The brushes, or beater brushes under your Roomba, are used to help it clean your floors.
Over time, these brushes get hair and other dirt trapped in them and must be cleaned. Refusing to clean and maintain these brushes will make your Roomba less effective at cleaning.
To clean the brushes on your Roomba is quite simple, but there are a few things you must keep in mind. Let’s go over how to clean the brushes on your Roomba and some tips you can use when you clean them. Also, when you need to replace them will be covered too.
How To Clean Roomba Brushes
You should clean your Roomba brushes every month and replace the brushes with new ones every year.
Failure to clean or replace your Roomba’s brushes can affect cleaning performance of your robot vacuum.
Here are the steps to clean and replace your Roomba’s brushes.
1. Remove Dustbin
Flip the Roomba over and remove the dustbin.
2. Press Yellow Tabs To Release The Brush Cage
Press the two yellow tabs as shown below to release the cage around the brushes.
3. Slide The Brushes Out
The Roomba brushes will slide out when you lift the yellow side up.
Remove the brushes from the Roomba robot vacuum.
4. Cut Hair With Scissors
When the brushes are out of the robot vacuum, you can cut the hair and anything that is tangled in them out.
No need to be fancy, regular scissors will do the job!
5. Rinse Brushes Off
An often overlooked step, you can and should rinse the brushes off.
I do mine under the sink as shown in the picture below and then dry them off with a towel.
These brushes get nasty, and not rinsing them off just means they’ll keep being nasty when cleaning. It takes 5 seconds to do, it’s very much worth it! You’ll agree when you dry them off and see all the grime that is left behind.
6. Clean Dirt Detector Sensor
Under the brushes is a piezo microphone that acts as a dirt sensor. It listens to how much dirt is being sucked up and if it detects a lot it does the spot clean.
It’s a good idea to clean this sensor with a slightly damp rag to get all the gunk off. Too much gunk on this sensor and it won’t spot clean or know to crank up the cleaning/suction on some robot vacuums.
Do not pour water or get this area too wet. You can use rubbing alcohol if the dirt and gunk is really bad, just don’t over do it and don’t press hard on the sensor.
Clean Brushes Monthly
You need to clean your Roomba brushes monthly and replace them every year.
There are more things you need to do to keep your Roomba cleaning the best it should. Check out our robot vacuum maintenance guide here!
See What Happens When You Don’t Clean Your Brushes
If you don’t clean your Roomba Brushes, they will end up looking like this:
Full of hair and a few bristles showing.
It’s the bristles of the brush that does the cleaning for carpets, and the less you have, the less effective your robot vacuum will be.
Not only that, but these brushes wear out over time and get shorter. The shorter the brush, the less it contacts the carpet and the less effective it is at cleaning.
If you have long hair or pets, these brushes will get a lot of hair trapped in them, especially if you mostly have carpets. So, you may need to clean the brushes twice a month!