We have four cats, 1 chow-lab mix, and 1 Flemish Giant rabbit. Needless to say, our floors are generally pretty messy. With tax-return time upon us, we are considering buying a robotic vacuum (i.e. a Roomba or similar). I love the idea of scheduled cleanings be able to keep things clean. We have carpet in most of the rooms, and vinyl tile in the kitchen (although that will be replaced soon, but will probably remain some sort of vinyl.)
What are your experiences with them? Looking at reviews on Amazon, you have to clean the brushes pretty frequently when picking up pet hair. Anything else we should know? Are they worth the money?
Thanks!
Phoebestar
I have a dog, a cat, and a Roomba. I love the Roomba (the dog and the cat, too). Mine is a really basic model, no scheduled cleanings, no returning to the charging stations. I wouldn’t mind if it returned to the charging station on its own, but I don’t think it would be good for me to have the scheduled cleaning. It really needs to be cleaned out before each run, especially with pets. Now, I clean it right before I set it up to run. If it was on auto, I’m sure I’d miss it and I expect that would damage it.
Also, be sure to get the virtual walls to keep it in one area (unless you have doors everywhere). It really needs to be confined to one room to work well. And, even then, don’t expect it to replace a more thorough cleaning.
My house has hardwoods throughout, so I have no knowledge of how it performs on carpets.
Roomba works well on carpets, thought I don’t have pets. I got one for my sister, who has a constantly shedding (but adorable) Corgi, and she’s very happy with it. Mine does get tangled on cords (including its own) and sometimes gets stranded on furniture bases that are 2-3 cm high. I have to look around the room and Roomba-proof it before hitting the button.
Someone mentioned the Roomba on another thread. I’d like to know more about how it works and how successfully it works.
Does it just sort of randomly bump around all day?
Can it get stuck in a corner or against something?
What makes it go from room to room (or does it?)?
How come it just doesn’t go back and forth over the same area?
I guess you close doors to keep it out of certain rooms?
I have two dogs and three cats. House is one-story, 2,200 sq. ft., part carpeted and part hardwood floors.
Yes, random. No, not all day. I haven’t timed it, but an hour or so seems to be the limit.
It backs out of places it could get stuck.
It will eventually find an open door if there is one and head out into other parts of your house.
It makes random movements
We do.
As for cleaning, it does need it frequently, but on the plus side, it is very easy to clean compared to other vacuums.
We had one, and three cats, and it did a pretty good job on bare floor and low pile. The problem was my hair, which is long and coarse. The brushes needed to be cleaned each and every time it was used, and eventually my mutant hair cut through the plastic and rubber fittings. It was two much trouble and after my hair killed the third one, we gave up.
FYI, it comes with “blockers” – a pair a boxes that emit some sort of signal - the roomba won’t cross the invisible line formed by the blockers. It has a pressure sensor in the front - if it hit something, it reverses, turns a quarter turn and keeps doing that until it isn’t hitting anything anymore.
The cleaning pattern is something like this. If you watch it will drive you crazy, it will miss pieces of dirt by inches and not go back to that area for a long time. But if you just let it run the coverage is very good over time.
I have 2, an original Roomba and a newer one. Both are currently out of service, the new has charging problems and the original is just getting worn out. Really I find the cleaning of the thing is about as much trouble as just manually vacuuming.
Still, I think they are good for hard floors and shallow carpets. For deep carpets the Roomba probably doesn’t have enough suction to clean deep down.
With pets you definitely want to get the pet hair model, with a regular Roomba I would think the hair would clog it all the time.
We have two Roombas, named Beauty and Beast*, one for downstairs and one for upstairs. We have two cats and all hardwood or stone floors. The robots are programmed to run daily and we clean them out every day. It’s easier that way.
They do an excellent job of keeping the overall dust level low. Dust bunnies are extinct. The robots don’t cover every square inch every day, but the net effect is everything gets swept at least once a week. The clever thing about them is they travel the same paths that everyone else does, so high-traffic areas like corridors get vaccuumed more frequently.
They get stuck frequently unless you robot-proof your house. Things like cords and low-clearance furniture can cause them trouble. One even trapped itself in a bathroom by closing the door behind it (just like a cat, it couldn’t open it again). Strategic use of the virtual walls helps a lot.
In terms of value, the time they save us not sweeping is worth the price. We got one at first and liked it so much we got the second.
*This is what happens when you let a young Disney-infatuated girl name your robots.
I have a Roomba 560 which is a middle of the line model. It has scheduling and cleans my entire place (1 story) while I am at work three times a week. It does a great job and I haven’t even run a regular vacuum since I got it. It gets stuck somewhere about 1 cleaning of 5 and occasional gets tangled in a cord or piece of cloth. The design is pretty simple so it is easy to get it untangled. It only takes a minute to clean it after every cycle with a more thorough cleaning about once a month. I don’t have any pets though.
One tip is to buy a refurbished Roomba if you can. I bought mine for about half price and it was completely new as far as I can tell. It has been running for over a year now with no major problems.
We did end up buying a Roomba, and he (Boris) is currently out of service.
