That Time We Talked About Robot Vacuums

Hey everybody, before the show gets started today, we have a quick message for you. Hey everybody, this is Craig from The Homeowner Show. Right now, many of you are probably really concerned about your mortgage, and we just wanted to bring your attention to a couple of resources that we've put together here on the show. One is my good friend Robin Sproba and her team have put together a quick 6-minute video over on YouTube that explains a lot of the issues with foregoing some payments on your mortgage and answers a few other questions about that as well. Also, my friend Haley Thayer and her YouTube channel, you can go over there and pay attention to a lot of things that are happening with mortgages in the market right now.

She's just an excellent resource. I called her just this past week to talk about my mortgage and she's just a wealth of knowledge. So we just wanted to bring these things to your attention because we know a lot of you might be experiencing some anxiety about your mortgage right now and just have some questions. So if you have those, go to the show notes. The links are there. Please take advantage of them. If you're just watching this on Facebook or Instagram, just know that the links are in the just down below. So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us. We're here for you guys. If you need us, just reach out. Back to the show.

This is episode number 85 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett. Here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're glad that you can join us from your Easter quarantine festivities.

We're recording this on Easter, and it is the weirdest Easter ever.

I love it.

Well, it's just different, man. Like, it's just, it's just different. It's honestly been the most relaxed Easter we've ever had.

Yes, yes. And even though, like, like, you know, we've, we've been adhering to some pretty strict quarantine policies here at the Williams compound, so like, we We didn't have Easter dinner with either one of our families, but I'm with you, man. It was super relaxing. Yeah, I actually took a, took a nap on my porch today. It was glorious.

I bet. It was really nice outside today.

Oh man, it was so pretty. Like, at one point during the church services today, I got this really cool photo of the sun coming out from behind the clouds. Yeah. And it was, man, it was, it just turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day. And I I know a lot of people are struggling with the lack of hugs and the lack of extracurricular human contact out there in the workplace and the public sphere, but it's gonna be okay.

It is. And we're seeing a downward turn, at least it's starting to turn, and things are gonna get back to normal eventually.

So yeah.

Just chill.

What's funny about this show, man, is a lot of the stuff that you and I talk about are things that people spend their time at work thinking about that they have to accomplish. Now that they're at home and they're faced with all of these projects and extra things that they can get done, which a lot of people are getting done, we're hearing from folks getting lots of interesting projects done around the home, a lot of their minds have turned to the things that they need to get done at work. Honestly, some people are turning their minds toward finding work. With as many people as being furloughed and let go. So, you know, it's just a— it's kind of a different season, you know, pardon the pun, on the Homeowner Show,

because everyone's, you know, kind of feeling like their home's a trap, almost.

Yeah, no, no. And one of the things that either happens is you either get into this mindset of like, I'm ready to— I'm ready to kind of get all these projects done that has been on my list for a while.

Yeah.

And, you know, I'm gonna work on it. Or it's like, man, I can't leave this place. I don't really want to do anything because I've got other things that I've got on my mind. And yeah, it's like one of the two. And, and, you know, it's, it's, it's just interesting. And the way people deal with things, especially in stressful situations— people deal with stressful situations In lots of different ways.

Yeah. So yeah, and you know, even though like, I honestly, I have not— still have not been home all that much. Like, I was, I was really stoked that I had an actual weekend this weekend because I haven't had one in 2 or 3 weeks. Um, just, it's been that busy. Um, so I was really stoked. Like, I didn't, I didn't get Good Friday off. I mean, Good Friday was— I mean, it was a good Friday, but it was, you know, it was jam-packed with work. But I had to pack it in on Friday just so I could have Saturday and Sunday with the family. But despite all of that, I've still been able to get some projects done. I've been pretty stoked about it. One of them that I got done recently—

this is a trend I've been seeing going around for a while, so I'm probably a little late to the game— but I put together one of these bed swings. Have you seen these?

No. Yeah, I have actually, but I didn't know you had one.

I just built it and finally got it hung about a week ago.

OK.

And that has probably been the smartest quarantine move I've ever made.

Well, thankfully, it's— thankfully, our quarantine time is in the middle of spring.

Yeah.

If this was like 2 months later, it would be awful.

It would be awful. I mean, it's still like we, we have a big wraparound porch. And so, it's always shady. If I put a couple of fans out there, it'd probably be bearable. But you're right, it just gets ridiculously hot. But springtime is perfect, man. In fact, my kids actually slept out there one night when it was light. But it was the night it got down to like— I think it got to like 48 degrees outside.

Wow!

