I love my Roomba, but why does it have to be such a delicate little blossom?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So we got a Roomba for Christmas a couple of years ago. For the most part, I love it. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do. It has learned an extremely complex and efficient path through our house for getting up dirt. Sure, it’ll hang on certain low ledges about once every four or five times, but otherwise it does a very nice job getting up dirt from the living areas and bathrooms, with very little supervision, and it does a wonderful job getting under the beds, couches, etc.

My one complaint is that, in terms of maintenance, it’s a goddamn prima donna. We have three cats and live in a very woodsy neighborhood in our city (think, tracking in a fair mount of crushed acorn debris, etc.) Cat hair (and human hair) gets wound around the brush cylinders, causing the Roomba to stop and complain until you clear it out. The brush cage gets clogged. The dirt reservoir is tiny, with an air filter that gets clogged easily. The vacuum isn’t really all that powerful, either.

And holy shit, when my wife had just had our son, and all that extra pregnancy hair was falling out. My god, you’d think it was trying to clean up chains. It would stop every 15 minutes, bitching to be cleaned.

And the process of cleaning it out is annoying. Hair gets wound around the spool. Hair gets wound around the tiny little axle. Hair gets wound into the socket the tiny little axle fits into. And there are narrow grooves at both ends into which hair and fur get forced, and it’s damn near impossible to get even the blade of a smallish knife in there to laboriously pick all of it out.

It’s just weird design. It’s like they put all of their R&D into making a robot with excellent pathfinding features, and just sort of skipped over the basic mechanical realities of the consequences of having a delicate robot wallowing all over people’s dirty floors.

And yes, we run it almost every day to try to prevent a massive buildup of detritus.

And no, I shouldn’t have to take the thing apart and clean it up after every run (even though I really do). What’s the point? If I’m going to have to do that, I might as well have just run the regular vacuum over the house to begin with.

I want to see them totally revisit the mechanical design, or maybe see Dyson take a shot at it (because at least I know the vacuum itself would be powerful enough to strip varnish off the floor, as opposed to the relatively weak, plastic fan-driven vacuum of the Roomba).

2

As if the damn things didn’t cost enough in the first place. :wink:

Seriously though, it sounds like all the maintenance you’re having to go through is stemmed from how small the Roomba actually is compared to a full vacuum. And yes you would think you should just start using the normal vacuum again, but it’s still a lot easier to let the Roomba do it’s thing and clean it daily than having to do all the damn vacuuming yourself. Since you still have to clean the vacuum.

3

Christ, you’re not kidding. We love having a Roomba more than anything, but the fuckers simply aren’t built to withstand the rigors of vacuuming pet hair off our floors. Lucky for us, the friend who bought it for us got it at Hammacher-Schlemmer which carries an unconditional lifetime warranty. We’re on our fourth one. Which is currently broken, I just haven’t had a chance to send it back yet. :smack:

And it’s not like we’re letting them get clogged: I pretty much field strip the suckers after each use to try to prolong their lives, but to no avail. Within a few months of sucking up dog hair, it eventually refuses to work, and instead just sits and beeps sadly to itself. They simply aren’t made very well, honestly. Which is sad, because if there’s anything I would love more than a robot who vacuums for me, I’m not sure what it would be. (I do know it would be illegal in many Southern states, though.)

4

After our Golden killed our first, cheap, Roomba we got the special pet model. When the vacuum on that died (before the warranty ran out) we got a new one, and I learned how to take it apart every few weeks and clean the inside. It usually takes two runs to really clean the hall or a room where she likes to be unless we do it nearly every day.
Wouldn’t ever give it up, though, especially because if it sucks up puzzle pieces or other things you don’t want it to get you know it right away, and don’t have to rip apart a vacuum bag.

5

Because it wasn’t designed by Heinlein.

6

I have one too and I love it in general but I agree they could have done a better job on the overall design. I live in just about the perfect environment for one: just me most of the time, new single floor dwelling set up in a neat minimalist style.

I scheduled mine to run every day and it certainly works. I haven’t run a regular vacuum since I got my Roomba. I expect my house to be cleaner when I get home when than when I left. Few men are entitled to have that expectation these days without serious consequences. I got a refurbished 560 at a great price and it looked new when I opened it but I think they knew it was one of the slower students in Roomba U. It gets lost a lot even in a very simple floor plan with virtually no obstacles. It locks itself in the bathroom, chews on my earbud cables, and gets into more trouble in general than little Timmy did on Lassie. It only finds it way back to the base station maybe once out of every 5 days so I have to play hide and seek with it most nights to rescue it from some god forsaken dilemma like being stuck on top of a shoe in my closet.

