Gear is everything that is not a vacuum: mop systems, microfibre, steam cleaners, carpet extractors, air purifiers, buckets and caddies. It is also the category with the least useful information in it: vacuums at least have test standards behind them, while a great deal of cleaning equipment is sold on adjectives.
So this section is organised around one question: what document would settle this? Nothing here is tested — the assessments come from published specifications, filtration and textile standards, manufacturer care instructions and trade catalogues, as set out in the editorial policy. Four principles fall out of that material.
1. Buy the specification, not the adjective
HEPA. In Europe the classes come from EN 1822-1, which rates a filter at the most penetrating particle size: H13 is at least 99.95% efficient, H14 at least 99.995%. The classes below — E10 at 85%, E11 at 95%, E12 at 99.5% — are EPA filters, not HEPA. Anything still sold as “H11” or “H12” uses a label the standard moved out of that group: those grades are E11 and E12 now, and E11 lets through roughly a hundred times more than H13.
Air purifier coverage. The measurement that matters is CADR, defined by ANSI/AHAM AC-1 and tested separately for smoke, dust and pollen — small, medium and large particles — so a single headline number is always a selection. AHAM’s verified room sizes rest on the smoke figure, because smoke is hardest to remove, and on 4.8 air changes per hour. Its rule of thumb: smoke CADR should be at least two-thirds of the room’s floor area in square feet.
2. Microfibre is a technical textile with a service life
Cleaning-grade microfibre is a split filament of about 1 dtex or below — often finer than 0.1 dtex per filament, giving strands under ten microns across — usually blended 80/20 or 70/30 polyester to polyamide. The polyester scrubs and holds a static charge; the polyamide absorbs. That is why a good cloth carries several times its own weight in water, and why it wears out.
The Danish manufacturer Nordisk Microfiber publishes a professional laundering specification far more prescriptive than any domestic label: wash at a minimum of 80 °C, use about a third of the normal detergent dose at a pH below 10.5, never use fabric softener because it encases the fibres, tumble dry at no more than 60 °C for 15 minutes, and renew a third of the textile stock every two years. Not everyone agrees on the heat: German makers of coating-sensitive cloths, Koch-Chemie among them, specify cold or 30–40 °C instead. Follow the label on the cloth you bought — softener is ruled out either way.
3. The consumable is the product
The purchase price of professional equipment is frequently the smaller number. ProTeam’s owner’s manual for its backpack machines requires the collection bag to be emptied and inspected at the start and end of every session, the cloth filter washed roughly monthly and air dried only, and the dome filter cleaned or replaced weekly. Every stage has its own part number: they are designed to be replaced, not nursed.
Before buying anything with a filter, pad or cloth in it, find the part numbers and the stated intervals. If neither exists, the running cost is unknowable. The same logic decides whether a vacuum survives ten years.
4. Two documents govern a floor tool, and the floor’s wins
Steam cleaners are the clearest case. Kärcher’s own guidance states that parquet and laminate can be mopped with a steam cleaner, and singles out oiled and waxed wood for one specific caution: do not linger in one spot, because the steam can draw the oil or wax back out of the timber. It is the surface treatment — waxed, oiled or sealed — that decides the method, not the species of wood. Generalise that deference. The appliance manual says what the machine can do; the floor’s care and warranty document says what the floor will tolerate, and decides who pays when something goes wrong. Read the second one first, and test on a concealed area.
The methods this equipment serves are in pro methods.