But anyway, it's this really cool wooden bed frame hanging from ropes on my porch. Um, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can go to Etsy, you can go to Pinterest, you can go to all these websites and find, you know, bed swings. And I think a lot of people put them on queen frames. I put this one on a twin frame just because we had an extra twin mattress. Um, and I wanted, you know, it takes a little bit less wood and I wanted to see if I could do it. So it actually turned out really, really nice. I did it with, um, A lot of people do them like benches, and I did mine sort of

like a chaise lounge.

Okay.

And so it only has a chair rail on one side, and I did it with shiplap. Um, and it turned out really, really nice. We've gotta, we've gotta get like a moisture barrier cover for the mattress and a decent outdoor sheet for it. Um, but right, like, it has been my kids' new favorite place to do their homework.

Oh, okay.

And so like they— where they typically kind of like to, you know, either hang out in their room or in the living room or try and like, you know, lurk by the TV. They love going outside and, you know, just sit in the breeze and read a book and do their homework. And that's where I took my nap today. And it was quite lovely.

Nice.

Mother Nature rocked me to sleep.

It was, it really was. It was, it was nice outside. Plus there was a really good breeze today, so I'm sure it was really nice.

Yeah, no, it was lovely.

Awesome. So awesome.

Well, we, we've got a, uh, we've got a pretty cool episode today. We're going to be reviewing something from Kevin's home.

Yeah, this is, so this is something that, um, I, I have been so very thankful to have, um, So we're gonna review a robot vacuum today. And just kind of before we get there—

Made by Skynet.

I'll tell you— do what?

Made by Skynet.

By Skynet, yeah. It's really interesting. So let me give you a little bit of background for a minute. So I had an internship back in 2003. And the guy, the owners of the home that I lived in for the summer, the guy worked for US Robotics. And he— I remember looking out of the window one day. And there's this thing like, out in his yard, just like doing something. What, what's going on out there? What is that? He said, oh, it's the lawnmower. The lawnmower? What are you talking about? I mean, this is 2003, okay? So this is cutting-edge stuff at the time.

Yeah.

And he said, yeah, you know, it's a product that my company's worked on and you just bury a line, you know, on the perimeter and it stays within that perimeter and it mows. Um, I, he said, I haven't, I haven't touched a lawnmower in like 2 years. And I was, and his lawn looked great. It looked great. Um, and that was goodness. That was 17 years ago.

Yeah.

You know, and so these robots have come a really long way. And so, um, my wife and I were somewhat early adopters into trying out the robot vacuum. And so we had a Roomba early on, uh, probably back in, like, we got married in '07. So it was probably shortly after that, maybe '08.

Okay.

Um, and we had a Roomba and it was, to be quite honest, we hated that thing. We, I mean, we spent a lot of money on it. Um, and, uh, uh, I don't know. I don't remember how much it was. We spent a lot of money on it. And one of the weird things was like, the, the, the way it mapped out a room was very odd. And this was also true of that, that lawnmower that I was speaking of earlier. It just kind of zigzagged around the room.

Right.

And it would, it would go until it hit something. And when I say hit something, it's got sensors all over it. And it— but it would like, it would bump up against something and it would turn and it would go another way until it bumped into something else. It would turn and go and bump into something else. And at the end of the day, like, you could see lines all over your room where it had vacuumed, but whether or not it actually vacuumed the entire room, I had no idea. And it seemed like it took forever. to do that. And eventually, I don't remember what happened, but it just, it died on us. I think it was a battery. And so we were

just, we just scrapped it.

Shallow grave.

We were, yeah, we really, we were not all that impressed with it, to be honest. But I loved the idea.

Right.

And so I don't know, 2 years later or so, I had kind of gotten onto this kick with these one sale a day websites at the time. And one that I still look at it every single day, it's called woot.com, W-O-O-T.com.

Yeah.

It's just one sale a day. They've got different iterations of it, but They typically sell one item a day and they had a robot vacuum on there and it was a brand I'd never heard of and it was called Neato, N-E-A-T-O. And I thought, huh, I'm interested in this. It was a good price. Um, and so I did a little bit of research on it. And one of the things that it said that really caught my attention was that it did not just randomly move about your room. It, It went in straight lines, turned around, went in a straight line, and, and you could kind of tell that it had cleaned your entire room at that point. And so I was like, you know what, good price,

let's try it out. And honestly, we liked it pretty well. We had that thing scheduled and it was a bit cumbersome because all of the scheduling had to be done on the vacuum itself. It had a little screen on it.

Mm-hmm.

