning the unit is essential to its performance. This one is easy to clean. The dirty water receptacle has a large opening and is easy to dump (I dump into the toilet) and rinse The clear lid takes a little work at the sink to get al the crevices cleaned out. Any leftover cleaning solution can be drained easily by unscrewing the plug on the bottom. Wipe down the outside and bottom of the unit, being sure to get clumps of carpet fiber and hair from the roller area, and youre all done. The handle folds down to save space vertically, should you need it. Complaints: As to complaints about drips; yes, when you stop cleaning and park the unit, there will be some dirty water spots I dont think its a leak, per se, but rather the liquid that get caught up in the roller assembly when everything is spinning and working. When it stops it drips. I keep an old towel handy and back the machine up onto the towel when I stop using it - problem solved. Overall: We purchased this for ourself because we had been so pleased with the rentals. It does a good job cleaning our carpets and controlling the odors from three dogs who sometimes have accidents. It really does leave the carpets cleaner and reduces odors, and were very pleased. Had I not had a slightly different experience with the rentals units, I might have rated it 5 stars. After a few more uses I will update my review as needed.

It got the stains out of my carpet. It definitely works. I did several passes & used double the solution like some of the other reviews said. I added before & after pics.

I bought this because I have 2 small dogs and they like to pee on the carpet. I always clean up the pee when it happens, and I pre-treated with spray carpet cleaner and let sit for about 5 minutes before using the “Big Green”. The first time I used it, I filled the cleaning tank to the fill line and added two capfuls of cleaning liquid. I only cleaned one small bedroom fully and a hallway, and then spot cleaned in a few other places. I quickly realized I did not need that much cleaning solution. The 2nd time I used it, I used 16 cups (1 gallon) of warm/hot tap water and only one cup of cleaning solution since I planned to only spot clean some pee and vomit. I still had atleast half of the cleaning detergent left over. I say this because you don’t need to waste the detergent and only plan on enough for the job you are doing. Overall it did a really nice job cleaning and I was very pleased with the product. The photos show where my dog ate “toadkill” and then puked it up later that day. There is some shadowing in the photos, but there is no stain left after cleaning. Pros and cons listed below: Pros- cleans carpet very well, easy to use, easy to maintain, great suction, carpet dries quickly, the hose works great on stairs and upholstery Cons- super heavy to carry up/down stairs. I take all the clean/dirty reservoirs off and then carry just the machine. This reduces weight a little bit. - this thing is HUGE and I haven’t figured out where to store it yet- the machine costs a lot, but I think I will save money and have cleaner carpets in the long run, so look at it as an investment. - again this machine is heavy and I can only use it for about 15 minutes before my back starts to get uncomfortable. - you do need to spend about 5 to 10 minutes cleaning the machine after each use to keep it in good working order. - it is hard to aim the sprayer on the hose directly on the surface, but if you hold it about 3 inches away from the surface, it is easier to spray the hose correctly and you can see exactly where it sprayed the cleaning solution - both times I used it I vacuumed first, but there was wet lint that collected on the surface of my carpet. I just bent over and picked it up, or continued to go over the spot until it was suctioned up, so not a big deal. Overall, I love this machine and will most likely use it for spot cleaning every week, and full carpet cleaning quarterly. Definitely recommend for pet owners.

I dont know why i was wasting so much $ letting carpet wash man do the job and they wouldnt do it aa good as me. If you think you use it more than 3 times a year it pays for itself in 1st year , just get you a good shampoo reagent ( i got zepp) and mix it with water and spray that on stain, brush it manually and use the same shampoo for big green and you will be surprised how clean it comes out, i have used it 2times and if i wanted to pay someone to wash the way i washed they would easily charge me 250 if not 300, So it has already paid for itself.

