Roomba Rescue

You may remember how much I adore our Roomba. Turns out one of their biggest flaws is that the batteries kick out after about a year of regular use. They do better with more regular use but we use ours only 2 or 3 times per week so maybe not enough to cycle the battery enough. Where we previously got an hour of cleaning out of it, we were now getting only about 15 minutes at most - barely enough to cover the kitchen. Argh.

So, I did some searching and found a replacement battery online. It cost around $30 for an aftermarket version (find it here), which considering a new Roomba would be about a few hundred dollars, it was worth it.

Total time to replace the battery was about 5 minutes - here are the steps.

1) Flip it over -

 

2) Then you remove the spinning brush (yellow).

 

3) Unscrew the four screws on the bottom. They do not come all the way out so you don't have to worry about losing them.

 4) Lift off the top and check out the dust inside your Roomba. Yuck!

 

 5) Lift out the old battery and replace it with the new one.

 6) Drop it back in the charger for a couple of hours so it recharges.

 

Back in business!

In case you are wondering, the picture above is the small area between our kitchen and dining room. It was originally intended to be a butler's pantry but we figured for this time in our life we could use an extra junk drop area more than a butler's pantry. But a butler's pantry would be nice too! Some day.