Despite all that, it does clean well and does it a hell of a lot more often and better than you are ever going to see me doing it so I accept it for what it is. It only takes me two minutes a day max to clean it and put it back on its charger so I am willing to shelter it and take care of its basic retarded needs as an even trade in a symbiotic relationship.

7

“Your floor…your floor is now clean”[bump]
“Your floor…your floor is now clean”[bump]
“Your floor…your floor is now clean”[bump]
“Your floor…your floor is now clean”[bump]

Brought to you by Carl’s Jr…

8

I’ve always wanted a Roomba (and its sibling the Scooba) but I have two Persian cats and there’s just no way. Maybe someday when our feline overlords are gone.

If they would make one that 1. could handle pet hair, 2. wouldn’t need to be frequently cleaned out with sharp utensils, and 3. wouldn’t constantly break, I’d definitely buy one.

9

I dunno. I have my doubts. I mean, I couldn’t get under beds and other furniture, but we basically, other than a few area rugs, have nothing but hardwood. It’s not that tough to hammer an upright through the house in half an hour and get most of the crud. Of course, the dust bunnies do accumulate that way…

But other than changing a bag, I never have to clean the regular vacuum.

Still, though, it’s very nice to be able to schedule the Roomba and forget it (until, of course, it starts meeping for attention.)

10

Just today mine died after 30 seconds repeatedly, and the two beeps indicated a problem with the rotating brush. I had to take the whole thing apart to remove some dust the size of a quarter (but much thinner.) There is no way that ammount of dust could cause the thing to seize up.

11

I am WELL educated in things electrical…and my Roomba has a dead IR cliff detector…but I can’t for the life of me get up the strength to tear into it, find the right part number, order and wait, and throw it back together. I’m hoping over the long. cold. winter. that it might be a project…but by then I expect the battery will need replacing.

12

Huh. Mine has been relatively trouble-free (finds some wood to knock on) - and I have two cats, one of whom sheds at even the smallest excuse, plus me with long hair. My place is about 900-ish sq. ft., mostly carpet with some area rugs. Most I’ve done is replace the battery, and block the cliff sensors so it doesn’t freak out with one of the area rugs.

I do, however, about once a month take it apart for cleaning. This means taking popping off the bottom plate, using canned air to blast out dust bunnies there and to clean out the filter, plus taking apart the brush cage to clean out the gears there. (I’m betting that is what Lamar Mundane’s is beeping about - it’s really the gears that turn the brushes that need to be cleaned, but the roomba can’t tell the difference between the brushes and the brush gears.)

<< Books. Cats. Life is good. >>

13

I agree that Dyson would make the perfect Roomba, but then it would cost $3,587.

Ours still works great, but have to admit there is quite a bit of high maintenance - think of it as the Jenifer Lopez of cleaning ladies; always an issue to deal with.

We use it mostly downstairs for the family room, extra bedroom, bathroom and laundry room. We run it about twice a week and only need to sit down and coddle it about every other month, so I guess you could say it is not a huge problem.

I would agree they could have spent an extra year in the research and development department to make some of the features a bit more robust and less finicky.

14

Hmmmm. <takes Roomba off my wish list, for now>

I guess we’ll wait for at least one more generation. I love the idea, but we’ve got four cats. Two of them shed in reasonable amounts. Two of them, though, shed constantly, and we need to run as fast as we can just to keep things from becoming completely covered in cat hair.

15

Yeah, but you know all the mechanisms would be perfectly sealed and trouble free. Hell, $3587 would probably be worth it, because it would last forever. :slight_smile:

16

<hijack>

Extra pregnancy hair? Falling out? What the hell is this?

</hijack>

17

I knew somebody was going to mention this. :smiley: This is something nobody ever tells you about regarding the pregnancy experience. All those pregnancy hormones floating around in a woman’s body frequently result in her growing thick, luxuriant, beautiful hair.

It doesn’t last. As soon as the baby is born, it starts to fall out, and continues to do so for a long time, resulting in tumbleweeds of extra hair gathering in the corners and under the furniture. And oh my God, the shower drains. I thought for several weeks that the drain guard in our shower was spontaneously generating gerbils.

18

Has this been conclusively ruled out?

19

Well, we’re told that Lamarck was wrong (mostly, not counting epigenetics, for all those Dopers waiting to pounce), you know… :smiley:

20

On her head, right? Women don’t turn into some kind of hirsute were-mommas, do they?