What would happen if you used a FM on carpets?

Probably not a good idea. It's not very good at dry vacuuming hard floors, and probably would be much worse on a carpet. The carpet might also make short work of the soft rubber squeegee intake nozzle. The rotating brushes are fairly soft and low powered... and probably wouldn't do much to scrub a carpet.

I have a Floormate and use it regularly on my kitchen floor. I like being able to apply and remove the detergent solution without having to squeeze out a map. I usually spot with a hand sprayer and a stiff floor brush on any stubborn stains, then go over the entire floor with the Floormate and more detergent. Then I follow up with a warm water rinse, and liquid wax if needed. Wax is applied with a regular sponge mop.

They sound like really cool machines!! Do they do well on hardwoods? And what about tile with grout? And what shampooers did Hoover make?

The Floormate can be used on wood floors, although I would recommend the floors have a polyurethane finish. The machines typically come with a bottle of Lysol floor cleaner for vinyl/tile, and Old English floor cleaner for wood flooring.

The Floormate may not be able to get into crevices like grout between tiles - although later models have an extra stiffer brush assembly that might do a better job of it. I use my Floormate on textured vinyl flooring, and it does pretty good at that. Typically though I pre-treat heavy stain/soiling with a spray bottle of diluted cleaner and a stiff long handles floor brush. The main advantage (to me) is that the Floormate can then be used to go over the whole floor, and it sucks up the dirty cleaning fluid as it goes. Typically I also run a conatiner of warm tap water to "rinse" the floor before waxing.

Hoover used to make a hard floor cleaner in the past, much larger and heavier; I forget the name. It's been out of production for a while so it would be a collector type of item.

That would have been the Floor a matic I think it was called. Dying to get my paws on one of those now that I have a large tile sunroom, kitchen dining and laundry room.

I have the JCPenny version of the floor a matic and let me tell you, it works so great. Its soo cool the way it lifts itself up on the brushes to scrub and then sits itself back down to act as a vacuum. What a COOL machine, and it does a great job. I just used it today as a matter of fact to clean all of my vinyl floors. I will try to post a picture of it tommorrow.

Derreck

While I've only seen pictures of the Floor Matic it certainly looks like a more robust machine than the Floor Mate which I have considered getting and still might get if I can find one on sale cheap. I often see those Bissell Flip Its for much less than the Hoover but then I don't know how well those work either. I guess I could buy one and return it if I don't like it. Whatever it is it should have good dry vacuuming capability on tile, we have two long haired shedding dogs and there's nothing worse than washing floors with strings of wet dog hair sticking to everything.

I have one myself but only have used it to buff my floors have never tried scrubbing yet with it but it is a neat machine

Skip...

I generally sweep the kitchen floor before using the Floormate on it. As a dry vacuum it's just not very good - the small opening for the squeegeetends to clog with dirt easily, as well as push it out of the way instead of sucking it up. As a wet vac, it's just fine.