I should start this review by saying that my carpet is original to my house, which is 26 years old. I have had the carpets professionally cleaned and I have done them myself many times. I have owned several carpet cleaners in the past and really hesitated spending this much money for another. I have to say it is worth every penny! Seriously, it got out things I thought would never come out. My son had spilled Dr. Pepper behind a metal file cabinet in his bedroom, and of course didnt bother to mention it to me. It had set in for about six month by the time I found it, and the file cabinet had rusted on the soda. Not cool! So while I held out little hope, I pre-treated the stain with the cleaner that came with the machine (mixed with water) in a spray bottle. I let it sit around 10 minutes while I did other parts of the carpet. When I went over that area, almost all the stain came up, including the rust. I did go back and use the pre-treat again several times and each time more of the stain came up. There is a very faint rust stain that did not come out but you really have to be looking for it to see it. I found this machine to actually be more quiet than others I have used, which is not to say it isnt loud, because it is. But compared to other machines, even my husband commented that it was not as loud as the last one we owned. It cleans way, way better than other models I have tried and I didnt spend half my time running to the sink to empty and refill the tanks. I was blown away by the amount of water/solution that was sucked out of the carpet. Most other machines, even the professionals, leave the carpet so wet. Last time I had my Berber carpets cleaned it took 4 days to dry! With this machine it was mostly dried in 3 hours. I did have one spot that took till the next morning, but it was the area I went over several times. It was easy to operate and cleans on both forward and backward stroke. I also used this on my sofa, chairs, and an area rug with similar results. The hose is long enough to clean up the stairs, and the electric cord is long enough to not have to move it, at least in my house, very often. The Cons- It is heavy, which I guess is why it works so well but if you have stairs, you will probably have to carry it up in pieces like I did (machine, tanks separately). It did drip a little when I was carrying it to be emptied, which I hate, but every other machine I have owned has done the same...........Grrrrrrr! I dont like the water flow indicator. This little disk spins on the tank to show you the water flow. If you arent paying attention (I get into the zone when I clean and did this several times), you will be moving the machine around but no water/solution is being released. The way the tanks fit together make it a little difficult to tell when they are locked together. I was releasing solution into the carpet and nothing was coming back up. Had to turn the machine off, take the tank off and put it back on and fiddle with it to Lock it down. All of that said, I will and already have recommended this machine very very highly. Its really all about the clean!! The cons I listed are all small things that are more bothersome than real problems. I am please with my purchase and love that my carpet looks almost new again. Good for another 26 years??