And so, you know, you had to arrow down until you got to a certain day and arrow down to a certain time. And it was a little bit cumbersome to get that all done, but once you had it set, it was kind of nice. You could set it to clean every day or every other day or whatever. Um, eventually it stopped working and we didn't know what happened. Uh, it turns out it was a battery. To buy a new battery for the thing was so expensive that it wasn't worth repairing, and so we scrapped that one too. We went without owning one for many years, but it's always kind of been one of those things where we could tell that the technology had been

continually moving forward.

Yeah.

And so, I mean, recently one of the things that's really caught my eye is Husqvarna has put out a robot lawnmower.

Yeah.

And, and it's fairly affordable whenever you, whenever you kind of get down to it, it's like $1,000.

I was gonna say they're like $1,000. Yeah. I saw one at the store the other day. They're doing, they're doing like live demos for it in most retail places now.

Yeah. And, and, and I know that, that, that sounds crazy a little bit, $1,000, but I started doing the math a little bit. And if you were the type of person who just doesn't have time to mow your lawn, Or just don't want to, maybe you can't mow your lawn, and you're paying someone to go out and mow your yard. Let's say, I mean, around here, goodness, you have to get your yard mowed every week.

Pretty much.

If you don't, it can get out of control. And let's say you pay $40 a week, which is, I think, is fairly reasonable for most homes, $40 a week. In a month, I mean, you've, you've spent a lot of money.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, you're up to $160 a month. You do that. I mean, around here you're talking 4 or 5 months out of the year. So within 2 years you can have that thing paid for. And—

I think they're electric, aren't they?

They are. You're not paying for gas.

Yeah.

Um, and it, and it'll mow as often as you want it to, you know. And so, and it's pretty powerful too. I mean, it'll, it'll mulch really, really well. And so these things have just continued to gain in their technological advances. And so my wife had been kind of talking to me like, hey, I'd be interested in looking at another robot vacuum because, I mean, goodness, we're both working full-time right now. Got one kid in preschool about to be in kindergarten, the other one's in first grade. So, you know, by the time I get home, our weekends, it's like, man, I'd really like to spend time with my kids. We got to clean the house, we got to do all these

things. It was kind of one of those deals where we started weighing the cost. And we decided, you know what, if one of the things could be taken off of our plate, it would really help.

The kids weren't in this discussion, right?

Oh, no.

Because I mean, like, not yet. Let's be honest. I mean, like, we're being practical.

Well, eventually, eventually. But like, my 7-year-old is not going to be vacuuming right now, right?

No, I meant getting rid of the kids.

Oh, oh, you mean getting rid of something?

Yeah. I mean, let's put everything on the table, Kevin.

It was a consideration, I'm not gonna lie, but we asked around and no one was interested. So, um, uh, which I was surprised. We had cute kids.

You do.

I don't know. Um, still curious how that happened. Well, it is a mystery. It is a complete mystery. Um, anyway, so, uh, we just started kind of looking at it and One of the ones that we kind of zeroed in on as being a really good product is one— I'm a researcher by nature, and I'm not just gonna buy something without spending a lot of time pouring into what does it do, you know, what are the reviews, is it gonna meet my needs, all those sorts of things. And I'm, I'm also the type of person that's more inclined to wait a few months and get what I actually want than to buy something impulsively right now. So we had zeroed into this, to this one,

and it came up on a flash sale before Christmas on Amazon. And so the price of this thing was pretty pricey, it was $599 at the time for this vacuum. The brand is Roborock. And the series is S5. They've now got an S6 that just has a little bit more, it does a little bit more than the one that I've got does. But it's $649 right now. So it's, it's even more expensive. But on this flash sale, we got it for $359.

Dang.

Yeah. So from $600 down to $359. Now, right now on Amazon, I looked, it was $479. Uh, so, you know, you find it at the right time, you might be able to get it for, for less than that. But, um, again, we started weighing the costs. Like, where do I want to spend my money? We— you and I've talked about this a lot. Now you go onto our DIY calculator and try to figure out, you know, what, what is your money worth? What is your time worth? Is it worth spending the money? We determined that $359 was worth it. So, um, let me tell you, like, I'll just tell you right up front, bar none, one of the best

purchases we've ever made.

Hmm.

