As every ferret owner is well aware ferret poop could be used as an epoxy
to hold together the space shuttle as it is resistant to even the most
vigorous attempts at removal.  Over the past few years I, like many of
you have had my eye out for a product that will make ferret poop removal
simple and fun (well maybe not fun, but bearable).  I am allergic to most
chemicals and I never really found them to be any more effective then the
enzyme products anyway I would use just for ferrets, and oxyclean with
hot water and hard work.  A few years ago I saw an add for the steam
buggy it was blasting away grime and nastiness in an oven and on an
outdoor grill, immediately I think if it will do that to baked on caked
on creosote what could it do to ferret poop.  After researching it on the
Internet, I found that the steam buggy came up lacking in the blasting
power department.  Enter the europro steam shark (AKA the EP-93).  I saw
one advertised at linens & things for about $145.00 I figured that if it
made ferret room cle aning simpler it would be worth every cent.  I have
had the blaster for about 2 months and I wanted to offer you guys a
review.
 
THE UP SIDE: Blasts poop just like you think it should!!!
 
THE DOWN SIDE: It is hard to get the smell of vaporized ferret poo out of
your sinuses.
 
THE VERDICT: Has some irritating features but it really does work.
 
MY STORY: As soon as I brought it out of the box I noticed a few
irritating features.  The first was that it only has a 5 foot cord so I
would have to move the plug around the ferret room as I worked, dragging
it through the yuck.  I also discovered that it has a little button on
the handle that you must hold down for steam to come out.  In my opinion
it really is stupid, you have to wait for the light on the body of the
steamer to turn green, then you must press the button HARD a few seconds
later and steam starts shooting out.  Once you let up on the button it
stops making steam in the tank but it takes another 45 + seconds for it
to actually stop blowing hot steam.  My thumb kills me when I am done
cleaning the room I have started using a piece of cloth to hold the
button on always.
 
We interrupt this story for a word from our sponsor .  Come to find
out that the step up the EP-95 has cooler features, a longer cord, and
supposedly no button to push.  I was on gardenweb.com and someone said
that it is an on/off switch, from what I can gather this product is only
available on the Internet it sounded like most people bought it from
vacuum-discounter.com.  Now back to my story
 
The first thing I did was dig my ferrets out of the box the steam cleaner
came in, and put them in a cadge in another room.  I did not want the
ferrets any where around the steam as it turns out the cleaner makes a
high-pitched noise (it was not irritating to me but it might hurt my kids
wittle ears).  I filled up the blaster and armed myself with towels
galore.  My kids are under strict instructions from the ferret Gods to
never use the litter box.  Because of this religious aversion to litter
pans they use the Sunday paper carefully placed in the corners of the
room every night only to be dragged into the middle of the room because
my littlest girl will not tolerate paper in the corners.  Needless to
say, I have a lot of poo and pee on the floor of the room.  Before the
blaster it would take me about 2 hours if I wanted to scrub the room
super clean.  With the steamer, I was AMAZED at how effective this thing
was, it blasted the poop to smithereens.  Now that I have a system down
(see below) I can start with a dirt y room and be done in less than an
hour and it is CLEAN!.  No residual poop stuck to the floor anywhere, it
was a total miracle.
 
MY SYSTEM: It has taken some revising but I have a system down now that
works well.  I remove the ferrets from the room I pick up all of the
paper and solid matter that has not welded itself to the floor.  I sweep
the floor with my special ferret room icky broom, and mop it with hot
water and enzyme.  Once I mop the easy stuff up, I arm myself with the
steamer and get to work with the little round scrubby attachment and a
handful of towels.  WARNING you must remember to keep your face away
from the steam not because it is hot (it is) but because the smell of
vaporized ferret nastiness is strong enough to peel paint off a wall.  I
could not get the smell to go away even when I changed clothes, it turns
out it was stuck in my sinuses or hair or something, once I took a long
hot shower with lots of flowery soap the smell was gone.
 
END COMMENTS: I do wish that I had bought the better blaster but I am
happy with the results of this one.  Besides I would not have felt right
returning something after I cleaned the ferret room with it.  I marked
the ferret room scrubby tip with duct tape so I would not accidentally
use it to clean my stove and I use the steamer all over my house my
house.  It works great on sink edges, greasy smudges that won t scrub off
cabinets, shower doors and their track.  I use it around the bottom of
the toilette (I have a 5 year old nephew who stays over a lot) again
watch out for the steam.  I have found that I cannot get it to clean my
floors with the floor attachment but I really don t care.  I have to say
that I am really pleased with the product.
[Posted in FML issue 3861]