Check out aerusonline.com. This is the old, Electrolux company, which has sold door 2 door for years. You can call your local branch and they will come out and give you a demo. Tell them that you are interested in hard surface cleaning and not carpet cleaning. This way you could use it on your floors and see how it works for you. They come out and clean your carpet. I sold Electrolux vacs right out of high school for 2 summers and sold many of them. I also grew up with one. When I was a kid all of the bedrooms and the family room, had hardwood floors. This was long before Poly and they were a lot of work. We had to clean them with Bruces Hardwood Floor Cleaner and hoped no one had a smoke! LOL This cleaner smelled like gas. Then you had to paste wax the floors and buff them. The machine was great, as it left no swirl marks. It has 3 brushes, 2 in the front and one in the rear, so you don't have the path which is not scrubbed. The third brush gives you something like power steering and you can move it from side to side with 2 fingers. 2 brush scrubbers tend to hop around if you are cleaning floors with wide, deep grout lines.

The machine has a cordwinder so you don't have to wind it by hand, a removable splash guard, so as not to get the cleaning solution on your base boards, has a large solution tank to dispense the cleaning solution, and the handle folds down for closet storage. I replaced the machine I grew up with 4 years ago, as it died. It was almost 40 years old. Go to Aerus online, type in your zip, and try it out in your home, then don't buy it. Now that you know what you are looking for, go to ebay. I paid $157 for the machine instead of $800. I did have to purchase the hard floor brushes through Aerus, as most of these machines are sold through the carpet shampoo demo. People use it once or twice and never use it again. Mine was like brand new, out of the box. Type in Electrolux scrubber, Aerus scrubber, Epic scrubber, Electrolux carpet shampooer, Aerus carpet shampooer, or any combination of the above. I think there are 3 on ebay at this time. Just search and you will find one and will get a bargin as opposed to purchasing a machine from a sales person, even if you have to purchase the hard floor brushes through Aerus. This machine does not suck up the cleaning solution so you still have to use a mop.

I will check out the Aerus. We have an Aerus air filter that does work extremely well. The only issue I see is that the unit looks really big and bulky and might be difficult to store and carry around. Also, do you think it will be able to get to the edge of kitchen cabinets? One of my biggest problems is grime and gunk on the wood kitchen floor.

Thanks so much.

When I was a kid all of the bedrooms and the family room, had hardwood floors. This was long before Poly and they were a lot of work. We had to clean them with Bruces Hardwood Floor Cleaner and hoped no one had a smoke! LOL This cleaner smelled like gas. Then you had to paste wax the floors and buff them.

That explains why everyone covered their hardwood floors with wall-to-wall carpeting in the 1960s!

If I can't get my hands on an Aerus for a good price, the Hoover Floormates look good. Has anyone used these? Any opinions as to which is better - the widepath or the regular that comes with tools? (seems you can't get both the wider path AND the tools)

I have a floormate I use on tile floors. It's very effective for scrubbing them.

One trick for tile is to use a garden sprayer to apply the cleaning solution to a 4x4 foot area, let it sit a few minutes, then scrub several passes, then vacuum up the dirty water.

I have the "wide path" because I have a LOT of floors.

It doesn't replace the regular vacuum, it's just a scrubber that sucks off the dirty water.