We are asked frequently if our Chief Steamers are only for Car Detailing or cleaning cars? The answer is an astounding NO!
Our background is Car Detailing
We started detailing cars over 25 years ago. Cars are dirty! Anything that can be used to help clean a car faster and more effectively we have probably tried. We have been using steam cleaners to help clean cars for over 12 years and we were one of the first detailing shops to use one. We have been through many of them and we have learned the technology because of that, and now we engineer our own and sell them
A steam cleaner needs to be built very well to get a dirt car clean. There are many different surfaces such as leather, vinyl, plastics, carpet and seat fabrics. All of these surfaces are porous to a degree which makes them even harder to clean. Combine that with the embedded dirt, spills, stains, grease, etc, and you have a difficult time getting these varying surfaces clean. As well, the interior of a car is an area that you cannot get too wet or leave too much of a chemical smell behind. This is why steam works well in cleaning a car. You can get the surfaces much cleaner, leave them much drier and do it in a much faster time frame
Car Detailing with steam takes a toll on the machine
because of what we just mentioned about cleaning a car, the steam cleaner being used has to be built extremely well. We have used many that were not built very well. They either did not perform well on the filthy dirty cars, or they broke very fast because of the time spent using the machine. In our shop, we need a steamer 8-10 hours per day and 6 days a week. That is true with many other shops. And now because we have sold steamers to large car dealerships, car manufacturers and manufacturing plants, car rental agencies, car washes, and larger detail shops, we know our Chief Steamers will be put to the test. They have to be well made or they will break down. We know this and how they will be used.
So we build our steamers with as high pressure and heat as anyone in the industry. We make sure they are easy to service. We make sure the warranty is top-notch as EVERYONE of our Chief Steamers has a LIFETIME boiler and heater warranty along with a 3-year parts warranty. These machines are built to last.
Back to the original question….can they be used for more than just Car Detailing?
Of course, they can! As we said, a car is a difficult thing to clean. more heat is needed. More pressure is needed. The machine needs to be cycled on for a longer period of time. You do not want a huge pressure drop. We use the longest hose of anyone. We have as much heat and pressure as anyone. Out machines are portable but still heavy-duty and can take a beating
So when people want to know if they can clean tile and grout, or clean grills, or ovens, clean range hoods in a restaurant, or clean hotels or hospitals, or food packaging plants. We always say of course the machine can do that. You see, most of the surfaces just mentioned are very hard and non porous such as stainless steel. A steamer does not have as difficult a time with a super hard surface like these. Car surfaces are actually much harder to clean as the dirt gets more embedded. A Chief Steamer will not have as hard of a time with a stainless surface or a tiled surface. And when you see the pressure, heat and steam volume that our machines have, you can certainly feel confident that it will do its jobs in areas such as this
Just because we do not show videos on these other areas or speak as much about cleaning these other areas, we certainly know the Chief Steamer will do it. Car Detailing has just been our background. But it helped us develop a superior steam cleaner as we believe that cars are the most difficult thing to clean with steam