is roomba the vacumning one?

[misdee]

am intriuged by this.

does it do a really job or will i have to do edges etc anywa with the vacumn?

can it get up small bumps? we have runners between each room aprrox 1.5cm high. am guessing too high?

is it noisey?

will i kill it?

[goes to look at it properly]

oh and does it work well on hard floors?

oh I know misdee. I so like the idea of these if only we didn't have so much crap piled up all over the floors.

wouldn't it be marvellous to go out and come back to clean floors.

it would be heaven.

i am meant to be vacumning now but just cleared half of the kids toys out so am 'resting' would be fab to have a little machine doing mos of it so its livable.

i need to know if it does hard floors!

would make dd1 like easier as then her room would get done everyday without fail (she is asthmatic and has dust mite allergy)

I just wonder whether they would be annoying and gimmicky to live with.

TBH, how long does vaccuuming a room take anyway ? I have a bigger than average house and hoovering doesn't take up that much of my time . Looking at the size of them and the speed they go at, doing a room would take ages, whereas whizzing around with a normal hoover takes minutes.

misdee, there's one that CLEANS hard floors. I can't remember its name (I am thinking of Scooby Doo so it probably has a part of his name in it).

IMAGINE THAT! It actually CLEANS the floors

oh NDP, it does it while you are not there so you wouldn't have to do it at all. Ever.

ndp i am lazy

i even live i na bungalow so it should be a piece of pee top vacumn daily but its a constant battle atm with kids toys everywhere.

well now it wont be as half have gone

kids are gonna go mad!

I have a roomba, it is pretty good, but I dont think that it could be your only hoover, I still have to go around and do the edges from time to time.
They can get up small bumps, not sure how high though.
Takes about 45 min to do a large room.
It is much quieter than a regular hoover.
They are really good for hoovering under things, because they are so low, they can get under my wardrobes, chest of drawers etc.
Probably not a big timesaver in the end, as like floors have to be completely clear and the brushes etc have to be cleaned frequently.
You wont hate it though. They are very cute.

I bought one yesterday.

Am ashamed at what it's picked up. I love it already since it's gone into all the nooks and crannies I haven't.

Shameful.

One day I'll work out how to programme it ...

misdee, it's not half so noisy as a vacuum cleaner. I had to wait 5 years before dds would let me use one while they were in the house

dd3 keeps switching the vacumn off. she doesnt like lous noises atm, and with new baby due am thinking i may have to add it to my xmas list.

if it works on hardfloors that is lol.

And it DOES work on hard floors.

[wonders if she can sell dh]

Works fine on our wood floor.

I go round every few weeks and hoover cobwebs and corners - and you need a normal hoover if you have stairs of course.
But, I love my roomba. With us it's a choice between regular roomba cleaning or no vacuum cleaning since the kids can't stand the noise (and I am lazy). With the roomba, I can set it off just before I go on the school run and by the time I'm back i have a clean floor.

I just can't believe what this thing (we've called her Vivienne) has picked up. Our house must have been seriously bad.

Misdee, I love, love, love my roomba. He is called Robbie and I have often sung his praises on Mumsnet. It is really good on hard floors and good on our carpet.

You still need an ordinary vacuum cleaner to do the stairs and the car etc. but the roomba does everything else. I use it every day.

It needs emptied after almost every use and needs the brushed cleaned frequently, but he says very politely 'Please remove and clean Roomba's brushes', and sits huffing until you do it!

Costco sell the standard one for £165.

misdee, if you get it from Lakeland - and I double checked this - if it doesn't do what you want it to do, you can take it back.

God, the women working there are all like Stepford Wives....

Roomba's are FAB.

We recently got one, and finally, my carpets are approaching clean again! Dd1 is ASD, and will not tolerate the hoover at ALL, so vacuuming has been rare in this house for the last 4 years

It does need regular emptying an brush cleaning, but that is so much easier to do than on a standard vacuum cleaner.

It is great. I hoover while taking dd to preschool, and while going to toddler group. I have hoovered while in the bath, but the ultimate has to be hoovering while asleep.

Our HErbie copes very well with hard floors (although it was shameful how much dust he found under the dining table), and does fine with small bumps (I think he has manged a 1cm climb between rooms upstairs) but best of all he cleans under cots/beds/sideboards, so you don't have to be faffed moving furniture about.

How noisy are they, out of interest?

fis - scooba is the one that washes hard floors, so you weren't far off. We have it. Only bad thing is that you have to have the right type of seal on a wood floor to use it, or it strips the seal off. We no longer have a seal on our living room floor , but it's great for our kitchen and breakfast rooms, which have stone floors.

ninedragons - it's not silent, but it's not as noisy as a normal hoover. It is loads less noisy than my dyson eg, and we have had it on in the house with dd1 around (autistic, & extremely noise averse) but in another room obviously.

That sounds ideal. In fact I might get both - having to clean your own hard floors when the carpets were being done by a robot would seem doubly annoying. Jesus Christ I'm lazy.

not lazy, just sensible imo!

I nearly bought a scooba as well, but tbh, I only have one room downstairs (the dining room!) and the bathroom where I would use it, so I got one of these instead. I set Herbie off to get all the crud lovely food that dd2 has dropped and then it only takes me 5 mins to whizz over...

That mop looks excellent but the flaw in the design is that it requires me to do something.

Ok, one last question, can the Scooba cope with two rooms that are not adjacent? I would need it to do the kitchen, come out and trundle over about three metres of carpet to get into the bathroom. Or can I just save settings for two rooms and pick it up and carry it between the two?

The scooba doesn't yet have all the advanced programmable features that the roomba has. You have to put it in the room you want to clean, leave it for about 45 mins or so to clean it, and then you'd need to charge the battery, clean it out and reload it before doing the second room. It can't run over carpet at all.

You also need to purchase the scooba from the US btw, as they aren't yet available here. I believe that there are plans to release them here later this year though, and irobot (the company that makes them) said to contact Domotec (details on the irobot website) for more info, as they will be the UK distributors when they are released.

Blimey, the level of expertise you lot have is really quite amazing!

I think the thing that has put me off until now is the thought that it might be like buying a first-generation MP3 player in 1999, i.e. cost 200 quid and stored one song and within a few years they'll be so much better and so much cheaper that they'll be given out when you fill up with petrol.

But perusing all the threads about Roombas, it doesn't sound like a gimmick. You are all quite evangelical about them!