well, i did the side by side comp with the challenger yesterday and i can say this, WOW, impressive dry time of under 1 hr. HWE dry time, right around 2.5 hrs, which was/is my norm.

cut my huge LR into 4 "sections", with each section being approximately 10' by 12'. carpet is sculpted berber.
section 1 and 2 furthest from the kitchen, dining room, and outside entrance way.
section 3 and 4 just off kitchen, dining room and outside entrance way.

sections 1 and 2 were presprayed with cleancrafts o so clean. love this product for its versatility and low ph.
padded section 1 and found just light soiling.
HWE'd section 2 with cleancrafts fibre max and again, light soiling as revealed with recovered water.
when done with 1 and 2, i padded the HWE'd side and found it removed more soiling. i rinsed the padded side and revealed virtually no more soiling. impressed the beans out of me :)

i then repeated the same procedure with sections 3 and 4, only now for the padding, i used the orbit kleen in the section nearest the entrance way, dining room and o so clean nearest the kitchen. this orbit kleen is some really good stuff!

although i never encountered dry time issues with HWE in nearly 30yrs of cleaning, my main concerns were and will always be dry times, and being i am new to OP'ing, residual left behind was/is another major concern!
so earlier this morning, i did a clear water rinse over all sections and found virtually clean water in the recovery on all 4 sections. i then post OP'd what i just rinsed, and within just about 90 minutes, all areas were completely dry. i attribute the extra half hr dry time to the rinse but still and hr less dry time than my HWE norm, and that simply impressed me even more!!

with the little prespray i had left of orbit kleen and o so clean, i combined them and OP'd the hallway this morning (worst of all areas) and i think i found a killer combo of a cleaning agent. hall was dry in under 1 hr.
i'll most definately try the other cleaning agents available for OP'ing to zero in on the best of the best but as we all know, or should know, its best to have different agents for different cleaning situations.

i used the pads that came with the challenger, and cleancrafts eclipse w/heat behind 25' of hose, for those who may be wondering.

in closing, i must say, i seriously had my doubts, but this OP process may just become my "new ticket"!
an easy machine to operate, relatively light weight but most importantly, my initial findings with its cleaning ability and dry times, so thats what i'll "sell", CLEAN AND DRY!!!

happy thanksgiving everyone
---micky

good stuff Mick! thanx for relating it

i've heard good things about the CleanCraft product from Mark Stanley but've never used it meself.

Mark had a good post on a similar test he did himself. it was interesting to note that in 1 of the tests he OP'ed with plain hot water and it came out nearly tying for 2nd place of the 4 tests. this tells me that while chems are good, the bigger part of this methods cleaning pie is the Agitation of the OP. here is a link to Mark's testing. scroll down about 3/4 of the page (or better yet read the whole thread his posting name is "vlmcentral". if you haven't already you'll have to register at the VLM forums to view it : http://tinyurl.com/7z3nz

just copy & paste it into your address bar.

the drytimes and cleaning ability is what have me sold on this system as well Mick. it does take me a little longer than when i used to clean with my portable HWE machine, BUT with far better results that's to be expected, right?

that's a redundant question

thanx --- Derek

Micky. Glad you've seen the light. Between you and Derek, I believe this Forum has the best R & D on the internet!!