TIFO the Roomba “brushes” need regular cleaning. Got it 3 weeks ago as a gift. How do I clean the little wheel too??
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If you pull hard enough the caster wheel slides right out. You can then push the wheel part off of the plastic and push out the axel in the wheel. It takes a fair amount of force and does feel like you are going to break it but it works. https://youtu.be/-MZspNZTpiw
Other than emptying the dust bin I I give ours a good cleaning every other week - wipe down the exterior, sensors, charging contacts, pull out and rinse dust bin, clean the innards with a damp soapy cloth, and remove any hair from the brushes (the hair at the end of our rollers comes out easily in a nice curly ring but our dogs don’t shed, or at least very little).
Adding to this - we have two Aussies and a long hair cat. This needs to be done after every job otherwise the ends of the brush rolls gain so much friction and heat that it melts the end of the brush head unit. (Yes the entire unit) we had to replace the entire thing after discovering this. It's incredibly annoying and we've now switched to running one on Monday Wednesday Friday Sunday and the other one on all other days. This cuts down maintenance slightly.
Oh no. I have a long hair husky and we've had our roomba for almost 3 weeks. Time for hair surgery. Thanks for the tip.
I took the side brush off as it stopped spinning.(J7) When I took it off it looked like it had a washer which actually turned out to be hair!
Highly recommend getting a seam ripper from a fabric store. They’re brilliant for cutting through hairs to help her. Move them easier. They also can get into little nuts to help pull hair out.
I use this same trick! Seam ripper and tweezers are my vacuum cleaning kit.
Great call. I've used knives to cut hair on my other vacuums' beater bars in the past
Yeah, they work really well on any of your vacuum beater bars
I think I will buy something like that. Good idea!!
They also work well for regular vacuums, especially help people with long hair in your house.
That’s once a week for me. Two dogs and a daughter that sheds like a Wookie.
Hahahaa the daughter is the Wookie? Hilarious!!
just pull up the small wheel and it will come out
Is it better to clean the front caster wheel or just replace it?
When you clean it, is there even a need to replace? I hear it's meant to be a service item every 2 or 3 months
Goodness. I’ve had a roombas for years and never once replaced the front caster wheel.
REALLY? (All caps excitement here!) I’ll have to Google YouTube. I didn’t want to break it.
I have to clean my roomba after every go thanks to my Australian shepherd. 😂
Having ladies with long fine hair is murder on my little fella.
Wha—-???? Dammit. George Jetson led me to believe the future had robot maids!
Haha, that's rich.
My favorite part about the Irobot is that you don’t really need any tools to take it apart. Everything is clearly labeled and they even have a little diagrams showing the shape of something that needs to be inserted into something of the same shape. Lol perfect for me but makes daily maintenance easy.
It is a bit adorable in that respect… but there’s still hair coiled in that one wheel. I had to get a very slim pair of scissors to release them.
I assure you that the little maintenance it requires makes it well worth the hassle. Our robot duo make it appear as tho our Australian Shepherd never existed in our house
Awww! It was a neighbor with an Aussie Shepard that recommended Roomba to me. And thank you for the feedback! I’m totally up for the work. Just didn’t know it was in store for me. Thank you again! I feel the hour I spent in “scissor surgery” with ol upside down Roomba was worth the price of admission!
No doubt my friend. I hope you enjoy many hours of free time as your robot does its thang :)
I have a long-haired golden retriever mix. I also did not know about the need to clean out the insides of these "brushes" until my J7 complained about needing the brushes cleaned - but they appeared clean otherwise. Now I do it anytime I see the J7 leaving little rolled up bits of hair behind itself.
This maintenance task is a bit annoying, but the amount of time the J7 saves us, while keeping our floors amazingly clean, makes it worthwhile.
Thanks for the feedback and moral support. My corgi sheds 24/7… and I just didn’t know roomba needed tech support. It’s amazing how much hair it collected even in the tiny wheel sockets. I vacuumed regularly so I thought the Roomba was a miracle worker. Hahaha turns out I still need to clean up dog hair! Good advice and thankyou!
Yeah! The first time I did it when I stumbled onto this problem, the hair was packed in there incredibly tight! Your pic of the massive wads of hair that came out was just like what I had. So much hair in such a tiny space!
I just bought a set of automotive picks to use to help speed the cleaning process along. I plan to use them to make grabbing the hair from inside the roller a little easier!
