Diary of a robot vacuum cleaner

I was in Fry’s looking at vacuum cleaners figuring I’d probably need to get one since I rent the place and I need to keep it in good nick. I discovered that vacuum cleaners are quite expensive, I also discovered robot vacuum cleaners are not as expensive as I thought.

So I bought a roomba robot vacuum cleaner.

Problem 1 with this idea is I have a set of stairs going up to the loft area. The roomba can’t vacuum stairs nor can it negotiate stairs but still 4 rooms automagically vacuumed out of 5 is better than none. Also obvious solution is a roomba stair lift it can drive onto then get transported up to the top of the stairs to vacuum the loft area, need to contact stannah stairlifts see if they make one of these.

My long term plan if you can call it that is to get a small vacuum cleaner to take care of anything the roomba misses and the stairs.

Anyway after charging it up I tried it out and it seemed to do a reasonable job I needed to pick up anything on the floor and arrange any electrical stuff so it wouldn’t knock it over or some such but it seemed to navigate around ok and make it back to it’s charging station. So I set the schedule thing so it would vacuum automatically every weekday at 10am.

Day one: Get back to find it stuck balanced on a chair leg. The ikea chair I have has slim wooden legs that sit on the floor the roomba can get over them almost but then gets stuck. Positioned a box near the legs to persuade the roomba not to try and go underneath.

Day two: The roomba manages to shut itself in the bathroom. I’d pushed the door all the way open so it could sweep around the bathroom but it must have gotten behind the door and then pushed it shut then ran it’s battery down exhaustively vacuuming the bathroom (which isn’t carpeted anyway). Wheres a 3d printer when you suddenly need a custom made door wedge printed up. Wedged door open with flip flops I use to go down to the pool for my daily swim.

Day Three: I found the roomba sitting in the middle of the corridor as if it had just given up. On closer inspection it looked like some plastic had got caught round the brushes and jammed it. Once that was removed it continued on it’s merry way vacuuming including the previously problematic bathroom and successfully docked with it’s charger ready to go again on monday. I’ll see how it does then and maybe clear up the bedroom so it can go in there as well.

Day Four: The machine seemed to have successfully cleaned the three rooms I left open for it and made it back to its charge station. Carpets looked good floors were swept so all in all the first successful run. Tomorrow will try letting it do the bedroom as well the acid test if you will as it will be doing all 4 accessible rooms it’s supposed maximum number.

Day Five: came back to find the roomba stuck under the bed it had managed to wedge itself under the metal reinforcing beam. I think if I put one of the virtual walls down the middle of the bed it might fix the issue I just need to get some batteries for the virtual walls that came with the machine.

Day Six: Forgot the batteries and the thing got stuck in the exact same place decided to try the box trick again and put a long thin cardboard box down the middle of the bed.

Day Seven: Got home to find the roomba was docked sucessfully and there were clear signs it had negotiated all the rooms. So with the exception of the loft it can now automatically clean the downstairs rooms. Giving everything a quick once over every day then maybe I’ll have to do a proper clean and polish every now and again. So so far it seems a useful little tool if one that requires some environmental tweaking to make it work right.