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I have posted two pictures of the very first short pass on our homes carpet using this new machine. This is at the top of the stairway in the upstairs hallway. She placed the machine and then pulled the handle releasing the cleaning solution and water and pulled the machine backwards ONE TIME. She did not go back over the spot. Look at the results. Strange thing is, you dont really notice how dirty the carpet is until you use a GREAT MACHINE like this one.........These carpets were cleaned with the Rug Doctor Mighty Pro X3 just two months ago. My wife vacuums our entire house EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. In fact, she has a machine on each floor to avoid having to carry the vacuum up and down three floors. We have Simplicity Pro Upright Vacuums (an $800 plus per machine vacuum) and a Shark Upright, and they are very good vacuum cleaners. We have 3 large canine kids all who reside in the house, where they belong. Of course, most of the carpeting in our home is an off white berber style carpet. We have tried everything over the years from professional carpet cleanings to various rental carpet cleaners and we have owned a number of machines ourselves. Recently, our neighbors allowed us to borrow their new Rug Doctor Mighty Pro X3 to clean our carpets. It worked well and I decided it was time to buy our own machine (again). The Rug Doctor we borrowed from the neighbors worked better than the upright Hoover Pet Machine and another similar upright vacuum cleaner looking carpet cleaners we have owned. Usually, the biggest flaw in these upright machines which are styled like vacuum cleaners are that they dont extract the water and cleaning solution well (weak suction) which leaves the carpets wet. Also, they have small water holding tanks for both clean water and extracted water. Small tanks mean a lot of filling and emptying of those small tanks. Every minute spent filling or emptying dirty water tanks is a minute NOT spent cleaning the carpets. You can spend more time emptying and filling those small tanks than you actually spend cleaning the carpets. Its critical that you dont overuse ANY of the carpet cleaning solutions when cleaning the carpet. Its a common mistake people make when cleaning their own carpets. Some people equate more soap with cleaner carpets and in reality, just the opposite is actually true. When you use too much soap, the machines dont rinse the carpet well and it doesnt extract the solution OR the water from the carpet. The carpets will actually get dirty faster when they have excess dried cleaning solutions on them. Also, carpets which remain wet longer because the water and solution are not extracted properly will mean more dirt will stick to the carpets and running a vacuum cleaner over damp carpet gums up the vacuum cleaner and reduces the vacuum cleaners dirt lifting ability, not just when the carpets are wet, but afterwards as well. Typical residential Vacuum cleaners (not the Shop vacuum types of machines) are NOT designed to extract moisture from any surface. Getting your vacuum cleaner wet underneath from using it on damp carpets will cause the brushes to gum and the belts to slip and eventually it will wreck the machine. Wet / damp carpets are not only a nuisance, they are destructive to vacuum cleaners. Just ask any vacuum cleaner repair person and they will confirm just how destructive it is to use any residential vacuum cleaner on damp carpets. Ideally, when you begin the project of cleaning your carpets, you want to spend as much of your time actually cleaning the carpets and not shuffling clean and dirty water back and forth. This is where the Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning machine really separates itself from the competition. Not only are the clean and dirty water tanks larger than virtually every other machine we have either owned, borrowed or rented, the Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine also has a much better cleaning bar to scrub the carpets. But one of the greatest distinctions between our new Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine and the Rug Doctor which we had borrowed from our generous neighbors, is the Bissell is far superior at lifting the water and cleaning solution out of the carpet when you are extracting the water and solution. I would say it is at least TWICE as good as the Rug Doctor machine at actually extracting water and cleaning solution from your newly cleaned carpets. Having owned about half a dozen different machines over the years, I wasnt too excited about spending $400 plus shipping on another carpet cleaner. I have cleaned and repaired our previous machines numerous times and its really disappointing how many of the machines are really made. The Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine has a 5 year Residential Warranty on the machine, which is excellent. The machine is well made and another SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE between this machine and the Rug Doctor Blue machine is the actual handle height when you use the machine. My wife and I are both taller than average, she is 510 and I am 64. I personally found the handle on the Rug Doctor machine at a terrible height for me to use. The Rug Doctor machine handle requires me (and my wife) to stoop over to operate the machine, which becomes a problem very quickly. Not the case with the Bissell Big Green Machine. Near as I can tell, the handle operating position on the Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine is about 5 taller than the Rug Doctor machine. This makes a HUGE DIFFERENCE when using the machine. Big advantage to the Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine. The water and solution extraction of the Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine has to be at least DOUBLE that of the Rug Doctor Machine we had borrowed from our neighbors and theirs is a new machine with very little use. How can you tell how much water the machine is extracting? Simple, if you put two gallons of clean water in and when you extract it, you only get 3 quarts of dirty water, the rest of the water is remaining in the carpet, along with some which will evaporate during the process. The point is to get out as much of the water and cleaning solution that you have put into the carpets. The Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine clearly is superior to the rug Doctor in extracting cleaning water and solution out of the carpets. By far, the best machine we have ever used to clean carpets. The carpets were even dryer than when we have paid someone $800 or more to clean our carpets. When my wife cleaned the carpets with the Rug Doctor machine, we actually used those floor drying blower machines for 2 or 3 days after the carpet cleaning to help dry the carpet.Truth is, we are so used to having damp carpet after cleaning that we own two of those clam shell styled floor dryers which the carpet cleaning pros use. With the Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine, there is no need for the floor drying blowers as the carpet was dry to both the touch, but more importantly, it passed the SOCK TEST after 24 hours. Walk on the carpets in your socks and see if they get wet. After a day, our carpets passed the Sock Test where it took nearly three full days with the rug Doctor machine. The two machines are similar in appearance and in style. But that is where the similarities end. The rug Doctor is a good machine. The Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine is a GREAT MACHINE, especially for the price. I asked my wife to honestly give me any negative about the Bissell machine she could think of after having spent two days cleaning several rooms of carpet and hallways and staircases. We discussed the two machines and their use. In the end, the ONLY negative comment about the Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine is that we didnt purchase it sooner. Hands down, The Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine is the best carpet cleaning machine we have ever used, owned, rented or paid others to clean our carpets. Having a direct comparison to the comparable Rug Doctor machine was very handy. I would give the Rug Doctor Mighty Pro X3 a 7 out of 10, where as I would give the Bissell Big Green Deep Cleaning Machine a 9.9 out of 10. Why a 9.9 and not a perfect score? I don;t want the Bissell engineers to stop their pursuit of perfection in residential carpet cleaning machines, but with this machine, they are much closer to perfect than any other machine we have ever used.

No issues

I loved my Hoover but decided rather than rent a commercial cleaner I’d just buy it and the price seemed reasonable. Did some research and the Bissell rated well. It cleans well and pulls the water out so the carpet is dry within 2 days. It will pay for itself. I’m pleased.

I have a great Bissell shampooer that is a pet model. Also have the little green machine. The bigger one I have works great but leaves too much water in carpets and rugs. So I bought this model thinking this was a better choice. I’ve used it two days now. It’s very heavy. It’s very hard to maneuver. It doesn’t get up against walls so need to use the little green machine after. It sucks up the water better but not by much. I’m not over saturating! It’s exhausting to use this! My other one is like vacuuming. This is like moving your fridge! Pluses: long cord, long hose. Fairly easy to assemble after filling with water and cleaner. Very easy to clean dirt chambers. I’ll keep it but probably pay someone to use it next time. Think twice! I’m not frail. I have the strength but wasting energy on moving sofas and chairs to expend way too much more on using the shampooer is a deal breaker for me.