Hello DIYers! Today I'm here with a little maintenance for my robot vacuum that I have named Peanut. :) I've had him for almost a month now, and he does a really good job keeping my floors clean. But like most tools, you have to do a little maintenace every now and then!
Between me having long hair and Yuan shedding in the warm months, there is a lot of hair on the floor that Peanut regularly sweeps up. Sometimes that hair gets tangled around the directional wheel (the one that turns and determines what direction he goes), and in the spinning brushes, and you have to clean it out. I know when it's tangled in the directional wheel when he starts running in circles; and it's stuck in a brush when one stops spinning.
To get the directional wheel cleaned out, you need to unscrew this little panel; the wheels are on an axel and will pull out easily.
I actually took these pictures backwards, lol, so that's the wheel after I already cleaned it; there was a big blob of hair tangled around it before, lol
You can use a utility knife or even scissors to cut at the hair so that it comes off the wheel axel. You can see the bits I had cut off in the first photo of this post where everything is apart on the floor.
The spinning brushes are easier, and pop right off, no unscrewing needed. Then you can just pull any tangled hair off with your hands and pop them back on.
Once you are done, put it all back together, and your robot vacuum will be ready to go!
My model is the K250A (that seems to be the only name of it, no other brand that I could see; I got it off of Wish dot com for under $30 so it's not an iRobot Roomba brand), so this may vary depending on the different models, but it's probably something similar.
If you're wondering how effective it is at cleaning up, I've had Peanut for almost a month now. Prior to getting him, I usually swept up every few days, because there was always cat litter tracking and hair and other detritus around. If you've seen my Clean With Me videos where I did some sweeping, you see how much I would pick up every time!
Well, I manually swept for the first time today after getting Peanut. If I had gone almost a whole month without sweeping before, this place would have been a MESS. But he was doing such a good job, I didn't feel I needed to do it before. Mind you, Peanut can't get into the nooks and crannies - he can't go underneath things that are too short for him to fit under, he can't get into the odd corners where he won't fit. Nor can he move things out of the way so he can get under or behind them. So when I swept today, that's where most of this came from:
That's it! I used to get more than that when I did my regular sweeping every few days. And again, most of that comes from areas where Peanut can't reach. So he's been very effective at helping keep the apartment clean, and saving me a lot of work!
Two thumbs up for Peanut the robot vacuum. Sometimes you do find a winner at Wish! :)
You can find my original review of him here.
Thanks for reading and have a great day!