A big debate at our house is cleaning it religiously to rid it of animal hair and normal debris. I however am unlikely to vacuum weekly and Jen is busy too. So I decided to try out one of these roombas. We have bare floors and a few rugs, but the one I got does carpet too. Well day 3 in and this thing is amazing. Operated from your phone, can setup a daily/weekly schedule, and can literally turn it on from the other side of the country. When it's done it parks itself and charges. It's like having a maid, no joke! Our floors have never been cleaner. Two thumbs up for the roomba.
curious.. while our last furry kid passed away, we are looking for a breeder now because our home is empty. With that said, we have lived with Alaskan Malamutes for the past 2 decades and let me just say that we have 'tumble fur' balls and I'm incredibly skeptical on these new technical vacuums. I think the amount of malamute fur would clog most vacuums up in one small section of a room.
We have 2 cats and does great. You do need to empty the bin a couple times the first day on the initial hair pickup. It will eat plants and thin chords too if they aren't out of the way. Picked up a drill bit too I had hiding under some furniture.
Interesting. Dan, which model do you have?
The 890.
Thanks. I'm going to check it out.
This one is kind of the middle of the road model. The higer end ones had features I wouldnt use or that weren't worth upwards of $1000. It vacuums 5x stronger than the next lowest model and has the carpet and docking features I believe the other one didn't have in the comparison chart. Bed bath and beyond are always sending us 20% off coupons so it was basically the same price as the next model down. It seems to run around for about an hour in our downstairs which is 700sq ft. I had to organize speaker wires from my entertainment center as the thing would grab them when it was under there. Regular wires for lights or extension cords it just plows over without sucking them up. Has a sensor that can be setup to avoid certain areas, either in line of sight or radius. It also has this rotating brush arm thing that kicks out debris from edges and furniture legs. It really goes to town.
Dan I took your recommendation and I got the same model 890 last night. And I was also able to use the 20% off BB&B coupon even though the fine print specifically excluded the 800 and 900 series Roombas. The cashier didn't seem to care and I was happy to get the discount.
First run was this morning. It ventured under the couch where it is difficult to clean with a conventional vacuum cleaner and it found a lot of dust and dirt there - I had to stop it a couple of times just to clean out the bin. The Roomba ran for nearly 2 hours (!) and even though I can't see any discernable cleaning pattern, I can see eventually it goes everywhere and hits many places multiple times. It really does a good job on our wood floors and in the corners too. Our dog was curious when I first started it up and it moved round the rooms, but after watching it run back and forth for about 2 hours the dog is now totally indifferent to it. My wife has already named it Rosie after the Jetson's maid. ;D
I see lots of videos of cats riding the Roomba.....:-)
I would not have thought that cats would ride these vacuums.
I know we're calling these things "robots", but I'm not sure there's any intelligence built into them at all. Maybe it's just the confusing layout of my house, but I can see already that Rosie is damn stupid about finding where her docking station is to recharge. The process kind of reminds me of the old saying that given enough time, 1000 chimpanzees banging on typewriters would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare, because it seems like there is only a totally random chance she will somehow find it. ( i.e no memory of where she started).
I know nothing about how these things work, although 2 hours is a long time to run IMHO. Maybe because you stopped it mid run and emptied it out it lost it's "home port"? Did any documentation come with it - and "how to's" or "what if's"?
I'm sure there's a Roomba forum somewhere....yep, a quick googley search saw pages of return hits.
Ha! Mine runs for 60 minutes flat then returns to the home base. The 1st time we ran it, it did seem to go longer and eventually died far away from the base. Always finds it since then though. It's currently upstairs cleaning for me! I ran it from Montreal yesterday and gave me a dirt report of 11 events. It does bump all over the place like a drunk guy eventually finding it's way home.
Can't seem to get our cats to ride it. I wish though.
I should add that Jen said McDonald's is about to start delivering food. All I could think of was how lazy have I become if I'm considering having McDonald's delivered. Laying on the couch tossing the Mccrumbs to the roomba as it scurries past the couch.
If you really want to blow your mind. Look into roombas for the yard. Yup, that's right, basically the same technology used to cut your grass with a small electric mower. Europe uses them a lot. Mowing at night while you sleep does sound pretty awesome. I'm feeling lazy just thinking about it. Someone order me a BigMac.
Quote from: MiniDave on October 25, 2017, 10:08:07 AM
I know nothing about how these things work, although 2 hours is a long time to run IMHO. Maybe because you stopped it mid run and emptied it out it lost it's "home port"? Did any documentation come with it - and "how to's" or "what if's"?
I'm sure there's a Roomba forum somewhere....yep, a quick googley search saw pages of return hits.
You were right on all counts. Yesterday was apparently an anomaly because of my interference (I stopped it mid-process several times to empty the dust bin without being "told" to do so).
Day 2, and today the Roomba ran at the time I scheduled it to run, performed 1 hour of cleaning, and promptly returned to it's charging base. So it works much better if I'm not messing with it. Who'da thunk?
After it finished I checked the dust bin and was surprised to see it was again full! Even after what I thought was a pretty thorough cleaning yesterday, it found a lot more dirt today. This beats the heck out of traditional vacuuming.
Yeah we can't believe how much it keeps finding too. Our bare concrete floors even feel different now, slick to the touch.
Got a bin error message this morning. Came home and found it ate some rope. The rubber rollers are very easy to unclip out, so was about a 2 minute fix.
I haven't had to deal with any tangles yet on my Roomba. I have run it about 9 times so far and I continue to be impressed by how much dirt it is finding.
These things sound cool, but that price :-\
We went to Scotland and I saw a yard mowed by an automatic mower. With the patterns it left it looked like Stevie Wonder was their gardener! LOL
Bruce, how many rooms does it run in the way you have it set up? Just the den, or the whole area, down the hall and into the rooms?
Run mine daily from my phone. Here's a log of runs and dirt events found. Every day there's a wad of hair in the bin, it's amazing still.
Quote from: MiniDave on November 09, 2017, 02:08:57 PM
Bruce, how many rooms does it run in the way you have it set up? Just the den, or the whole area, down the hall and into the rooms?
About 70-80% of my house is hardwood or tile floors. So we run our Roomba in every room and hallway in the house except the 2 bedrooms that are carpeted. We figured it's just easier to use the traditional vacuum cleaner in those rooms. But we might change our minds and use it in all rooms.
I decided to drop Rosie the Roomba into one of the bedrooms to give it a shot on the carpet (which I thought was pretty clean to begin with). Boy was I wrong - a ton of dirt was found and I got several 'bin full' messages sent to my phone during that job. It really did well.
Besides the emptying the unit's dust bin, there is a hepa filter that you're supposed to knock against the side of a trashcan to clean out. I'm not doing that - instead I'm removing the filter and hitting it with some canned air and reverse blowing it clean. These filters are replaceable, but mine should last a very long time if I continue to do use the canned air.
Quote from: MiniGene on November 09, 2017, 01:58:38 PM
These things sound cool, but that price :-\
I can't disagree. The are a pricey item. But... my home is cleaner than it ever has been and I do not miss traditional vacuuming at all. At all!
Quote from: MiniGene on November 09, 2017, 01:58:38 PM
We went to Scotland and I saw a yard mowed by an automatic mower. With the patterns it left it looked like Stevie Wonder was their gardener! LOL
The random pattern of travel seems okay for a vacuum, but for a lawn mower it doesn't make much sense to me.
I knock that filter out too but canned air is a good idea.