The Haan SI-35 Makes Cleaning a Steamrolling Task
Recently, we have become increasingly enamored of steam. Sure, we’ve seen it before- a handheld iron, for example. But we’ve been stepping up the use a steam cleaner sanitizer on our floors due to the absence of chemicals and the sheer fact that a bucket and mop is hard on our back (and frankly, a general pain). Not to mention that we didn’t much like cleaning to begin with!
HAAN has a variety of products on hand to help improve the cleanliness of your home, and we decided to use the HAAN SI-35 Slim & Light Series Floor Cleaning Sanitizer on our floors and see what kind of effort this cleaner would put forth. The SI-35 uses steam in excess of 212°F to clean and kill 99.9% of germs.
Our place consists of mostly tile and hardwood, and we decided to start in one of the dirtiest places in the house; the tiled kitchen. Perhaps some level of grime is natural, but it’s made worse by the fact I can’t go ONE single day without spilling something. We suggest first vacuuming or wiping up any loose debris as steam mops are not made to pick up a ton of fragments, shards, or the like.
The first observation was the simplicity of the assembly. All we had to do was snap on the handle and press on the cleaning pad. It was definitely as easy as using a Swiffer- lightweight with a long enough handle to prevent us from straining our back. We always recommend you use distilled water because usually it helps prolong the life of your steam cleaner (due to no minerals breaking down inside your boiler). It only took about 30 seconds to heat up and that was plenty fast. We appreciated the silence of the SI-35, as it was quiet enough that we didn’t even disturb the cats we were house-sitting.
The kitchen and dining area required a tank of water (the tank size is 13.5 ounces) and we needed to refill after that space, but we did take our time a bit which of course requires more water. The floor dried in a short amount of time and it definitely did a thorough job. We noticed this isn’t a particularly great steam mop for grout but then again, grout usually requires more effort and a certain type of cleaning.
There is a carpet tray attachment so you can tidy up and sanitize your couch or loosen a stain from the carpet. This is not to be used in place of a good old-fashioned carpet cleaning as it does not have that capability, but it definitely helped loosen a coffee stain that had been in the carpet for a few days.
The pads are re-washable and we would recommend that once the pads become saturated to replace them (the unit comes with 2 pads). Complaints with steamers often stem from streaking on the floors, caused by pads that are saturated already.
The positives far outweighed the negative but it wouldn’t be fair to not mention the downsides to using. There is no short handle attachment so it is still up to you to clean your countertops/smaller areas by hand or invest in a hand-held steam cleaner. The cord was decent but not long enough to reach multiple rooms so just be aware that you will need multiple outlets if you are switching rooms. The SI-35 only swivels forward and backward, not side-to-side, so it can be a bit difficult to get into tighter spaces.
We were able to purchase from Amazon for around $110 also purchase the Replacement Micro-fiber Steam Mop Pads for around $20 for 4 pads.
If you are looking for a version that combines handheld, check out the Steamfast 3-in-1 Mop which is easy to morph into a handheld steam cleaner into simply by switching the microfiber pad bottom to a small nozzle. You can also use this device as a hand-held steamer for clothing. The results were decent- we were even able to pretty easily uncrease wrinkles in some dress shirts.