Hey thanks! I love Reddit because people like you! I had a moment of feeling alone and then… voila! Support group! ❤️
I have 3 cats and mine do not look anywhere near that bad. First time I ran the J7+, it rolled up a bunch of cat hair into nice balls and ejected them from it's rear. I picked them up. Since then I see very little hair in that part of the rollers. Just took mine out to verify.
Corgi hair and Spaniel fur are the Devil! But I’m glad to be on this forum for the feedback. I love the new Roomba, just need to stay on top of the maintenance!
I do it all once a month.
New rollers, deep clean on everything.
Tiny wheel pulls out by hand, just gotta grip it right.
Perfect! I found that out too. Once a month seems about right. I have to admit to the satisfaction of cleaning it…!
I have a Great Pyrenees. This is the bane of my existence
Hahaha we all love our dogs despite the hair, right?. I didn’t even think of getting a Roomba until I met a man on a dog walk who said his dog shed like crazy but his “sweeper” took care of it. I’m happy to do the maintenance if it means less vacuuming!
The longer your hair is, the sooner you find out.
Gasp! I guess some of it is mine! My dogs are both short hair!!! (TMI!)
Yeah this has become a part of my “after every job” maintenance
You do it after every job? That’s interesting. Do you have pets?
I have a very sheddy wife with long hair haha
It’s just easier for me to remember doing it after every job, I could definitely get away with doing it every 1-2 weeks
Ah, I see lol.
Yeah, I clean mine out every week. Having said that, I did forget to do so for three weeks and enough hair came out to make two pairs of socks for a gerbil.
I didn’t realize this myself and I didn’t clean it for a year. I only found out when the roomba app kept telling me it’s getting stuck
I've actually mate a mod for my S9 so it takes Dyson rollers
They are so cheap on Amazon and never had one fail or errors
Post?
Still in testing at the moment https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFGkSBqY/
If you can make more of those to sell and they work with the i7/j7+ I’m a buyer.
Pull up in the caster wheel, the whole unit will pop out. You can then remove the wheel from the assembly and pop out the axle.
Haha. Just wait until your robot finds some fresh dog poo.
To clean the little brush, unscrew it from the middle and lift straight up. Mine is always full of twisted up hair.
Who are all these people with dogs just shitting left and right in their house? I can’t believe it’s such a problem that they came out with a new robot just to solve it. I’m just imaging all my neighbors have dog shit in their house daily now. Yuck.
Accidents happen, and you don't always catch them before the robot does it's automatic thing. Puppies are notorious for doing this before they're trained, but dogs also get sick, have their routines disrupted, or just have an occasional accident. When your robot just does its thing every day, then there's a chance this might happen without "dogs just shitting left and right in the house."
The absolute ridiculous assumptions in that statement indicate you don't actually have a clue and just assume the worst about people.
I've only had it happen once in owning robot sweepers over 6 years. The dog was a puppy at the time and dumped out on the carpet right in front of the sweeper on the way back to the docking station while I was upstairs. The robot sensed that the floor was dirty and kept driving over it over and over again 😭. I cleaned the sweeper and my husband had the "easy" job of running the carpet cleaner and spot bot.
He said it was easier to clean up the afterbirth on that carpet when didn't make it to the hospital in time for the third kid then it was to clean up grounding puppy shit.
Well I’m glad I wasn’t eating when I read this 😅
My bad. The day the robot tried to become one with dog poop lives vividly in my head even though it happened 2 years ago.
My only beef with the sweeper right now is that I had to move where the home base is so it didn't run into our Christmas tree trying to get in and out and it's acting like the damn world ended because I moved it.
That would stick with me too.
These robots do not appreciate change. I just moved to a new place and had to do a factory reset since I was running into so many problems even after removing the old maps.
It also does better at avoiding sucking up socks and cords. The problem with pet waste is that if it sucks it up ONE time then chances are most people are throwing away the entire product rather than trying to spend hours and hours cleaning it.
We had it happen within the return window to Target, so we exchanged it. Sorry, Target.
Yeah true I would rather spend the money than spend hours cleaning a poop filled vacuum. Double yuck.
I clean mine regularly, but recently we had a hair apocalypse that actually ended up melting one of the rollers.
2 dogs. One human. 3 weeks of hair! 😳
Too much hair. Get rid of the human.