Reviewing Rug Doctor

I recently bought a Rug Doctor from Costco. Our rugs were nasty when we moved in the house and our pets have made them even nastier due them trying to cover up the markings from the previous homeowners pets. I know at this point we should just replace all the carpet but 1)we can't afford new carpet at this point and 2) did you not read I have 4 kids under the age of 6?! So, I invested in the Rug Doctor. My idea, since it was $400, is to rent it out to my friends for $15/day since renting it at a store is $25/day. 
I cleaned Serenity's carpet a week and a half ago. I was really pleased with the results. It is waaayyyy better than before. It smells better in there too. So tonight, with the impending visitation of my in-laws coming up, I wanted to clean out the basement living room. A few hours worth of work later... and it is so much cleaner! Compared to my old steam-vac, I give this one 4 1/2 stars out of 5! I really only have two dislikes out of it. The first dislike comes from the upholstery attachment. The design of the attachment does not seem to be very efficient in scrubbing then sucking up the water. It seems to do both simultaneously. It seems to work adequately though. I will discover more on this when I have to do the stairs but for a mattress it seemed to work okay. The only other thing I wish they would've done with the design of the Rug Doctor was to put the catch tank on the bottom. The soap holding tank holds about a gallon and a half of water but the catch tank holds probably 5 gallons. So to me, it would be very beneficial to keep filling the machine without having to take out the catch tank every time. 


For your amusement, I took before and after photos of the carpet I was working on. Notice the stain on the left side of the photo. That is old paint and I knew that would not come out, but the rest turned out nice. 

The best way to use the machine I found is to: Push forward while releasing soap, then pull to pick up the water, then push forward without releasing soap to pick up more water. The second push forward pushed the carpet pile and made a huge difference on drying time and picked up a surprising amount of water. So thank you Rug Doctor for giving my carpet a bit more life! :D