How To Correctly Empty Your Steam Cleaner

By Juan Casallas

28 June 2023

You would think it’s a very simple thing to do, but is it? You need to know the Do’s and Do Not’s of correctly emptying your portable steam cleaner.

No names, no pack drill. Let’s just call him John to protect his identity. One day John was happily humming Submarino Amarillo to himself as he carefully steamed Mrs Rigby’s two bedroom unit on the 6th floor of a Melbourne apartment block. John would normally empty the water from his beloved steam cleaner, as trained, either on the front lawn or in a gully trap if on the lower level, or in the toilet bowl if on a higher level.

In this case, Mrs Rigby asked John not to empty the water in the toilet bowl as she was fanatical about such things. Obligingly, John took the steam cleaner down the tradesman’s lift to the ground floor to empty the water onto the lawn at the front of the high-rise building. To John’s alarm, there was no grass and very little of anything suitable for emptying the water from the steam cleaner. He couldn’t even find a gully trap.

Keen to get to the next job on time (John’s a very punctual fellow), he decided to take a short cut and empty the steam cleaner directly into the gutter on the street. Big mistake! You wouldn’t believe such bad luck existed but as John was draining the last drops from the steam cleaner drainage tap into the gutter, a “friendly” EPA (Environmental Protection Authority) officer ambled by and took photographic evidence of the situation.

The upshot of this sad tale has both good news and bad. The good news is the benevolent EPA officer didn’t fine us as a company which may have been very painful indeed. The bad news was they did fine John as an individual which was at the time of the incident $330.

This story is true except for the cleaner’s name. The moral of the story is:

DO NOT EMPTY YOUR STEAM CLEANER ONTO ROADWAY OR ANYWHERE THE RUN-OFF MAY REACH THE STORMWATER GUTTERS OR DRAINS.