Like, other than like insurance for health. This is one of the best purchases we've ever made, mainly because of its functionality. I'm not interested in something if it doesn't Work, right? So we brought it home, unboxed it, and it unboxes really, really well. The thing does not have any type of remote with it. You actually use your phone and everything is done through an app. But one of the things, if you were to go look right now and look and see any reviews on this thing, They're probably about a year old. A lot of the reviews are because this unit specifically is a little over that, you know, age. And many of them say that it's got a clunky app. Well, they've made a lot of

improvements on that app even since we've bought it over the last few months, and they continue to put out updates. But there's a lot of things that you can do with the app, and we're going to get into that. in a few minutes, but that you control everything from that app. I want to show you just a few of the features of the vacuum itself, and then we'll get into kind of the functionality of it a little bit. I've actually got it right here. If you're watching this on video, you can actually see it.

Go ahead. I was just going to ask real quick, so if you control it from your phone, is it connecting via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth?

Yes, it's Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi, okay.

Yes.

So, so technically then you could control it when you're away from the home?

Yes, you absolutely can.

Okay.

In fact, one of the things that's really nice about it, we'll talk about this as well, is the, uh, the alerts that you get are pretty, pretty good, and we'll talk about that in a minute. Um, so, so this is the unit right here. Um, so it's got It's got sensors on it all over. The underneath has the brush, obviously. But so it's got this lid that pops up. On the inside is where the dustbin is, comes out really, really easily.

Oh, cool.

Just like that. And it's got a— it's got an air filter on it and just clean that. In fact, one of the ways— one of the things that we do is it comes with an extra air filter. And so about every 2 weeks, we take that to our kitchen sink with the sprayer function, and we just spray that thing down. We take it out, we spray it down, we put the other one in and let that one dry. And we just, we just recycle it that way. It's also got this tool right here. I don't know if you can, you can see it.

For those of you just listening, there's a, there's a tool next to the dustbin on the interior panel of this thing that Kevin's showing me right now.

Yeah, and so one of the things that it does, it just pops out of here, but it's got a, it's got a cutter on it, and it's also got a brush on it. And that is specifically to clean out anything you need to if you've got any hair or any, you know, strings or thread or anything like that that wraps around the Around the brush itself. Yeah, you don't have to go find a knife or scissors or anything. It's all right here. You can just use this tool to fix all of that. Then on the other underside, it's got this little— a lot of robots have this. It's a brush that sweeps things towards the brush,

the roller brush.

Okay.

So up against— if you notice here, the The actual brush that vacuums is in between the wheels.

Right.

Okay, it's, it's not huge. I mean, it's probably like, I don't know, 8 inches in length. But this, this little wheel will sweep stuff into the brush. So whenever it gets up against the walls or that kind of thing, it sweeps it in. And then one of the things that happens with most vacuums is stuff gets clogged in that brush, right? It's frustrating. This thing is super easy, man. It's got these 2 little— got a little guard on it and brush comes right out. Take this out, clean it, put it back in and snap this thing back. Good to go.

Yo, he just took that apart in like 5 seconds.

Yeah, I mean, there's these, there's these 2 little clips right here. And it's, I mean, it's super easy.

Yeah.

So, so that's the unit. It's got 3 buttons on the front, on the top. One's a power button. One is kind of a charge, send it to the charger. This is kind of a menu button of some sort. So, so that's the vacuum itself. And, you know, honestly, There's a couple of functionalities that I think a lot of people are interested in whenever it comes to, to these things. One of them is, is it going to get stuck anywhere?

Hmm.

So far we have not had that issue. We're going to get into some of the mechanics of it in a minute, just because the app has some really cool features that I want to highlight, but also We have not had any issues with it getting stuck. When it— if it— we've had one time when something got stuck in the roller, the roller brush, the cleaner brush, and it stopped immediately and sent us a push notification on our phone. And it made an— it's got a speaker on it, so it makes a— it will audibly tell you. Something is stuck.

Mm-hmm.

And so if you're near it, you'll hear that. You can then just go remove whatever is going on. Or if you're not near it, it'll send you a push notification and you can just— you can read it right there on your phone that something's going on. You might want to check it. So this is one of the things that's actually been really helpful, is even whenever I'm away, like if I'm at the office or something, And this thing is going, I know exactly what it's doing. I know if there's something going on, if there's something wrong. But honestly, we don't really have that many issues. So it doesn't get stuck that often. The other, the other question that people have is,

what kind of battery life does it have? This thing will go for about 2 hours. Um, and, uh, about 2 hours before it has problems. Uh, and once it has problems, um, once it has problems as far as battery life goes, it just goes back to the dock, recharges itself, and goes back to where it left off and starts up again. So again, to me, it's one of those deals where battery life is kind of— it's one of those deals where it's like, I mean, I guess it could be a problem, but at the end of the day, if it's going to go back and recharge itself and then go finish cleaning, I don't know that it really matters.

