A steam mop is a

mop A mop (such as a floor mop) is a mass or bundle of coarse strings or yarn, etc., or a piece of cloth, sponge or other absorbent material, attached to a pole or stick. It is used to soak up liquid, for cleaning floors and other surfaces, to mop ...

that uses steam to clean floors and carpets. Unlike a regular mop, which requires cleaning agents such as

bleach Bleach is the generic name for any chemical product that is used industrially or domestically to remove color (whitening) from a fabric or fiber or to clean or to remove stains in a process called bleaching. It often refers specifically, to ...

detergent A detergent is a surfactant or a mixture of surfactants with cleansing properties when in dilute solutions. There are a large variety of detergents, a common family being the alkylbenzene sulfonates, which are soap-like compounds that are more ...

, a steam mop uses

heat In thermodynamics, heat is defined as the form of energy crossing the boundary of a thermodynamic system by virtue of a temperature difference across the boundary. A thermodynamic system does not ''contain'' heat. Nevertheless, the term is al ...

from steam to

disinfect A disinfectant is a chemical substance or compound used to inactivate or destroy microorganisms on inert surfaces. Disinfection does not necessarily kill all microorganisms, especially resistant bacterial spores; it is less effective than ste ...

the floors. A microfibre pad is often placed right underneath the steam jet to trap dirt. Most steam mops have a small water tank, and often provide dry steam.

History

The steam mop was first envisioned by

Romi Haan Romi is a given name and may refer to: * Romi Dames (born 1979), Japanese-American actress * Romi Garduce (born 1969), Filipino mountain climber and IT Professional in Procter and Gamble Philippines * Romi Goldmuntz (1882–1960), Belgian business ...

in 1998 in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

. She developed a prototype in 2001 and in 2004 the steam mop would hit the mass-market.

Usage

A steam mop works by heating up the water inside the reservoir to temperatures of about 120 degrees

Celsius The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the Kelvin scale. The ...

(248 degrees

Fahrenheit The Fahrenheit scale () is a temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). It uses the degree Fahrenheit (symbol: °F) as the unit. Several accounts of how he originally defined his ...

). Many steam mops have one jet of dry steam (but may have as many as 15 jets), moistening a

microfibre Microfiber (or microfibre) is synthetic fiber finer than one denier or decitex/thread, having a diameter of less than ten micrometers. A strand of silk is about one denier and about a fifth of the diameter of a human hair. The most common ty ...

pad placed underneath. The steam helps soak the pad and dirt is drawn off ground. Unlike regular mops, steam mops do not leave a residue on the floor and often clean through the dirt. The heat of the steam can kill about 99 percent of the

bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among ...

and

dust mite House dust mites (HDM, or simply dust mites) are various species of acariform mites belonging to the family Pyroglyphidae that are found in association with dust in dwellings. They are known for causing allergies. Biology Species The curren ...

s. Steam mops can disinfect floors, restore shine, kill

dust mites House dust mites (HDM, or simply dust mites) are various species of acariform mites belonging to the family Pyroglyphidae that are found in association with dust in dwellings. They are known for causing allergies. Biology Species The current ...

, and remove some stains. Some of the steam mops feature a two-sided, flip mop head that allows you to clean twice as much floor before changing the mop pad. One pad is soft for use on delicate flooring such as

hardwood Hardwood is wood from dicot trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood (which comes from ...

and

laminate Lamination is the technique/process of manufacturing a material in multiple layers, so that the composite material achieves improved strength, stability, sound insulation, appearance, or other properties from the use of the differing materials ...

s. The other pad has built-in scrubbing strips that facilitate cleaning tough messes.

Safety

While steam mops have advantages, the heat from the steam can

scald The structured computer-aided logic design (SCALD) software was a computer aided design system developed for building the S-1 computer. It used the Stanford University Drawing System (SUDS), and it was developed by Thomas M. McWilliams and Lawrence ...

skin quickly, raising potential safety issues.

References

{{Cleaning tools Cleaning tools