Robot vacuum for dog hair cleanup

[KLF]

Have a Saint Barnard at home now. Great dog, very gentle and smart, trains very well. But OMG the hair...

Anybody have one of these newer Roomba style vacuums, with a shedding dog? I can't imagine it would be able to self clean out a big wad of hair.

 

[clrussell]

We use the shark brand and are very impressed with its dog hair ability.

Obviously requires emptying every now and then but it works really well.

Even if we vacuum with a normal vacuum it still will fill up in dog hair. Easy to clean, easy to use.

Recommend

 

[mudgudgeon]

I think one benefit of these is you can set it to run daily, so you don't get as many big wads of fur built up

 

[sentient schmoo]

Have a Saint Barnard at home now. Great dog, very gentle and smart, trains very well. But OMG the hair...

Anybody have one of these newer Roomba style vacuums, with a shedding dog? I can't imagine it would be able to self clean out a big wad of hair.

Yes. Five of the shedding variety.

1.) Keeping up on grooming is essential to preventing the huge clumps
2.) Running the robot vacuum once daily is majorly helpful in preventing the fur pile up. When I use the robot vacuum daily / with consistency, all I have to do is sweep out the corners / under the furniture legs 2x a week.

 

[Skniper]

Have a Saint Barnard at home now. Great dog, very gentle and smart, trains very well. But OMG the hair...

Anybody have one of these newer Roomba style vacuums, with a shedding dog? I can't imagine it would be able to self clean out a big wad of hair.

Beware…while effective, these autobot vacuums are non discriminatory when it comes to other dog “debris”.

Photo below sent by a friend after his roomba went mudding, it then continued to fingerpaint his entire floor with that foul mess.
I was gagging and laughing so hard I could barely breathe.

Roombas come with decent mud terrains from the factory, however with a St. Bernard you may consider an aftermarket lift as well.

 

[BILT4ME]

@Fast Eddy recommendation?

 

[KLF]

Thanks for the feedback. Still haven't taken the plunge, but considering. I'm aware of the risk, but this guy has never had any accidents in the house, not one. We just don't leave him alone that long.

 

[Fast Eddy]

The solution to your dog shitting on your floor is not in your cleaning device.

@Fast Eddy recommendation?

Always Neato vs Roomba. The D-shape cleans faster and closer to the edges and corners. I'm not sure if the newer roombas have an actual vacuum in them, but they used to be sweepers, not vacuums. Neato has always had a blower. I actually sought them out for a job due to the fantastic reviews you youtube. I worked there for a couple years, 2013-2015.

I'm more of a fan of the older, unconnected ones. All the newer ones since I left are the connected type that have no screen and are fully controlled by the phone. I'm sure they're good, and now they have the "partial map" feature, where the bot or the cloud service stores a map of your place and you can direct the cleaning where you need it. The older ones create a new map every time with Software Localization And Mapping (SLAM).

Roombas, when I had one and when I joined Neato, just randomly bounced around and eventually cleaned the whole room by chance. They are probably more sophisticated by now, but they still can't put the brush out on the edge because Neato has a patent on that. Conversely, Neato has to find the charger by looking for it. It can't remember where it is because Roomba has a patent on that.

Here's one for $200. This one has software in it that I wrote. Mostly the color screen driver and the User Interaction (UI) SW, but also some of the battery modeling that helps it predict how much charge is left to be sure it makes it back to the charger before the battery is completely dead.

It's a low-enough price to see if it works for you, before you pay the bigger price for a connected version.

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[Fast Eddy]

BTW, they do not auto-clean the brush. With a lot of dog hair, you're going to have to do that yourself. You can get a 2nd brush and rotate them. The brush will pick up more hair. There is also a rubber paddle thing that won't clog up with hair as easily, but it won't pick up as much hair and is noisier on anything other than carpet.

In either case you'll still have to clean hair out of the bearings on the ends and, of course, dump the dust bin as often as every time.

A robot that automatically dumped the dust bin would be great, and they exist, but I have no experience. I'm guessing you still have to do a lot of manual hair-picking out of the crevices.

 

[KLF]

So I thought I'd update this thread. I finally caved, did a bunch of research, and ended up with an iRobot j7 a few weeks ago. It was highly rated for dealing with pet hair, which is my biggest focus.

My verdict: Meh.

We have to run it pretty much every other day to keep up. A Saint Bernard sheds a LOT, and this thing is just not up to it. Yes we do try to brush (more like rake) him outside occasionally, but it's a super messy job.

Our house is not very big, and the area that it can work with is only about 700 ft2 (according to the map it generated). I have this split into 3 zones. There is a "whisker" brush out front, and a small caster, both of which are wadded up with hair after I run a single zone. I have to clean it by hand after each run.

This one has a base that it empties into, and the bags are just too small. I'm surprised at how noisy the things is. I'm not comfortable having it run on an automatic schedule without supervision, I'm worried that he will get complacent about it and it will end up tangled in his fur someday.

It won't replace using the real full vacuum (we have central) as it just can't get into the corners and under some stuff.

I think it would do really well with short pet hair, but it's just not that great for our situation.

 

[BlackCat]

The minute one of those things started randomly scooting around the house, my dogs would immediately tear it to shreds I’d imagine, but it definitely would help I’m sure.

 

[KLF]

We've had a couple of events now where the thing gets "lost" in the house. It just starts randomly wandering around looking for its base, bonking into furniture and walls. I get tired of hearing it so I have to pick it up and shove it back into the base. I guess I'll have to remap the house again.