Especially if you're not home during the day. I mean, like, if it runs low on battery, it's going to go back and charge and then go finish its job and it'll probably be done before you get home anyway. Well, and that's probably, that's probably a good question about how long does it take to do the whole house?

I think that kind of depends on how you run this thing. So our house, you know, it really kind of depends. I mean, some people have 2-story houses. Well, this thing isn't going to climb stairs, right?

Well, they should work on that.

So you either have to have multiple— so we, you know, unless you have multiple units, you're gonna have to physically take it. somewhere else and put it somewhere. It does have sensors where it's not going to go down the stairs. It's not going to fall down the stairs or anything.

Okay.

But at the same time, some of that, some of that's going to be dependent on how big your house is. For my house to do the entire thing, which we're about 2,400 square feet, it probably takes it 3 hours maybe.

Okay.

Something like that. But we do that in stages a lot of times. A lot of times we'll be in one part of the house and we'll just let the other part go and vice versa. So it's kind of hard to determine 'cause we probably use it differently than some people would, which is just, hey, clean my entire house once a week or twice a week or every day.

Yeah.

If you want to. So one of the things that has been a knock on this thing is some people say that it's got a small dustbin. There are some units that you can get on certain brands that have like the— at the docking station, it removes the waste for you.

Okay.

I haven't found that to be an issue, honestly. I have not found it to be one of those deals where it won't clean my entire house. Or at least part of my house with needing to dump whenever I'm not around. Part of that is how often are you going to clean your floor?

Sure.

The more you do it, the less it has to be cleaned. So, you know, I think that— I think a lot of that has to do with how you choose to run it, you know?

Yeah.

So those are kind of the main things that I think physically a lot of people are concerned about. Is it going to You know, eat up something in my house? Well, I think a lot of that has to do with how well do you pick your house up?

Sure.

I mean, you kind of have to be smart about things. Like, if you don't want something sucked up in your vacuum cleaner, you probably need to pick it up anyway.

Well, like, I know that yours is a Lego house, so it definitely— will it suck up a Lego?

Oh yeah. Yeah. And, and so you do, I mean, Again, you have to be kind of careful. I mean, if you, if you, if you wouldn't want it to suck it up, then you probably just need to make sure it's picked up or close that off.

Mm-hmm.

That brings us up to another question, which is, how do you section parts of your house off or, you know, tell it not to go places? The last 2 robot vacuums we had came with like these sensor, like these lasers that you would put in certain areas and came with like 1 or maybe 2 and you could buy more, but it essentially sent, shot a laser across a certain area and it would be like a no-pass zone.

Okay.

But you had to have multiple of those if you had multiple places you didn't want it to go. This is where this vacuum has really stolen my heart. It will projection map your house.

Oh.

What happens is, in the app, when it starts going, it analyzes the room, kind of goes around the perimeter, and then it starts making its path back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. will do your entire house or wherever you have it set to go. And it maps out where it's gone and it maps out the layout of your house. I mean, it's bizarre. I could pull up my app right now and show you the map of my house and then you can go in and label rooms.

Hmm.

And so you can say, no, this is the living room, this is the kitchen, this is the, you know, the kids' bedroom, the You know, parents' bedroom, whatever. And so, and it actually has physical lines on this map to show you every swath that this vacuum has taken. So like in my living room where the couch is, there's like this little cutout where it didn't vacuum right there. It doesn't necessarily know why it didn't vacuum there. It just knows that there's a perfect little rectangle that it did not vacuum around. Because there was something there. So one of the things you can do is you can literally draw out on that map where you don't want it to go, and it won't go there.

Hmm.

So, so like, for instance, if you've got, like in my bedroom, we've got curtains that drag the ground. We can just draw a line around those curtains and it would not go there. You can also do boundaries to where if you, if you just don't want it to go into a certain area, it just won't go there. You just literally are drawing that off on the map and it knows not to go there. So this is next level, in my opinion, of taking the ability to make sure that you're not sucking up Legos in a room that you didn't pick up.

Yeah.

Maybe, maybe you forgot for the day, um, and you know it's going to be scheduled to go. If you wanted to, you can get on the app and either tell it not to go that, that day or tell it not to go into that room, and you've taken care of the issue.

So you can just, you can just go into the app and say, hey, just don't do this room today?

Exactly. The other thing you can do is you can say, go clean the, the kitchen, and it works with This one specifically works with Alexa. So if you just tell Alexa to, you know, to clean the kitchen, then boom, it knows where the kitchen is and it knows to work on only the kitchen and then go back to its charging station. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So the other function of this thing that kind of had me intrigued was its mopping function.

