The old Number1! The first carpet cleaning units with Saiger's

Mark Saiger

Mr Happy!
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Dec 26, 2006
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11,197
Location
Grand Rapids, MN
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Mark Saiger
Doing some history digging for Simoniz and Harvard Chemcial.

My parents sold their house after many years and downsized 2 blocks away from our family home.

Brother Kirk grabbed the old Number 1 that provided for our family for many years until our first truckmount around 1981. (family started cleaning in 1967 about 53 years ago)

We pulled this out for some pics and did a quick last second "We're going live" Facebook moment.

This was the SteamTronics Version...a break off of the Deep Steam. We made these machines in Neche, North Dakota. Home Base was Grand Forks, North Dakota later.

The unit is all Stainless Steel, except for the base I believe had some steel in a frame (but that's still in tack)
2 inch belt driven sutorbilt blower suction pump
100 psi ceramic seal water pump (think we updated it a bit later)
1.5 hp electric motor (on the phone with my dad and we had updated 2 hp motor that turned 3500 RPM)
1500 watt electric heater (which we didn't use much)
The drag head was lead weight filled, 2 jet in the early days, and an added 5 jet system later.

We were really used to walking and cleaning backwards most of our life's, so the reason I think we took to the Zipper Wand so well.

The opening slot of that drag head is pretty big. We are going to try and hook it up to one of our truckmounts to jet try for fun.

No prespray back then. Two chemical mixes to choose from....residential chems (powders) or Commercial mix.

Add it to the hot water, stir it up and bucket brigade. Dad got us a 2 gallon bucket to make it easier.

Such fun times for us to see what we used and how evolved.



Old Number 1 Portable.jpgOld Number 1 portable Merle's Pic.jpgMark & young brothers 002.jpg20171225_155153.jpg50534712_2012273635474744_7824337159451574272_o.jpg67671816_2328153610553410_6311396394988994560_o.jpg
 
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Joined
Oct 7, 2006
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18,834
Location
Benton KY USA
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Lee Stockwell
I had a local friend buy a similar "Deep Steam" unit in 1974 from Arlen Knight (later of Kleenrite). He bragged it was "upgraded" to dual lamb vacs.

Impressive for the era, but heavy and unruly.
 
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Condog

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Sep 24, 2019
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431
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Phoenix AZ
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Tony

Priceless, truly awesome!
 
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Joined
Oct 10, 2006
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Location
Ann Arbor
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Steve Lawrence
I bought a couple Deep Stream units (very similar) in about 1978. Was so glad to get a JK Sales truck mount in 79--those Deep Steam things were heavy but the drag wands worked pretty well with those "portables".

Ooh, just remembered: we took one of those old 18" drag wands and put a motorized cylindrical brush and another manifold of spray jets before the pick-up slot. Dang--that was killer but probably left the carpet wetter than today's systems.
 
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Joined
Oct 25, 2016
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Location
Montana
Name
Swani
Lol! We call our porty R2D2.šŸ˜‚
 

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