Scooba Blog

We added the Scooba and the Roomba to our wedding registry, and received the Scooba as an early Christmas gift. I could just say the Scooba works great, but that wouldn’t be really helpful.

Initially straight out the box, the Scooba would not lay down any water. I went through some simple troubleshooting steps (without calling iRobot). The design of the Scooba is relatively simple, the tank is split, clean water one side, dirty water on the other. On the clean water (solution) side, there is a small rubber valve. On the base of the unit is a small needle valve. The valves “mate” when the lid is closed, and the water flows from the clean tank into the base unit. These valves will “stick”. To check if the valves are working, push the top in and out a bit, and you should feel water on your finger. However it is the bottom valve which sticks more ofter. The bottom needle valve has an internal spring. To free this valve, use a drinking straw. Suck up some water from a cup, place the end of the straw over the needle valve, and blow…forcing the valve to un-stick. If you do this a few times, you will see water on the floor under the Scooba, this is when you know it is working. At this point, close the lid, and press Clean. With both valves working, the solution will flow. If you hav verified that both valves are working, and still no water is released or cleaning, then the unit is really truly broken, and you’ll have to call iRobot.

Anyway, love the Scooba. The desing is simple yet effective, I also love the fact that replacement part numbers are printed on the unit, and that the solution is not expensive…even if you have to buy from iRobot.

Good Luck,
Mark

I just bought my first Scooba 1 1/2 months ago. I think it was not working quite right out of the box. Sometimes it would not lay any water down. I called customer service and they suggested putting the Scooba on its side an “firmly” hitting it on the floor. I did and it still didn’t work, they said they would replace it but the whole process would take 3 weeks. So, I brought it back to Brookstone and they replaced it because it was within a month of buying it. I have had my 2nd Scooba for 3 weeks now it it worked great out of the box. Made a lot of racket (the first one did not) so it must be a good one right? Just the other day it too stopped laying down water so I used the whacking it on the floor trick and amazingly it worked. The Scooba was up and running. Now a week later the service light comes on and it is not sounding right. It is too quiet. I call customer service again and they basically tell me the filters may be clogged, I tell them I checked that and they ask me if I am “prepping” the floor before I run it. I do vacuum before I run it. I now have to bring this one back for a replacement.

The thing is I love this Robot!! I have 3 young children so trying to wash the floor and keep an eye on them at the same time is tricky. I just vacuum and put up the gate. My wall thing doesn’t work, the Scooba kept escaping. I love that the Scooba picks up the dirty water. When you see the dirty water it is very satisfying. I use it every day on one part of the house, sometimes twice a day. The kids love it too. They clean their room without a hassle because they can’t wait for their turn with the Scooba. I am feeling that maybe the Scooba was not designed for this kind of frequent use. I will admit that I am considering getting another replacement. I am hoping they were both lemons. My husband thinks I am crazy. He is done with it and thinks they just don’t work.

Thank you for listening!!

Thanks to Lynn for writing in - She writes:

I have been using my Scooba for a couple weeks now, and I love it. I
have two kids, a cat, a dog, and a muddy backyard. I just couldn’t
keep up and was living with pretty gross floors. I did need to run it
twice the first time because the kitchen floor was so very dirty, but
now I just make sure to do it every three days or so. I am cheerfully
resigned to the fact that the edge area under my low, handmade cabinets
is inaccessible and will need a quick wipe by hand every few days. I
have also used the Scooba on my countertops and smoothtop stove, after
a big messy day of canning, and it was wonderful.

I got a new Scooba and it doesn’t work. On the first use, the “Check Tank” light repeatedly came on 3-4 seconds after pressing “Clean.” After I followed all of the instructions in the manual, I found a few more suggestions on the web site. Incredibly, they suggested using “a turkey baster to unstick the valve.” Yes, a high tech piece of robotic instrumentation requires a turkey baster (or a drinking straw, if you’re so inclined) to get started. So I did it, and it worked - and the robot cleaned for all of six minutes. Then it stopped, again with the “Check Tank” light on. $300 in mechanical & electrical engineering that is inoperable because of a $1 valve.

I’m done. This robot is more trouble than it saves.

Oh - and if you call iRobot Customer Support, expect to wait at least 15 minutes for an operator.

Since repairing the house damage from Hurricane Charley, we now have white tile floors w/ indented white grout through out the house.

Our Scooba is a fantastic. Trying to keep the house clean with out Scooba would be insane. The grout comes up clean.

As far as the fragrance of the Clorox cleaner, I do not notice a strong lingering odor. In fact, I only notice the odor when filling & emptying the tank.

I don’t mind the cost of the cleaner. As far as being “forced” to use the cleaner, it like being upset over buying a new car, oh gosh, you mean I need to buy gas to make it run ?

Get real.