Well, real quick, I mean, you said it worked with Alexa. Does it work with your HomeKit stuff?

It does not work with HomeKit.

Does it work with Google?

It works with Google, it works with SmartThings, it works with IFTTT.

Just not with HomeKit.

Not with HomeKit.

Okay.

I think there are some other things that it works with as well, but it works with quite a few different options. HomeKit is just not one of them.

Gotcha.

There are some different things you can do with the app that are still pretty nifty. There's a mopping function. I've got the little insert here. This is the insert. This is the mopping insert. It's got a little reservoir in it.

Mm-hmm.

You pop this little tube here, pour water into it. And, uh, this is a reservoir and it clicks into the back and then, uh, it comes with microfibers and this thing can be washed. You can buy more of them. It comes with 2 of them. Um, but it, but it's pretty simple. It, uh, it just, it's got a, this is a rigid, uh, side and it's kind of like got a pipe in it and you slip it in and it Velcros down. And then that is a microfiber that it basically expels water onto. You get this thing wet first before you put it on. It expels water onto it as it's going, and it basically, for a better— lack of a better term, it

drags the ground. And so to tell someone that this thing does deep mopping would be a lie. It does not do that. However, I mean, if you were to go into your kitchen right now, even after having swept it, cleaned it, or whatever, and like take a wet paper towel and wipe it, you're probably going to get stuff on, on that wet cloth, right?

Right.

So whether it's dust or just, you know, stuff that, you know, doesn't get picked up, this basically does the same thing. It will— it's not gonna— it'll It picks up paw prints from my dog, which I do want to mention that we have a dog. She doesn't shed a lot, but she does shed a little bit. And this thing has been a lifesaver when it comes to that because it picks up pet hair really, really well.

Hmm.

And so, but yeah, it'll— on your hard surfaces, it'll go along and wipe them down basically is the best way I can put That and does a really good job. I've been, I've been really pleased with that function. So brings me to another point. So there are 4 different modes on this thing. There's quiet mode, there is a kind of a middle mode, a max mode, and a mop mode. So the quiet mode is just like if you're in your house and you really don't want to hear it much, it'll, it'll do your floors and it's really not that loud. It's pretty quiet. That middle mode is kind of a good mixture between not too loud, not too quiet, but it's got a good amount of suction. And then the max has the most

suction, it's a little bit louder. And then you can put it on the mop mode specifically, and it doesn't roll the brush at that point, but it will still mop. You can use the mop function and the vacuum function at the same time. I don't know that I would necessarily recommend that.

Why would you do that? Is there a reason you might do that?

Most of the time when we're doing our floors, we will let it go with the regular vacuum and then come back with the mop function and wipe it all down.

Okay.

But if you didn't want to take that extra step, technically you could do it all in one, one step. I don't know that that's probably— that would be my favorite way to do that. I think you would wind up being a little bit counterintuitive in doing that.

Sounds like you'd be sucking up wet dirt.

I think that happens sometimes. Well, it could, it could happen. So to me, it's just better to do it, to do it separately. But I will show you real quick. So, so the back of the underside of this thing, that reservoir, whenever it's on the floor, it just clicks in to the back like that. Nice.

Okay.

And so it's, it's, it's really simple. And there's buttons on the side, on either side, you click those in and it just pulls right out. So really easy to use. They've made it very functional as far as that goes.

Well, I'll tell you, Kev, one of the other easiest things that you can do is call Paul the Plumber.

Yeah, man.

Man, if you have a leak, if you need a new toilet, new hot water— man, I've been seeing him put in a lot of hot water heaters here lately. I don't know what is going on, if people are like counterintuitively getting ready for the summertime, but he's been putting in a lot of hot water heaters and he is great at it. Any of your plumbing needs, reach out to Paul the Plumber at 832-521-3252.

There you go.

You can also book him online now, man.

That's, that's one of my favorite things about this, man. It's so easy. Yes.

I mean, you can go on the website, you can book him there, you can go on Facebook and click Book an appointment, and you can book an appointment on Facebook.

Dude, it's so easy.

If you need a plumber, call Paul the Plumber.

And just make your life easy. Call him. Don't get bogged down in something you wish you would have called him for.

Yeah, it's a great sponsor of this show. Thank you, Paul.

Thank you. Really, really appreciate it. So back to the app. I'm gonna show this to you. Man, you can't really see that, can you, at all? I was hoping to show it to you.

