by glnc222 » April 1st, 2017, 2:41 pm
I have studied this issue a long time cleaning wall-to-wall carpet, for which small robots are not designed. The regular vacuum cleaner was invented a century ago for this problem, compared to sweeping hard floors. Low power robots cannot deep clean carpet, but they can prevent accumulation of dirt with frequent use of a robot made for better cleaning. The common tests reported use surface debris which is not entirely indicative. So I tested the dirt left over after robot cleaning with a regular vacuum. I was interested in the Samsung Powerbot for its high power MAX mode but found that made little difference and may put excessive wear on the battery. Over months of use I found the normal mode on this brand at least sufficient to clean the carpet. There is insufficient data on other brands, understandable with robots oriented towards hard floors. The Powerbot intake sits flat on the floor much like the regular vacuum cleaning heads. I would still do carpet washing every year or so.
Washing carpets is a high power job to extract the water, nothing like mopping a hard floor with iRobot mopping products (discontinued I think).
I found the rented machines from Bissell better than some more common ones. A few years ago there was a lot of advertising of home owned washers, I would think of interest only in large houses.
For dry cleaning materials, HOST etc. (actually wet when applied), there is one to avoid. A fine clay like product, applied dry, with separately applied chemicals, is sold, which I found when used was not extracted fully by the regular Dyson centrifuge and showed up on the separate exhaust filter intake. Concerned this could ruin the washable HEPA filter and not be washed out, I would use it only with paper bag vacuums. I did not find HOST as thorough as washing machines (used for antique, delicate etc. materials.) (steam by the way, is really hot water, in truck mount machines -- avoiding chemicals; steamers for hard floors, alternatives to chemicals, true steam, are something else -- and will damage with heat lots of materials besides stone or tile flooring, the underlayment etc.).
Commercial firms sell cleaning services with something like HOST, no-residue service.
Dyson's robot is supposed to have high suction(and short run time) similar to their hand held battery product, so maybe useful.