We got a scooba lucke dout actually a Target near us couldn’t sell theirs they marked both units down three times. So we got ours for $150.00 (300 to 250 to 200 to 150) I’m thinking about buying the other one and selling it on ebay for $50 more just to have that 50 pay for the solution.

The solutions not bad but people will have issues. the vinegar trick is in teh manual. I knwo many peple don’t want ot read that far but they offer you that choice they don’t force you to use clorox solution if they did they’d not print the vinegar water solution in the manual. So come on lets be rational educated people here before ya go blasting something cause ya didn’t want to read the owners manual. Don’t get me wrong vinegars not ideal smelling but it’s still a choice.

As for hardwood we have a 3000 sq foot house the floors rarely if ever get cleaned.

So the wife picked up the clearanced scooba now nick named scooby and figured if it sucked we’d take it back.

She’s done the kitchen which is lame lino.. And all but one room of the first floor which all rooms are hardwood. And I have to say I haven’t seen the floors this clean since we moved in it did an amazing job you could tell the floors were clean. The only caveat to hardwood flooors look around after it’s used to see if you have any water that soaked into the wood if so dry it and reseal it if you plan to keep using your scooba cause ward in teh wood too much is bad.

But our floors look great and wife is quite happy as is everyone else in the house.

On to another robot. The Scrubbing bubbles shower cleaner not a full bot but does the same and I was skeptical but it works I’m seeing grout coming white finally and the shower curtain has stopped sticking to istelf from the mold that grows.
All in all i’m happy to say we’ve moved on to using some of the labor saving clean devices of the new age and they work quite well. I only wish everyone else the same good fortunes.

I sadly returned my Scooba today to The Sharper Image. (By the way, they were really nice and no-questions-asked about the return).

I love robots and I love Scooba theoretically, but my expectations were too high. For $325 with tax, I really wanted it to clean well.

And it was only so-so. It got our dining room and kitchen floors pretty clean, but left a border of dust and dirt behind along the edges of the floor next to the walls. The Clorox solution also smells way too strong. If you’re not sensitive to smells, it probably won’t bother you. But I was annoyed.

We also tried it in a small, closed off area of our gallery space, which had more industrial-sized stains on a concrete floor (spilled drinks, scuff marks, dirt footprints). The Scooba really didn’t make any difference at all. I was wondering if the stains were just permanent, but then I whipped out the old Swiffer Wet, and it dissolved most of the stains with a little elbow grease. It was not as cool as Scooba, and I had to spend my own time cleaning instead of the robot’s time; but with the Swiffer it actually got clean.

So now I’m sad that it didn’t work out, and I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for the second generation scooba to give it another shot.

Thanks to Adam who wrote in with a review:

I sadly returned my Scooba today to The Sharper Image. (By the way, they were really nice and no-questions-asked about the return).

I love robots and I love Scooba theoretically, but my expectations were too high. For $325 with tax, I really wanted it to clean well.

And it was only so-so. It got our dining room and kitchen floors pretty clean, but left a border of dust and dirt behind along the edges of the floor next to the walls. The Clorox solution also smells way too strong. If you’re not sensitive to smells, it probably won’t bother you. But I was annoyed.

We also tried it in a small, closed off area of our gallery space, which had more industrial-sized stains on a concrete floor (spilled drinks, scuff marks, dirt footprints). The Scooba really didn’t make any difference at all. I was wondering if the stains were just permanent, but then I whipped out the old Swiffer Wet, and it dissolved most of the stains with a little elbow grease. It was not as cool as Scooba, and I had to spend my own time cleaning instead of the robot’s time; but with the Swiffer it actually got clean.

So now I’m sad that it didn’t work out, and I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for the second generation scooba to give it another shot.

Hi Folks.

Got another review for you, this time from KDKA, a CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh. Here is a link to the review.

Some snippets:

…there is no question the Scooba gets up dirt, but smears the dirt in tougher jobs. You can see it does a decent job. Getting it to finish the job is the problem…I found it pushed a lot of the dirt which it is supposed to pick up into the corners and where all the walls and the floors meet

So, did it lessen her workload?

“It actually created more work because once it was done, I had to clean all the parts off, dry it all out, put it all back,”

For those who have the Scooba, whats your opinion? Has it lessened your workload, or are you better off just scrubbing the floor?

CNN Money is featuring a review of the Scooba. Read it here

Some Excerpts:

I tested the Scooba on my kitchen floor the day after it had been mopped by a professional housekeeper…the silicon-based robot picked up more dirt and left the floor much cleaner than the carbon-based humanoid did.

On the downside, at nearly 15 inches wide, Scooba is not going to crawl behind the toilet or wiggle into recessed corners. It’s slow by human standards. And I wish it had a laser-pen sensor so I could guide it to messy areas.