Knowledge

Karcher sells two entirely different things under the name “steam cleaner”: a domestic SC range that starts at A$269, and a professional SG range that starts at A$1,999. They are not the same machine at different prices, and buying the wrong range is the most common mistake we see in this category.

A mop and bucket is the cheapest piece of equipment in a cleaning cupboard and the one that fails fastest. The reason is almost never the mop head — it is a head paired with the wrong bucket, or a bucket chosen for capacity when the wringer mechanism was the real decision.

We stock 26 Dyson parts and no Dyson vacuums at all. That is deliberate — and it is also why this page is about identifying your machine rather than choosing a new one. If you are shopping for a Dyson, this is the wrong page. If you already own one and something has failed, the next paragraph is the whole answer.

The Victa catalogue runs from a A$599 push mower to a A$1,249 self-propelled machine, and the numbers on the box — 140cc, 163cc, 190cc, 18 inch, 19 inch — do not tell you which one suits the ground you actually mow. Here is what each family is for, and what the two most expensive decisions in the range really buy.

The Echo range in our catalogue runs from a A$490 twelve-inch saw to a A$2,499 seventy-three-cc felling saw, and the model codes look almost identical from a distance. The first decision is not engine size at all: it is whether you need a top handle saw, a rear handle saw, or reach. Get that wrong and the specification that follows will be wrong too.

“Metho” is one of the most-searched cleaning terms in Australia, and it gets used as a catch-all for three products that behave nothing alike: alcohol for glass and stainless, an alkaline solvent for carbon and grease, and pre-saturated wipes for surfaces that cannot get wet. This is where each one belongs, and where it does not.

Laundry is the one consumable every site reorders on a predictable cycle, which makes it the easiest line to overpay on. The prices below are all catalogue prices for the same job, and they differ by more than three to one per kilogram. What you get for the difference is worth understanding before the next pallet is ordered.

Jiffy has been the default name in professional garment steaming for decades, and the machines themselves are the least interesting part of owning one. What decides whether a steamer is still working in five years is the water you put in it and whether the hose and switch were treated as consumables. Here is the range, then the part that matters.

Type “Clean Plus” into Google and you will see three different names competing for the same shelf — Clean Plus, Cleanplus and NAB Clean — mixed in with mops, cloths and dispensers. If you are trying to work out what the range actually contains and what you need to run it properly, the naming is the first obstacle. This is the map.