At the time, we had a rabbit and a chow-lab mix, and there was fur EVERYWHERE. They’ve since passed (it’s been a hard year for us with pets), and around that time Roomba stopped working. Really, it was a huge pain to clean the thing, it seemed like with the bunny fur he needed cleaned every 10 minutes or so.
We bought him from Hammacher Schlemmer on the recommendation of someone else here on the board, as they have a generous return policy. We’re planning on returning him and getting our money back. However, as we’ve anthropomorphized him and call him “Boris”, and have lost 3 pets in the course of a year, we’ve found this difficult to actually do. But we will!
We have a Golden Retriever, who generates 10 cats worth of hair. We burned out our first one, and got a more expensive one target for pets. It has been great.
It comes with a wireless fence which you can place to confine the Roomba in one room without closing doors, or to keep it away from the wires behind our TV.
Yes you have to clean the brushes. Every time. Ours get filled with hair, and the container gets full. In some cases we need to run it twice per room. It comes with tools which make cleaning fairly easy. However every so often I take it apart and clean inside, since the hair gets into all sorts of places. A can of compressed air is very helpful also in cleaning the filter.
It still takes work, since you need to clean stuff off the floor and remove obstructions. Still, we have five bedrooms, and it is very nice to just start it up and let it go, and rescue it for a cleaning and recharge at your convenience.
Has anyone tried a Mint?
I’ve been looking into them, for the bathroom. It’s not a vacuum, but basically a robotic Swiffer. You put a wet cloth on it and let it run.
If you have one, does it ever find it’s way into the corners, especially around the toilet? That’s where all my toilet paper lint collects.
i bought a roomba in 2007, it hoovered mostly every day, and i had it sent for service once. it went for another year.
finally this year i moved and decided to give the old roomba to goodwill and buy a new one. i ordered the pet series 5 hundred something. it is great! runs nearly every day and i don’t have to clean it as often.
i come home to a clean cat hair free floor.
I have a ‘Neato’ … love love love that thing!! And yes, it has a name … James!
I like that it isn’t random so some of the issues that the Roomba owners have I don’t (it doesn’t miss bits!). I like that it knows when it finds a doorway, to finish the room it is on then go back to that doorway and clean that room.
I have 2 dogs and 2 cats and I live in the country … so it has to deal with lots of hair, dirt and other unmentionable things. It goes from hardwood floors to carpet with no problem. It sucks more out of the carpet than my previous normal vacuum.
It has two downfalls … 1. it doesn’t empty itself (but they’ll work that out I’m sure one day!) and 2. it misses about 1 inch from the edge of walls (so I just go over the edge of the room with a handheld vac when I’m trying to be very clean).
I do find it easier to run it when I’m around rather than set it to a timer, so that I can clear the dog toys before it goes and check up on it just in case it gets caught on the occasional cord.
For cat owners: how does the cat cope with the Roomba? Mine freaks out badly enough with our upright vacuum, with me firmly holding it. I have no idea if she could cope with a vacuum running around the place on its own.
Slightly off topic, but if you have problems with leaves getting stuck in your gutters, iRobot, the company that makes the Roomba, also makes the Looj, which is well worth it if your gutters need frequent cleaning.
Ever since I read The Caves of Steel I wanted to have a friend like R. Daneel Olivaw. And after I saw Forbidden Planet I thought that Robby was just the best thing evar! But it was R2-D2 and C-3PO that…
What? Roombas? How are they any fun?
[Emily Litella] Never Mind [/Emily Litella]
We have a Roomba and two cats. We only use it (unscheduled) in our upstairs bedrooms (our downstairs is hardwood and tile), but it does a decent job as long as we move any chairs out of the way. Removing the hair that gets wound around the brushes is a pain though – my wife’s hair moreso than the cats’!
We have nearly 1800 square feet, a combination of hard floors and lowpile carpeting, 3 bedrooms, two bathrooms…and four cats. And my birthday is coming up. Can anyone recommend a specific brand and model?
I have a Roomba (550 or 560, I forget), two cats, and long hair. Mine does just fine on wood, tile, and typical renter’s grade beige carpet. I did pick up from a dollar store a little brush made for cleaning other brushes - it works wonderfully on getting hair out from the bristle brush. A seam ripper also works nicely, and does a good job of getting any hair that’s wrapped around the end pieces of the brushes.
Just keep in mind that they do need maintenance, just like a regular sized vacuum, and because they’re smaller they’ll need that maintenance proportionally more frequently. About once a month I take apart the brush cage, to clean out any hairballs from around the gearing that turns the brushes.
With pets, I wouldn’t run it on a schedule. Knowing how things usually go, a cat will hurl up a hairball, a pet will eat too quickly and urf it back up, etc., and if the Roomba runs automatically you’d get smeared nasty stuff all over the place. :eek:
For me, it’s worth the money. Yes, I spend more time on maintenance than I would a full-sized vacuum, but that is more than balanced out by the carpets getting vacuumed far more often than would happen if I had to do it myself. Most of the time I simply have the Roomba run about while I’m doing other chores around the house.
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