Which method
actually works?

Hot water extraction removes deep soil and is the method the Carpet and Rug Institute and most major carpet manufacturers publish. Dry methods clean the surface and dry faster, which makes them useful for interim commercial maintenance but not for restorative cleaning.

No, and the gap is mostly heat and vacuum. A truck-mounted unit produces water temperature and airflow no portable can approach, and vacuum determines whether soil leaves the building or settles back into the fiber as it dries.

Steam cleaning in ordinary use means hot water extraction. Shampooing uses a foaming detergent worked into the pile and is largely obsolete because rinsing it out completely is difficult.

Encapsulation has a genuine role in commercial interim maintenance because it dries fast enough to clean an office overnight. It is not a substitute for restorative extraction — it crystallizes surface soil for later vacuuming rather than removing deep soil.

More contested than most people assume. Carpet traps particulate and holds it until vacuumed or extracted. Hard floors let the same particulate stay airborne and redistribute with every footstep.

You can improve grout by hand, but you cannot reach what is inside it. Grout is porous, and a mop pushes dirty water into it. Pressure plus simultaneous extraction is a different physical process from anything achievable with a brush.

Spiker discontinued color sealing. It is a pigmented coating over grout rather than clean grout underneath, and when it wears it wears unevenly and is difficult and expensive to correct.