Kind of a bluish glare.

Yeah.

Oh, I can see it now. Yeah, it says vacuum. Leaving room.

Vacuum. Yeah, leaving room is what it should say.

It's rather ominous.

But yeah, yes. So if I click that right now, it will actually take me to another screen that has the map of my house.

Huh.

So, so that's just part of my house because that's the last thing that it did. But you can actually see, I don't know if I can show you, but right there is where my couch is, that rectangle that I was telling you about.

Oh yeah.

And so, you know, it knows where every place in my house is, and there's a lot of really cool things that I can do with this. But one of the things that I absolutely love about this is all of the settings that you can do. You can change the volume of the speaker, you can turn it off completely if you want to. This is where you're going to go in, you're going to schedule everything. You can set up timers. It's actually got a remote control on it. So like if you want to manually move this thing around and just kind of spot clean, you can, you can do that from the app. One of my favorite things is it's got a maintenance, a maintenance part. So

it'll tell you how long you have left on your filter. On your side brush. I know it's backwards on my screen, sorry. On your side brush, on your main brush, and then as you can tell— And so I got a push notification the other day that said you've now run your vacuum for more than 30 hours, and every 30 hours you're supposed to clean the sensors. It's as simple as taking, like, going and wiping them down. But you need to do that. And it's one of those— it's, it's just a— it's like anything. The more you maintain things, the longer it's gonna last.

Yeah.

And so the app takes out the hard work of figuring out when you need to do that. And, you know, it tells you whenever stuff needs to happen. So the maintenance function is really, really cool. You can update its firmware from here. It'll tell you if there's firmware update that you need to do. I mean, there's so many. It would take me a long time to go through all of the various options that the app gives you, but the amount of control you have over it is stunning.

So do the different colors— and for those of you listening, you weren't able to see that, but there's several different colors on Kevin's map when he showed it to me. Do the different colors mean something on the app as far as like what the vacuum's doing there, or what do all those things mean?

Uh, they're just different. It's, it's signifying different rooms without me going in and telling them which rooms those are. It knows that it's a different space.

Okay.

You can tell because, like I said, when it goes into a new area, there's, there's a little ring on the top of that thing that's constantly kind of analyzing the space that it's in.

Okay.

And it can tell I've come into a new area that I've not analyzed yet. When it does that, it goes in, analyzes that area, and says, oh, this is a new space, and it colors it differently on the app so you kind of have an idea of what room you're in. Yeah, you can set multiple— if you have multiple vacuums, you can control all of them from here and tell them to do what you need to do. You can set up the rooms. the various rooms in there. It is, I'll tell you right now, of all of the ones we've ever had, this is by far the most efficient. It's by far the easiest to use. It does a fantastic job of cleaning. I'll tell you, one day I just

got to be curious and said, I want to figure out how good this thing does. So I let it clean my living room and go back to its docking station. I came back with my with my regular upright, which is a very good vacuum, and I cleaned it and it still got stuff up. Okay, but it is a, is a very powerful vacuum and it still got stuff up, but probably less than a quarter of what it normally would get up.

Hmm.

It— I would— I was so impressed at that point. I was like, listen, if I could, if I could run this thing even 2 or 3 times a week and only wind up having to physically vacuum my house every other week, every third week, and feel like my house was still clean. And it just changed my ability to— I bought time back and I didn't feel like I was losing cleanliness in the meantime, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that's, that's always a frustrating thing is when you, when you put down a chunk of change and And, you know, you don't think that you're actually getting the return for what you spent the money. You're not getting the freedom. You're not getting the return, basically, is, you know, right? Like, if it was just like, you know, leaving dirt all over the floor, you'd be like, well, that was a stupid $380 that I just spent, you know?

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, because if I, if I wound up spending that $350, whatever it was, and I got that thing home and it just didn't work, Man, I would be insanely frustrated, especially after I felt like I'd tried a couple out before and kind of been burned on those. But the reviews on this thing were really, really good. And I thought, man, it's— we're going to pull— we're going to just pull the trigger and make it happen. And I am so glad we did. My wife would tell you the very same thing. One of the best purchases we've made.

That's awesome. I mean, just the mop function alone, man, I have not— I mean, like, and I haven't done a whole lot of research on robot vacuums, but I'd never heard of one doing a mopping feature of any kind.

Yeah. They've actually got— the next level up, they've got the mopping function. It does a couple of cool things. I think it's called an e-mop, I think is what it's called. You can tell it, even in different spaces, to mop differently. It— I don't know exactly how the function works. I encourage you to go look into that since, I mean, I just don't own that one.

