Cleaning with Steam

I really need to clean my carpets, but I'm so averse to using chemicals around my cats that I'm thinking about buying a steam cleaner.

I was wondering if anyone has any personal experience with any of the steam cleaners availabe on the market? I can't afford to spend $1,000+ to get a really good cleaner, and I guess the ones that call themselves steam vacs just use hot water and you have to use a cleaning product as well (not just steam).

Any advice on what I should look for?

A couple years ago we got my mom a Hoover upright steam vac for Christmas from Kohls (I KNOW it wasn't even close to $1000, probably more like 200-300).... it does have a hot water and cleanser compartments so I don't see why you couldn't just use the hot water part to clean... although my mom uses the Hoover pet specific cleaner in hers and we have not had any problems with the cat, dog, hermit crabs, fish or frog lol (we usually put the dog outside and keep the cat on whichever floor is not currently being cleaned).

In thinking about it right now, I wonder if any of the Nature's Miracle stuff could be used in such a cleaner....

If you're interested, I can get the style/model number of my mom's vac - it has worked really well... we've used it on carpet and the vinyl kitchen floor and it has a hose and upholstery tool as well

Sure, if it's no trouble to get the model number, I'd like to take a look at it. I've been looking at the steam vacs and it's hard to know which ones work good. Maybe I need to research pet safe cleaners that will work in them as well. It looks like decent ones that only use steam are way out of my price range.

Ok sorry it took a couple days lol but it's the Hoover steam vac Dual V Widepath.



Here it is on the hoover site:
http://www.hoover.com/product.aspx?m...0900&ds=false#

And Kohls apparently still has it for $250 (at least it's listed on their site, we got it in-store)
http://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/home...et+Cleaner.jsp