Steve,
We don’t own a Pile Lifter, but most of the rugs we take out of a customer’s home to clean we drop off at a local company here in town that is VERY good at cleaning rugs. They use pile lifters to vacuum the rugs before they clean them. Based on that, I can’t give do’s and don’ts outside of the obvious. I think it would be a pain to use a pile lifter in a home unless you had a lot of room to work (which often isn’t the case). Just my 2 cents.