Yeah.

But like certain, maybe certain hardwoods or certain tiles, it'll put down a different amount of water. So like maybe your laminate, you don't want it to put down very much water, but on your tile you do. You can control how much water it puts down. So kind of a neat, kind of a neat function that this one doesn't have.

Yeah, my house, I'm gonna need one that climbs stairs. That's pretty much all my house is.

Well, and I'm glad you brought that up. You know, I mentioned that it's not gonna go downstairs, it's not gonna fall to its demise, but we do have a lot of different surfaces in our, in our home, and it is It transitions really, really well, especially like in our playroom. We have a rug that's fairly thick and it's shaped like a— it's actually a puzzle. It looks like a puzzle.

Okay.

And so the outside edges are, you know, look like a puzzle. It navigates that thing like a champ, up and down. It doesn't have any issues with transitions and we've never had any issues as far as that goes. It's the wheels on it are powerful and they go over lots of different terrains, which is really, really helpful as well. Nice. Yeah.

Anything else we need to know about this booger?

Yeah, we— I could probably talk more about it, but at the end of the day, um, I give it 2 thumbs up. And if you're looking at vacuums, I would highly encourage you to at least consider this one.

Well, just, just real quick. I mean, like, even— I mean, like, even if you're paying full retail for this thing, which I think you said was like $400-something now?

Right, right now it's $480 on Amazon.

How does that stack up against some of the bigger names like the Roombas and the—

Very similar.

Similar price range?

Yeah, I mean, they have less expensive ones and they have more expensive ones. I mean, I think Roomba has one out that's like $800 or something.

Okay.

But, but, you know, there's, there's certain features that it's going to contain. You're also paying for the name for sure whenever you go with Roomba. iRobot, I think, is the parent company for that. But, you know, at the end of the day, I want to know how to— I mean, a lot of these have apps and a lot of them don't. So, you know, how well does that app function? What kind of features am I getting with that app? Am I having to put down physical barriers in order to do that, or is it kind of digital? Whether or not you go with this specific vacuum, I think you need to kind of look into some of the features that I know this vacuum offers before you go out and buy the

Shark or the Roomba or whatever name brand you think is good. I'll tell you right now, very few of them are going to be getting better reviews than this one has. I, like I said, I did my research. In fact, one of my good friends who lives in Arkansas, he, he was asking me about it because I put something up about it on Facebook the other day. And he was like, hey man, I've been, I've been thinking about one of these. And he's a researcher like me. And, and he said, you know, I, if I buy this thing, it's gonna be totally on your recommendation. He bought it. And he showed me some of his logs. It was insane the number of times he had already had that thing going. He was like, man, this is the best thing I've ever bought. I'm

I am all in on this thing. He absolutely loves it. And I know there are some people that will get more than one and have multiple going at the same time in the same area. And it apparently it works. I've not tried to do that, but it kind of cuts your—

Be interested to see if they fight.

Yeah, I don't know, man. I have no idea. No idea. But anyway, it's a good product. You know, we'll put in the show notes, uh, what I have. We'll even put the newer version in and, uh, let you go check it out.

Awesome, man. I'm looking forward to it. I mean, like, again, like, I need a flatter house before I invest in one of these boogers, but, uh, you got like 29 sets of stairs. That's what we need. That honestly, if somebody could come up with a robot that can clean stairs, Like I'm in. I don't even care what it costs. Yeah, I'm in. If I never have to clean stairs again, those—I don't know why those get dirtier than everything.

So I don't know, man. But I don't know. Cool.

So all right. Well, good show, man. I guess it's back to quarantine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back to back to quarantine. We're still doing this remotely. I'm I'm looking forward to the day when we can. be back in the studio together.

Absolutely. But, but until then, everybody, you know, send us, send us maybe like a picture or a message of maybe some projects you guys have gotten done around the house while you've been in lockdown. I'd love to hear some inspiring home news about what you guys have been up to. And also want to remind all of our business owners, we're still putting together our Support Local montage for everybody. We've been getting some really cool videos from some folks and we'd love to hear from you. So send us a quick video of you, business owner-operator, just saying the phrase Support local so we can put you into our, our video that we're going to be putting out

to everybody real, real soon. Anything else, Kev?

I just want to encourage everybody to continue to shop local and take care of those people that have been taking care of you. Thanks for listening to our show. You know, you can always find us on info@homeownersshow.com or on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all of those places. Leave us a review. would be awesome. Thanks for downloading this show.

Share it with your friends.

Until next time, we'll see you later.

See you.